Vermont's 1881 Grieving-Man Mausoleum at Laurel Glen
5443 US-103, Cuttingsville, VT 05738
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public access to mausoleum grounds along US-103. Laurel Hall mansion (across the road) offers separate tours.
Access
Limited Access
Marble steps and uneven cemetery ground; mausoleum entrance reached by short flight of stairs
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1881 · National Register of Historic Places · Giovanni Turini Sculpture · Victorian Mourning Architecture · Vermont Marble Industry
John Porter Bowman (1816-1891) made his fortune in leather goods, supplying tanned hides to the federal government during the Civil War. His personal life ran in the opposite direction. His infant daughter Addie died in 1854. His older daughter Ella died in 1879 at the age of twenty-three. His wife Jennie died the following year.
In July 1880, the recently widowed Bowman commissioned a Grecian-style mausoleum on a parcel adjacent to an existing burial ground in his native Cuttingsville. The project employed more than a hundred sculptors, stone cutters, masons, and laborers over the course of a year. The completed structure cost an estimated $75,000 — a substantial fortune in 1881 dollars. The interior contains marble busts of the three deceased women, period furnishings reflecting late-Victorian domestic life, and the four sarcophagi.
The most-photographed feature stands outside the mausoleum's bronze doors. Italian-American sculptor Giovanni Turini — best known for the Garibaldi statue in Manhattan's Washington Square — carved a life-size marble figure of Bowman himself. He is depicted ascending the tomb steps in mourning dress: cloak, gloves, top hat in hand, a funeral wreath under one arm, and the key to the family vault in the other. His marble face holds an expression of contained grief that has drawn observers for nearly a century and a half.
When the mausoleum was dedicated in 1881, it became an immediate tourist attraction. Thousands of visitors traveled to Cuttingsville to view what newspapers of the period called the most expensive private memorial ever erected in New England. Bowman himself died ten years later in 1891 and was interred alongside his family.
Laurel Hall, the family mansion Bowman built across the road, was reportedly maintained as if the family might return at any moment. Local tradition holds that Bowman left provisions in his will for the staff to set a table for the family each evening at the mansion. The mausoleum and mansion together were listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A historical marker was added in 2021.
Sources
The Bowman tradition is one of the most-cited Vermont ghost stories, more about love than fear. Local accounts repeat that Bowman left a provision in his will requiring his staff to set the family dining table at Laurel Hall each evening — places laid for his wife and two daughters — and to maintain the household as if the family might return. Whether the provision was literal is debated by Bowman scholars and the current preservation foundation, but the story has circulated locally since at least the early 20th century.
Visitors to the mausoleum describe a persistent sense of being watched by Turini's marble figure of Bowman as they approach. The statue's eyes, set in their downward-cast position on the tomb steps, appear in some accounts to follow visitors at the periphery. Photographers report difficulty producing images that reproduce the figure's expression consistently, which Vermont folklorists attribute to the unusual angle of the marble carving rather than anomaly.
Reports from Laurel Hall across Route 103 describe footsteps on the upper floors, the smell of cigar smoke in the library, and the sound of piano music from rooms where the original Steinway is no longer in playable condition. The Bowman Mansion preservation nonprofit collects these accounts as part of the property's interpretive material without endorsing them as confirmed phenomena.
Notable Entities
View the marble life-size statue of John Porter Bowman ascending the steps of his family mausoleum, carved in 1881 by New York sculptor Giovanni Turini. Bowman is depicted in mourning cloak and gloves, carrying a funeral wreath and the key to the tomb that holds his wife and two daughters.
Across Route 103 from the mausoleum, the Bowman family's 1880 Laurel Hall mansion offers seasonal guided tours through the Bowman Mansion preservation nonprofit. Check current schedule on the venue website.
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