Blue Sky Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery

It was the last of four projects that Martin had personally commissioned from Wright (including the Larkin Administration building, the Darwin D. Martin House and Graycliff, the Martins’ summer home). Though the plans for the mausoleum in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery were completed in 1928, the project remained unrealized. In 2004, the cemetery commissioned Anthony Puttnam, an architect trained by Wright, to complete the mausoleum. In true Wrightian fashion, the granite monument is organically integrated with the landscape and neighboring monuments. A stone monolith and sweeping staircase overlook a peaceful pond. Etched on the south side of the monument, a quote extracted from Wright’s correspondence with Martin proclaims: “…a burial facing the open sky. The whole could not fail of noble effect.”