Daubrenet Mortuary Chapel at Oakwood Cemetery is wasting away

Folks over at the Shockoe Examiner covered an interesting story about the Daubrenet Mortuary Chapel at Oakwood Cemetery.

The fate of one of the rarest of Richmond architectural types is literally hanging by a thread, and it may soon disappear forever. One of the few mortuary chapels in this city is threatened with eminent collapse, and it remains to be seen if anyone will rescue it before it vanishes from the landscape of Oakwood Cemetery.  There are chapels in some Richmond cemeteries, like the former gatehouse and chapel at Hollywood Cemetery (now the cemetery offices) and the mortuary chapel at the Hebrew Cemetery (now brutally stripped of its interior and used as a tool shed). These chapels were designed for use for foul-weather funerals and the semi-public purposes of their cemeteries and no burials under them were ever intended. To encounter a private, nineteenth-century building that combines the functions of a religious chapel and a tomb, like that built by Leon Daubrenet in Richmond, or even Virginia, is rare indeed.

Read the full story here