Dateline>City of Angels

They say you can’t take it with you.

Maybe not, but it sure can buy you one helluva sendoff.

Just ask Louise Maier, only daughter of the wealthy Joseph Maier, the Bavarian owner of L.A.’s Philadelphia Brewery in the late 1800s. When Lulu (as she was known about town) died in 1897 at the blossom age of 18, her final exit created quite a stir.

“For the first time at a funeral in this city, the corpse was not encased in a regular casket,” reported her March 28, 1897, Los Angeles Times obit. Rather, her funeral directors introduced a stylish catafalque “in the shape of a burial couch.”

Elaborate new death rituals were all the rage in Victorian Los Angeles, and Lulu’s didn’t disappoint. The Times went on to note that, after lying in state in her posh apartment “clad in a rich robe instead of the conventional shroud,” the “dead maiden” was conveyed to the cemetery “calmly sleeping” upon her comfy pink sofa, accompanied by a huge cortege of 120 carriages.

Upon reaching this family mausoleum at Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery, “a funeral chant was sung, a cover was placed over the couch and it was placed in the bier and conveyed to the grave.”

Tempting as it was to peer into the tomb the day I snapped this photo, I have to admit I was too afraid to look.