A "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion, Part 14: Conspicuous Entombment | Blatz Mausoleum (1894), Forest Home Cemetery
(Updated on May 14, 2024)
This series complements my recently published guidebook, Milwaukee in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Cream City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it MSC.
The MSC section and page references for the site featured here: 7.5; pp. 172-173.
Facing east-southeast.
Forest Home Cemetery, one of America's great landmark burial grounds, boasts many ornate mausolea. But this final resting place for one of Milwaukee's famous beer barons and his family is the most flamboyant of them all. It's made of what is arguably the best known and widely used of monumental stones quarried in this country—Vermont's Barre Granodiorite, better known in the trade as "Barre Granite."
Devonian in age, the Barre comes from a mass of magma emplaced in the upper crust approximately 368 Ma ago, during the mountain-building event geologists refer to as the Acadian Orogeny. Petrologists consider this rock type a granodiorite because most of its feldspar content is in the form of plagioclase rather than alkali feldspar. Normal granites have a more equal mixture of the two feldspar types.
The Barre Granodiorite is a fine-grained, light-gray stone that is very resistant to deterioration, as is evidenced by the crispness of its carved ornamental details here after almost thirteen decades of exposure to the Cream City's unforgiving climate.
This site and many others in Milwaukee County are discussed at greater length in Milwaukee in Stone and Clay (NIU Imprint of Cornell University Press).
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion album. Also, while you're at it, check out my Architectural Geology of Milwaukee album, too. It contains quite a few photos and descriptions of Cream City sites highlighted in other series of mine.
A "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion, Part 14: Conspicuous Entombment | Blatz Mausoleum (1894), Forest Home Cemetery
(Updated on May 14, 2024)
This series complements my recently published guidebook, Milwaukee in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Cream City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it MSC.
The MSC section and page references for the site featured here: 7.5; pp. 172-173.
Facing east-southeast.
Forest Home Cemetery, one of America's great landmark burial grounds, boasts many ornate mausolea. But this final resting place for one of Milwaukee's famous beer barons and his family is the most flamboyant of them all. It's made of what is arguably the best known and widely used of monumental stones quarried in this country—Vermont's Barre Granodiorite, better known in the trade as "Barre Granite."
Devonian in age, the Barre comes from a mass of magma emplaced in the upper crust approximately 368 Ma ago, during the mountain-building event geologists refer to as the Acadian Orogeny. Petrologists consider this rock type a granodiorite because most of its feldspar content is in the form of plagioclase rather than alkali feldspar. Normal granites have a more equal mixture of the two feldspar types.
The Barre Granodiorite is a fine-grained, light-gray stone that is very resistant to deterioration, as is evidenced by the crispness of its carved ornamental details here after almost thirteen decades of exposure to the Cream City's unforgiving climate.
This site and many others in Milwaukee County are discussed at greater length in Milwaukee in Stone and Clay (NIU Imprint of Cornell University Press).
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion album. Also, while you're at it, check out my Architectural Geology of Milwaukee album, too. It contains quite a few photos and descriptions of Cream City sites highlighted in other series of mine.