Percival Lowell Mausoleum, Lowell Observatory
Percival Lowell (1855-1916) is buried here at his favorite spot, on the grounds of the Observatory he founded in Flagstaff, Arizona in 1894, just yards from the telescope he used to make his famous observations of Mars. This mausoleum is carved from granite shipped to Arizona from his home region of New England. It cost a whopping $40,000 in 1923 ($20,000 more than his Clark Telescope!). The three solid blocks of granite were shipped by rail. The structure was designed to look both like the planet Saturn and a telescope dome. The roof is made of Cobalt glass tiles, and the plexiglass was added years later to prevent weather damage.
The inscription reads:
Everything around this Earth we see is subject to one inevitable cycle of birth growth decay . . . Nothing begins but comes at last to end . . . . Though our own lives are too busy to even mark the slow nearing to that eventual goal . . . . . Today what we already know is helping to comprehension of another world. In a not so distant future we shall be repaid with interest and what that other world shall have taught us will redound to a better knowledge of our own and of the cosmos of which the two form part. --- The Evolution of Worlds, Percival Lowell
Percival Lowell Mausoleum, Lowell Observatory
Percival Lowell (1855-1916) is buried here at his favorite spot, on the grounds of the Observatory he founded in Flagstaff, Arizona in 1894, just yards from the telescope he used to make his famous observations of Mars. This mausoleum is carved from granite shipped to Arizona from his home region of New England. It cost a whopping $40,000 in 1923 ($20,000 more than his Clark Telescope!). The three solid blocks of granite were shipped by rail. The structure was designed to look both like the planet Saturn and a telescope dome. The roof is made of Cobalt glass tiles, and the plexiglass was added years later to prevent weather damage.
The inscription reads:
Everything around this Earth we see is subject to one inevitable cycle of birth growth decay . . . Nothing begins but comes at last to end . . . . Though our own lives are too busy to even mark the slow nearing to that eventual goal . . . . . Today what we already know is helping to comprehension of another world. In a not so distant future we shall be repaid with interest and what that other world shall have taught us will redound to a better knowledge of our own and of the cosmos of which the two form part. --- The Evolution of Worlds, Percival Lowell