Blue Sky Mausoleum
Drive eastward along West Delavan Avenue, just a block and a half past Delaware Avenue, and you’ll see it on your left, through the wrought iron fence surrounding picturesque Forest Lawn. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Blue Sky Mausoleum gracefully blends into the landscape, a perfect illustration of the famed designer’s concept of "organic architecture."
Better yet, drive into the cemetery and walk to the mausoleum. It’s a serene setting with the blue sky and fleecy clouds the "ceiling" and the trees and greenery the "walls," as Wright intended.
The design consists of a flight of gently rising steps that provide 24 burial crypts, as well as space for memorial inscriptions. At the top of the steps, a white granite monolith overlooks two peaceful ponds.
Wright designed the mausoleum at the request of Darwin D. Martin, secretary of the Larkin Soap Company and longtime friend and benefactor. It was the last of four projects Martin personally commissioned from Wright. The two discussed the project between 1925 and 1928, and when its plans were finally presented, Martin nicknamed it the Blue Sky Mausoleum because of its projected cost. The design was completed shortly before the 1929 Stock Market Crash which ushered in the Great Depression. Martin lost his fortune and the plans were put aside.
The project languished until the 1990s when Fred Whaley Jr., president of the Forest Lawn Cemetery, attended some of the planning meetings for the Darwin Martin House restoration project. When he discovered that a Wright memorial had been designed for his cemetery, Whaley began the effort to raise public support and funds to develop the monument.
Architect Anthony Puttnam, who apprenticed under Wright at the beginning of his career, was named the principal architect on the project. $500,000 was raised and the project was underway.
Wright wrote a note to Martin explaining his design. "This is a burial facing the open sky--a dignified great headstone commune to all." He saw in it ". a nice symbolism in the stepping terraces. a compromise between the grave and the mausoleum," adding, "It may have the better points of both." Wright concluded, "The whole could not fail of noble affect."
Blue Sky Mausoleum was opened in October 2004. None of the Martin family is buried there, however. Instead, crypts are available to anyone in the world. The design has been forever retired, making this beautiful structure at Forest Lawn unique in the world, a fitting legacy of both architect and patron.
SOURCES
1"Frank Lloyd Wright’s Blue Sky Mausoleum Opens a Half-Century After It is Commissioned," Architectural Record, November 22, 2004 . Also see: Ramona Pando Whitaker, "Wright-Designed Mausoleum is Completed in Forest Lawn," The Landmarker (Newsletter of the Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier), Fall/Winter 2004, p. 11; Collin Edgar Yeo, "Change of Plans: Does a Frank Lloyd Wright Revival Honor or Betray Him?" The New Republic Online, Nov. 30, 2004.
