A mong the many crypts and monuments in Spring Grove Cemetery sits a strikingly spooky chapel known as the Dexter Mausoleum. Designed over the course of four years (1865–1869) by James Keyes Wilson, this Gothic revival mausoleum was meant to resemble the grand architecture of Europe. When construction stopped in 1869 (it was never fully completed), it featured the only flying buttresses in the city. Deceased members of the Dexter family lie in the underground portion of the mausoleum.
“There are 36 catacombs in there and 20 of them are used,” says Spring Grove Cemetery historian Debbie Brandt. “The others can’t be used because today’s standards have changed, and the spaces are too small.” Edmund Dexter, the family patriarch who commissioned the building, gained his notoriety and fortune as a whiskey baron, but the money ran out, so the elevator and stained-glass windows in the original were never installed. According to Brandt, the building can’t be…..