Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Ottawa Hills Memorial Park, Toledo, Ohio

Toledo has several beautiful cemeteries. It also has Ottawa Hills Memorial Park, which has to be the most bloody fucking awful excuse for a cemetery I've ever seen.
I say this because the place is not just totally lacking in character, scenic beauty, or anything else worth praising, but it also is home to what has to be the worst collection of disgustingly bad artwork in Toledo, if not in all of Ohio.
Just look at it!
The whole damn place is like a Baptist theme park.
WTF happened here? Were they trying to save on shipping by narrowing a crappy statue?
Unfortunately, it doesn't look any better from this angle.
I'm not even going to comment on this one.
I will, however, say something about this. He looks as if He's expressing dismay at so much wasted stone.
The supposed advantage of these low-to-the-ground-only cemeteries is their ease of maintenance. I've never noticed the idea to work, though. They're almost always as badly tended as some backwoods family plot.
To add insult to injury, Ottawa Hills Memorial Park recently demolished its only distinctive feature, an administration building designed by Wilfred Holtzmann. I'd only recommend a visit if you have relatives who had the misfortune of being buried here or if you have a masochistic love of spectacularly bad artwork. This stuff makes Elvis on black velvet look classy.
As for me, if anyone dared plant me at Ottawa Hills Memorial Park when I drop off my perch, I guarantee I'd come back and haunt the hell out of them.

Hailsham, East Sussex

Taj Mahal, Agra

The cenotaphs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal
Their actual tombs in the crypt.

Tomb of Nicholas Fitzherbert, Norbury, Derbyshire


(Photo Credit)

Tomb of Emperor Showa ( Hirohito )

Tomb of Emperor Xuanwu, Luoyang

Northern Wei Dynasty, d515 CE.
(Photo Credit)

Tomb of Leonardo da Vinci ( Supposedly ), Amboise


(Photo Credit)