A visit to any of the Great American Garden cemeteries will reveal an abundance of monuments and mausolea inspired by ancient Egypt. Indeed, the United States experienced a revival in Egyptian-influenced architectural design beginning in the first half of the nineteenth century, extending through the late 1880s, and resurging in the 1920s and 1930s. Whether carved out of marble or granite, Egyptian-inspired monuments in the form of masabas, pyramids, and obelisks were expensive undertakings affordable only to the rich and famous—to captains of industry, community leaders, and people of incredible economic means. This paper will showcase several examples of Egyptian Revival burial monuments erected in cemeteries in the East and Midwest. The occupants range from local celebrities (such as Eugene C. Lewis, Director General of the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition) to nationally known inventors and manufacturers (such as Horace and John Dodge). I will also connect the structures to the occupants’ lives and the circumstances of their deaths. The presentation touches on the subtopics of social and class differences in cemetery monuments, the politics of memorialization, and Egyptian Revival design motifs.
About the presenterPatricia M. Radecki
Patricia Radecki is Professor of English at Nassau College, SUNY, where she teaches composition, applied linguistics, and folklore—as well as helps coordinate ESL curriculum. In addition to the topic of death in American culture, her research interests include Old Regular Baptist hymnody and the Bible as literature.