Everyone has heard about the housing boom, but a tomb boom?

Many Americans over the past few years have upgraded where they live. Now, some are raising the standards of where they want to spend eternity.

Mausoleums, which date to the time of the Pharaohs, are freestanding buildings used for the entombment of human remains. Inside, stacks of crypts containing caskets line the walls, many of them marked with the name of the deceased. Funeral-industry representatives say larger community mausoleums, as well as cremation burials, have increasingly become a popular alternative for people who do not like the idea of in-ground burials. But although the older mausoleums tended to be somber and foreboding, the most recent ones are a lot more welcoming, decorative and high-tech.

Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks and Mortuaries in Glendale, Calif., is planning a three-story community mausoleum complex in Renaissance style. It will feature a 2,700-crypt mausoleum; a statuary garden; an 800-seat auditorium for religious services, lectures and films; a cafe serving coffee and light sandwiches; a space for exhibitions by local artists; and a museum displaying a permanent exhibit of artwork owned by the cemetery. The crypt area will feature technology that lets visitors press buttons on hand-held devices to retrieve photos, history and even a recorded message from the deceased via computer chips affixed to individual crypts.

In New York, Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn is constructing a five-story, $16 million, 2,500-crypt mausoleum that will look "more like an office tower you might see in Manhattan," says Lou Bortolin of Portland, Ore.-based Milne Construction Co., the developer. It is expected to be completed in December and will feature a sawtooth glass roof and two 20-foot skylights to bring in natural light, as well as two four-story waterfalls that flow into reflecting pools.

Although no one tracks the construction of mausoleums nationally, Tribute Cos., a Delafield, Wis., company that provides design and building services to cemeteries, says above-ground burials account for up to 30 percent of all burial work it does, up from 5 to 10 percent a year ago. The Prairie Home Cemetery in Waukesha, Wis., says sales of above-ground burial plots have nearly tripled over the past three years.

Cemeteries began building more community mausoleums, which are more space-efficient than ground plots, partly in an effort to preserve burial space, because some have been running out of land. Even with the frills, people in the funeral industry say mausoleum burials are often a few thousand dollars cheaper than traditional burials, which require an outer burial container to enclose the casket in the ground, a headstone, gravedigging, fees for opening and closing the grave and maintenance.

The popularity of upscale crypts is a boon for the death industry, which is a pretty stagnant business. The number of deaths per year is growing but not by much. Meantime, profits have been hurt by rising interest in cremation, which is also cheaper than interment because it doesn't require large burial plots or pricey caskets. The mausoleum-building spree is partly an attempt to capture some of cremation's popularity, while boosting revenues by adding bells and whistles that appeal to the deceased's loved ones as well as visitors from the general public.

Another factor: "Baby boomers are wanting a more unique statement to be remembered by, for their parents and for themselves," says Douglas Keister, who wrote a book about graveyard architecture called Going Out in Style.

The trend also stems from an increasing tendency among Americans to personalize death ceremonies. Tribute, the Wisconsin cemetery-design company, sells among other things hand-sculpted cremation niches for football fans, decorated with footballs, aerial views of a football stadium, and other images of the game. "The past few decades have seen a great deal of change in what people want to do with their dead," says Gary Laderman, a professor of religion at Emory University. Loved ones want to make sure "there's a celebration of the individual."

Mausoleum space can cost anywhere from $1,000 (for a single crypt) to $316,000 (for an eight-body crypt), with extra costs if the crypts are at "eye or heart" level. The average cost of an in-ground burial plot ranges from $750 to $3,000, according to the Funeral Help Program, a funeral-industry watchdog. The total average cost for cremation is about half that.

Spaces at mausoleums are often sold far in advance, sometimes before the structures are built. (Prices are slightly discounted in such cases.) Prepaying for funerals is something the death industry has been aggressively promoting. Some cemeteries put the funds into an escrow account and use the money to help pay for the construction. If the buyer dies before the mausoleum is complete, he or she is placed temporarily in another mausoleum.

Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a non-profit advocacy organization based in South Burlington, Vt., says prepayment "is almost always a terrible idea" because in most cases it's hard for people to get a refund if they move or change their minds.

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