Mount Auburn Cemetery


  • Caption
    View of Structure Across Water
Related people
Henry A. S. Dearborn (designer)
Alexander Wadsworth (landscape architect)
Date
1831 (first dedicated)
Location
North and Central America->United States->Massachusetts->Cambridge
Description
Mount Auburn Cemetery was the nation's first rural burial ground and the first large scale landscape open to public in the United States. Classical design principles were applied when designing the cemetery to make avenues, paths, and ponds responsive to the natural topography.
Cemetery's horticultural landscape consists of 30,000 monuments made by the first generation of American sculptors. Popular monument styles include Neoclassical, Gothic, and Egyptian forms and motifs. The landscape also contains a rich variety of vernacular memorial art, including iron fences, granite curbing and mausolea of a wide range of styles, with particular strength in the mid-19th century.
Physician Jacob Bigelow was the driving force behind the development of the cemetery.
Dearborn and Wadsworth were the designers.
Style/Period
19th Century (1800 - 1899 CE)
Gothic Revival
Material
grasses
deciduous trees