Nov 4, 2002 4 min read

PITTSBURGH (AP) – Six feet under isn’t the way the way an increasing number of folks want to spend the hereafter in Pittsburgh, which is experiencing a boom in mausoleum construction. Several factors are behind the boom, including preserving space and offering consumers choice.

“At one time, mausoleums existed only for the wealthy and famous,” said William Howard, director of marketing for Homewood Cemetery, where more than 90 private mausoleums of millionaires and others adorn the property.

“With the new community mausoleums, they’ve become offered to all,” Howard said. “Now the cost can be comparable to ground burial. You can have a nice crypt for the cost of a good used car today.”

On average, a couple will pay $7,000 to $7,500 for two spots together, which is somewhat more than the cost of burial, which includes a burial plot and grave vault, grave opening and closing fee, and a headstone.

As with all real estate, location affects cost in mausoleums.

The second level of a mausoleum wall, or “heart” level, typically costs most.

That’s followed by the third tier, or “eye” level, and then the “prayer” level on the bottom row. The top tiers are cheapest.

“If people can touch them, they feel more comfortable. It sounds emotional, but it’s true,” said Thomas Roberts, president of Allegheny Cemetery.

Bob Fells, external chief operating officer for the International Cemetery and Funeral Association, said no one appears to keep track of the number and percentage of mausoleum entombments each year, but there’s a general sense that it’s growing.

The 1960s and 1970s were the first big growth period for community mausoleums, Fells said. As more and more people who signed up for them have died, it’s educated their friends and relatives about the possibility.

Pittsburgh area cemetery owners estimate the percentage of the population preferring entombment at somewhere between 10 percent and 25 percent.

They often offer pre-construction discounts lasting several years to provide funds to build the mausoleum.

Cemeteries can also place more people in a mausoleum than in the ground it takes up, which would help cemeteries last longer.

“If … people knew how little space I have left (for ground burial), they’d be lined up out the door,” said Art Ognibene, manager of Mount Lebanon Cemetery. He estimates about 10 years’ worth of traditional burials remain.

Culture and ethnicity also play a role in choosing mausoleums.

Catholics have historically shown more tendency toward above-ground burial than Protestants. Entombments are more common in Italy, with its rocky soil, than almost anywhere else in Europe, and Pittsburgh has a large Italian population.

Homewood Cemetery hadn’t constructed a public mausoleum since the 1950s until this year, when it opened a small garden mausoleum with space for 96 bodies. Its Quiet Reflections Chapel Mausoleum is to be built with indoor fountain, heating and air conditioning and has 560 spaces.

Lawrenceville cemetery’s Temple of Memories Mausoleum has been constructed in six phases since 1962, providing 8,000 crypts that are nearly all filled. Space in the new mausoleum is less expensive, partly because it has so many more crypts available but also because it was built without a heating and air-conditioning system.

Roberts said most people don’t linger long enough in a mausoleum to need heating or air conditioning. So the cemetery invested instead in larger-than-life bronze figures of angels covering walls both inside and outside the mausoleum. A crypt covered by part of an angel on its front costs more than one without.

One early crypt purchaser, Richard Scuro, 53, of Clermont, Fla., formerly of Penn Hills, said he and his wife considered buying one of those interior angel crypts before opting for a more modest wall space outside.

“We started thinking about it and realized we’re going to be dead, and who cares if you’re part of the angel,” Scuro reasoned. “In essence, you’re not going to know anything.”