Resting Place: Roman Ghosts

The Burke mausoleum's four guardians echo a popular style around the turn of the century.

In 1907, ancient was all the rage. Neoclassical memorials were bringing Greek and Roman themes to Lake View Cemetery, including in the Burke family mausoleum. The granite building was designed by sculptor Herman Matzen for Stevenson Burke, a judge and railroad investor. Cut on-site, two caryatids and two telamons — figures that double as columns — still stare down from the front of the mausoleum today. While classical forms, such as those at the Erechtheion in Athens, feature one figure repeated, the Burke figures draw on different symbols, says Maggie Popkin, professor of Greek and Roman architecture and art at Case Western Reserve University. One figure carries a cornucopia, one a scroll and another a pot that resembles an urn. The left-most telamon, a fresh-faced young man holding a snake-wrapped staff and wearing wings sprouting from a crown, references the Greek god Hermes, says Popkin. "This makes sense in the funerary context," she says, "because Hermes is the Greco-Roman god that leads souls to the underworld."

Find it ⇨Section 10, east of the Garfield Memorial