Oakwood Cemetery Mausoleum

The Board of Cemetery Trustee's report to the Village Council in 1914 describes their intention to have built 'a sanitary and modern place of burial, for 80 to 100 people, a beautiful little chapel which can be used for funerals, not only for compartment owners in the Mausoleum, but also for other funerals in stormy or inclement weather'. The unusual fieldstone mausoleum was built 'by the O.J. McBride Company for the Washtenaw Mausoleum Company, under contract with the Village of Saline. The work of construction was under the superintendency of Dr. J.B. Wallace [superintendent of the Board of Cemetery Trustees], by appointment of the Village Council'. A Village Council minutes entry dated March 8, 1915, reports that the Mausoleum is almost completed. The building's dual use as a chapel and crypt accounts for its somewhat large size. The Oakwood Cemetery, in which the structure stands, includes land set aside for burial use by Orange Risdon during his original platting of Saline. Although Village records contain no further information on either the contractor (who was not local) or the Washtenaw Mausoleum Company, a phone interview with Larry Arnett--of the Arnett Cemetery Monuments Company of Ann Arbor, the oldest monument firm in the county--revealed that an identical mausoleum located in Ann Arbor's Bethlehem Cemetery was recently torn down. Arnett suggests that the Washtenaw Mausoleum Company was probably one of many franchises found across the nation during the 'Teens and Twenties. The City would donate the land, and the franchise would provide the plan and sell crypt rights to the City, or directly to subscribers. The Washtenaw Mausoleum Company never registered with the State, a fact which tends to corroborate the franchise hypothesis.

The rectangular, one-story Vernacular fieldstone mausoleum, with its terraced east and west facades and monitor roof articulated by small rectangular windows, sits in the Oakwood Cemetery (at the corner of Monroe and E. Michigan) along an entrance road from Monroe Street, due west of the foot of W. Henry Street. The pink, grey, and black fieldstones of the 30 x 45 foot structure are joined by grey cement mortar. The building's roof is covered with red tiles. Small stained glass windows, the inscription 'In Hope' carved in a sandstone block below a heart-shaped stone, three square metal accent plates, and metal doors articulate the Henry Street facade. Stained glass windows and metal accents also highlight the west facade. The edges of the main east (Henry Street) facade and the entrance are emphasized by projecting stones. The mausoleum interior contains space for 88 to 100 burials.