Hollywood Forever Cemetery Unveils Towering Brutalist Mausoleum

Lehrer Architects has unveiled the completed first phase of the Gower Court Mausoleum, a vertical mausoleum that will house 50,000 additional spaces for deceased residents upon its completion. The structure draws inspiration from the modern art and architecture heritage of Los Angeles, resulting in an eco-brutalist monument to life that soars over Hollywood.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery has become a historic landmark of the entertainment industry in its century-spanning history, serving as the final resting place of Hollywood icons like Judy Garland. In the sprawling 19th-century lawn cemetery style, the 53-acre site was designed by landscape architect Joseph Earnshawand and opened to the public in 1899. The new Gower Court Mausoleum’s design began with Lehrer Architects in 2013 and was finished with the help of Roberto Sheinberg’s Arquitectura y Diseño firm.

The poured-in-place concrete building stands 100 feet in the air with rectangular cantilevered protrusions and vertical gardens full of lush floral and herbal vegetation. Inside, fresh air and natural light fill the open corridors, providing 360-degree views of the Cemetery grounds, the studioscape at Paramount, the Hollywood Hills, the Pacific Ocean, the San Gabriel Mountains, Downtown Los Angeles, and greater Hollywood.  For a touch of textural contrast, the crypt-fronts are clad in lustrous quartzite stone panels.

While embodying the spirit of designers like Donald Judd and Eduardo Chillida’s simplistic modernism, the mausoleum also recalls ancient sites of spirituality like the ziggurats of the Ancient Near East and mastabas from Mexico and Central America. The final product aligns with a growing architectural movement often called “eco-brutalism,” which combines the concrete volumes of 20th-century Brutalism with lush vegetation and landscape-focussed design.

See the gallery above to get a closer look at the innovative Gower Court Mausoleum by Lehrer Architects.