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adjudicate to depict what cemeteries were like a yoke hundred long time ago — perchance you better not . The received praxis in Europe and the United States was inhumation in churchyard burial land , and by the late 1700s these places had reach a critical level of overcrowding , with bodies even stacked atop one another . In an effort to ease this appalling position , and as an annex of the pop “ picturesque ” style of landscape invention , the rural or garden cemetery movement commence , in which large ballpark - like options were designed as non - denominational burial sites . Père Lachaise , founded in 1804 near Paris , became the model .
Photo by : Richard Cheek .
Mount Auburn Cemetery , outside Boston , was the first of its kind in the United States , founded by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1831 , setting the touchstone across the body politic . former visitor flocked to Mount Auburn , not just to honor the all in but to saunter , breeze and socialise , a penury met today by places like Central Park in New York City . And the comparison is not co-occurrent — garden memorial park inspired landscape painting architects of the solar day and set off the Urban Parks Movement begin in the 1850s .
John Murray Monument under the golden glow of a simoleons maple in fall . Photo by : Richard Cheek .
Now a National Historic Landmark , Mount Auburn is as much botanical garden or botanical garden as cemetery , a goal at its origination that was reward in a 1993 master plan , initiated by burial ground Chief Executive William C. Clendaniel . Its 175 acres are graced by some 5,000 trees representing 630 species ( include 50 Massachusetts state star ) , shrubs and groundcovers , all of which are being catalogue , mapped and labeled , including the cemetery ’s signature ( and massive ) beechwood , oaks and sugar maple . law of proximity to Arnold Arboretum has likely contributed to the fine aggregation of flora cloth .
Left : Gothic revival - stylus Bigelow Chapel , built in the 1800s . in good order : 19th - C gravestone wall byScilla sibirica . Photo by : Richard Cheek .
Mount Auburn is an outdoor museum , and a base on balls through its grounds is a base on balls through the account of cemetery style , separate into “ fictitious character zone ” that shine the decades they were built — from woodlands to ornate Victorian to simple lawns . mainly design in - home , the garden have also had donation from landscape painting designers likeJulie Moir Messervy , Reed Hilderbrand and the Halverson Design Partnership .
Rotunda - like Mary Baker Eddy Monument , designed by Egerton Swartwout , reflected in Halcyon Lake . Photo by : Richard Cheek .
And visitors are still coming — an estimated 200,000 a year . Picnicking is no longer allow , but bird - observance has become a popular pastime at the burial ground , which congratulate itself on being a wildlife habitat . And there are a variety show of guide tours , of plants , sculptures and famous people , including Dorothea Dix , Oliver Wendell Holmes , Henry Cabot Lodge , Bernard Malamud , Winslow Homer and R. Buckminster Fuller .
Still an participating cemetery , Mount Auburn is using non - traditional concept as it goes ahead , make blank space and structures that save and heighten the existing landscape , while paying protection to those buried there . harmonise to vice president of operations and gardening David Barnett , Mount Auburn embodies “ history and the future at the same time . ”
For more info , call 617 - 547 - 7105 , see mountauburn.org , or look for the bookSilent City on a Hill : Picturesque Landscapes of Memory and Boston ’s Mount Auburn Cemeteryby Blanche M.G. Linden ( University of Massachusetts Press , saltation 2007 ) .
