Falling stone on mausoleum at Fairview Heights cemetery adds frustration to grief

It’s always sad when David Carr visits his mother’s crypt at Lake View Memorial Gardens, but lately he’s been feeling frustrated, too.

The once-stately Garden Mausoleum in the Fairview Heights cemetery is in disrepair. Some of the concrete blocks in back and mosaic floors in front are cracked. Floors and walkways are littered with trash, other debris and square stones that have fallen off the facade.

Workers installed orange plastic fencing around the mausoleum last fall, but sections have been pulled off metal poles and trampled due to people climbing over them to visit crypts and fill vases with flowers. Moisture-soaked fliers announce that the site is closed for “assessment.”

Until recently, Halloween and fall decorations were mixed with Christmas poinsettias, said Carr, an artist who lives in Belleville.

“I’m at a loss,” he said. “Every time I ask (cemetery employees) what’s going on, I’m told that it’s going to be fixed in two weeks, and they’ve been telling me that since October. It’s just weird.”

Carr suspected mine subsidence until recently, when he called the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and heard back from Brent Guttmann, a civil engineer with its Office of Mines and Minerals.

Guttmann told the BND that he inspected the mausoleum on Oct. 2, 2023, in response to a call from the cemetery owner in late September.

Guttmann concluded that problems were likely caused by “maintenance, deterioration and potential moisture issues,” not mine subsidence. He said a cemetery employee told him last week that a privately-contracted structural engineer reached a similar conclusion.

“Typically, when mine subsidence starts to happen, you have a large bowl-shaped depression that forms, and it’s anywhere from (200 to 700 feet) in diameter,” Guttmann said. “It usually impacts a relatively large area, and the primary indicators are ground cracks around the perimeter.”

That hasn’t happened at Lake View, he said.

St. Louis and O’Fallon Coal Co. operated its No. 2 mine (Black Eagle Mine) about 200 feet below the mausoleum site from 1905 to 1954 using a room-and-pillar system, Guttmann said. That system involved hollowing out “rooms” of coal-rich soil while leaving pillars for stabilization.

Lake View Funeral Home & Memorial Gardens, off Illinois 159, are owned and operated by Dignity Memorial, a Texas-based company that owns about 1,900 other funeral homes and cemeteries in the United States and Canada, according to its website.

On Tuesday, Lake View General Manager Ryan Zinke declined an interview through corporate spokesman Chris James, who emailed the following statement:

“We are committed to providing all families with a well-maintained environment for visitation and remembrance. Unfortunately, the Garden Mausoleum has experienced deterioration that poses a potential risk to those who visit the site.

“We realize this is an inconvenience to our visitors but due to safety reasons, it must remain roped off. We are in the process of getting qualified professionals to assess the mausoleum and hope to begin construction when the weather permits this spring.”

Lake View was established in 1952, according to James. The mausoleum, built in the early 1960s with a stone facade and wrought-iron trim, contains more than 300 crypts of varying sizes with marble fronts.

Carr said he’s relieved that the mausoleum isn’t being damaged by mine subsidence, but he doesn’t understand why cemetery management has taken so long to do repairs and failed to maintain the plastic fence or clean up the area so it looks presentable for families.

He’s also concerned that narrow openings where stones have fallen off the facade could allow water, animals or other pests to access crypts.

Carr believes the cemetery should have done more to keep families informed and wonders how many who live out of state are unaware of what’s going on at the mausoleum.

“(The employees) are like, ‘Oh we’re still holding services there. We’re still putting people in there. It’s just that we have to keep people away for their own safety,’” Carr said. “And I’m like, ‘That statement doesn’t make sense.’”