Hidden Treasures
Newspaper founder's mausoleum refurbished
Restored final resting place of Scripps will be rededicated

Robin Buckson / The Detroit News Jack Thompson refinishes the door to the Scripps mausoleum in Woodmere Cemetery. The mausoleum was built for the Scripps family in 1887 by architect H. Langford Warren.

By Christopher M. Singer / The Detroit News

    The mausoleum bearing the bodies of Detroit News founder James E. Scripps and his wife, Harriet, and William E. Scripps will remain solid as a rock for a long while to come.
   The newly-restored mausoleum will be rededicated at 4:30 p.m. Sunday (Aug. 20) in Woodmere Cemetery on West Fort at Woodmere in southwest Detroit.
   Scripps died in 1906.
   Construction on his family's authentic 13th Century English Gothic mausoleum began in 1887. The architect was H. Langford Warren of Boston, who spent two years touring Europe and studying Gothic architecture.
   The mausoleum is 18-by-28 feet with shafts of solid granite anchoring the arched doorway. The ceiling inside is vaulted and the vault itself is supported by three carved angels on each side of it. A stained glass window provides light.
   Family member Warren Wilkinson of the City of Grosse Pointe supervised the restoration work done by, he explained, "four or five companies."
   "The old slate roof was leaking and the water was getting down between the stones," Wilkinson added. "And when the waters gets down between the stones, the whole thing goes."
   The restoration cost $40,000, he said.
   Buried in the structure is James E. Scripps and his wife, Harriet, and William E. Scripps, a president of The News, and his wife, Nina, and their son, Francis.
   Scripps founded The Detroit News in 1873 with the goal of making the afternoon daily affordable to any reader, including workers. He wanted it to include news that was of interest to a mass amount readers, carefully edited, so it could be quickly read by busy working people and the money could be invested in editorial quality, rather than spent to buy paper and ink..
   Scripps was also a founder of the Chicago Tribune. He served as a state senator and used The News to spearhead a drive to found the Detroit Institute of Arts. He lived on Grand River at Trumbull, not far from The News on West Lafayette at Second. Plans are currently under way for new housing to occupy the site of Scripps's mansion.
   Woodmere Cemetery, built on a onetime native campsite, was dedicated in 1869.
   Besides the Scripps family, other notables buried there include four workers, Joseph York, Joseph Bussel, Kalman Leny and Joseph DeBascior, who were gunned down by Dearborn police during a 1932 hunger march on the Ford Motor Co. River Rouge Plant.
   Others buried in Woodmere Cemetary are Dexter Ferry, of the D.M. Ferry Seed Co.; Henry M. Butzel, a state Supreme Court justice and founder of the Legal Aid Bureau; Israel Himelhoch, a downtown Detroit retailer and founder of Better Business Bureau of Detroit; Moritz Kahn, vice-president of Kahn Bros. architects; and George Farwell, builder of Detroit's first auto showroom.
   Also there are James, Ella and Jeanette Liggett of Liggett School; Leo Franklin, a former rabbi at Temple Beth El; David Buick, inventor of the porcelain-coated bathtub and founder of Buick Divison, General Motors Corp.; Henry Leland, founder of the Cadillac and, later, Lincoln brands; David Mackenzie, a Detroit educator; Benjamin Siegel, a retailer; and David Whitney, a real estate developer.
   Pvt. Eddie D. Slovik, the only U.S. soldier executed for desertion during World War II, and his wife, Antoinette, are also buried there.