The Stanford Mausoleum , located in the Northwest of the Stanford University campus in the Stanford University Arboretum , holds the remains of the university's namesake Leland Stanford, Jr. and his parents Leland and Jane Stanford .
7-546: Once per year, the mausoleum is opened to the public and a wreath laid (usually in October during the reunion weekend) as part of the annual Founders' Day activities. The original intent of the Stanfords was to build a family mansion here. They had only gotten as far as planting a cactus garden (still present) before the death of their only son. They changed their plans to building a university in his name instead. Nearby
14-461: A burial vault below the superstructure. This contains the body or bodies, probably within sarcophagi or interment niches. Modern mausolea may also act as columbaria (a type of mausoleum for cremated remains) with additional cinerary urn niches. Mausolea may be located in a cemetery , a churchyard or on private land. In the United States , the term may be used for a burial vault below
21-513: Is a memorial (the Angel of Grief ) to Jane Stanford's brother, Henry Clay Lathrop. This memorial is a 1908 copy of a 1901 copy of an 1894 statue by the prominent American sculptor William Wetmore Story . The mausoleum has sphinxes on both the front and the back. The back ones are Greek and female with naked breasts. They were originally on the front but the Stanfords disapproved of them and replaced them with Egyptian style male sphinxes and moved
28-620: Is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A mausoleum without the person's remains is called a cenotaph . A mausoleum may be considered a type of tomb , or the tomb may be considered to be within the mausoleum. The word mausoleum (from the Ancient Greek : μαυσωλεῖον ) derives from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (near modern-day Bodrum in Turkey),
35-456: The via Appia Antica retains the ruins of many private mausolea for kilometres outside Rome . When Christianity became dominant, mausolea were out of use. Later, mausolea became particularly popular in Europe and its colonies during the early modern and modern periods . A single mausoleum may be permanently sealed. A mausoleum encloses a burial chamber either wholly above ground or within
42-512: The female sphinxes to the back. Stanford Mausoleum is also the site of the traditional Mausoleum Party, informally referred to as Maus, a student Halloween party held each year at 10:00pm on the last Friday or Saturday of October. After being temporarily cancelled from 2002 to 2005, this tradition was revived in 2006. It is sponsored and planned annually by the Stanford Sophomore Class. Mausoleum A mausoleum
49-684: The grave of King Mausolus , the Persian satrap of Caria , whose large tomb was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World . Mausolea were historically, and still may be, large and impressive constructions for a deceased leader or other person of importance. However, smaller mausolea soon became popular with the gentry and nobility in many countries. In the Roman Empire , these were often in necropoles or along roadsides:
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