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Americas dead rich buy a tomb with a view

Written by DeadGirl
Tuesday, 07 December 2004
Peter Beaumont Sunday December 5, 2004 The Observer Wealthy Americans seeking immortality now have the option of being reincarnated as a work of art. For the sum of $300,000, aficionados of the great American architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright can be buried in one of the last of his works to be completed: the Blue Sky Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York. Designed 76 years ago and finally built 45 years after Wright's death, the mausoleum - which has 24 two-coffin crypts - represents either the ultimate transaction of style with the hereafter, or a supreme act of vanity. The first crypt has been sold and negotiations are understood to be under way on others. Built on a gentle, tree-lined slope, the mausoleum features twin rows of 12 granite slabs that climb the lawn to meet on either side of a monolith. Recalling the layered slabs of his prairie-style houses, the mausoleum is inscribed with a Wright quote expressing his intention for a 'burial facing the open sky'. Opened to the public on a grey afternoon, the $1.2 million structure has already attracted sniffy remarks from architectural purists and guardians of the Wright legacy. 'This has been simplified from Wright's design, and it takes away some of the characteristics of the angular effects,' William Allin Storrer, author of the Wright companion, told The New Republic . 'You either build on the site, as the plans show, or forget calling it a Frank Lloyd Wright.' Civic leaders have never hidden the fact that they regard the mausoleum as being as much about attracting tourists to Buffalo as commemoration. 'We have the opportunity to establish ourselves as a national destination for people who care about architecture,' said Assembly member Sam Hoyt at the opening. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1366833,00.html

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Taphophilia?

taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)

ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"

DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries