PARK AND CEMETERY. 
15 
sold at prices ranging Irom $10 to $15 
each, by warranty deeds, some without 
any qualification, while others contained 
the clause, “Always reserving all rights 
granted by law to cemetery associa- 
tiqns,” or “Subject to all rights granted 
by law to cemetery associations.” When 
the sidewalk assessment involved in this 
case was made, all the lots nearest the 
street had been sold, and the lodge 
owned none closer than 126 feet from 
the street line. After referring to the 
Iowa statutes which provide for assess- 
ments against “abutting” property, the 
court says; 
“Now that plaintiff as the owner of 
the four-acre tract had the right to 
dedicate it to use as a cemetery no one 
will deny. To that end it was entirely 
proper for it to plat the tract into 
blocks of burial lots separated by con- 
venient streets or driveways and alleys. 
And when the land was thus platted 
and set apart for such use we can con- 
ceive no good reason why, under the law 
to which we have already referred, the 
authority of the city or town, if any it 
has, to levy the cost of the sidewalk 
upon abutting property is not limited to 
that part of the property, if any there 
be, which borders or abuts upon the 
street improved. This, we think, would 
be the case had no lots yet been sold, 
and for still stronger reason it must ap- 
ply where the lots have been conveyed 
to other persons to such an extent that 
the property left unsold has no contact 
whatever with the street. 
“In avoidance of this objection, the 
appellant argues with much earnestness 
that notwithstanding the conveyance of 
a large majority of the lots to other 
persons, manj^ of whom have doubtless 
used them for the burial of their dead 
and perhaps have expended much labor 
and money in improving and decorating 
them, yet there is such an underlying 
title and proprietorship remaining in the 
plaintiff that the city may consider the 
entire cemetery as a single lot or parcel 
of land and treat the plaintiff as its 
owner for the purpose of levying and 
collecting special assessment, not upon 
the lots severally, but upon the cemetery 
as a whole. So far as this question of 
title is concerned appellant places much 
reliance upon the decision of this court 
in Anderson vs. Acheson, 132 Iowa, 744, 
110 N. W. 335, 9 L. R. A. (N. S.) 217. 
The cemetery there considered was one 
of a public character, provided, owned, 
and platted by a city. A city ordinance 
provided that the burial lots should be 
used by the purchaser only, should re- 
main indivisible, and, except it be to the 
city, should not be conveyed to any one 
but a member of the purchaser’s family. 
It also provided that proprietors of 
burial lots should not allow any inter- 
ment upon such lots for a remuneration, 
nor make any disinterment without the 
permission of the mayor. * * * Counsel 
fail, however, to notice that said case 
deals only with a public cemetery in 
which the conveyance of a lot was made 
subject to so many conditions and re- 
strictions as to vest the purchaser with 
little, if anything, more than a mere 
family privilege or right of burial, and 
the effect of our decision was that when 
a burial was rightfully made on such lot, 
a court of equity would protect the 
grave from desecration on the complaint 
of any member of the family of the 
deceased. Counsel quote the court as 
there saying: 
“ ‘The courts quite generally hold, 
* * * that the purchaser of a lot in a 
* * * cemetery, though the deed be 
absolute in form, does not take any 
title thereto. The mere privilege or 
license to make interments in the lots so 
purchased, exclusive of all others, is all 
that is acquired thereunder.’ 
“Such was not the language of the 
opinion. What we did say was ex- 
pressly limited to a ‘public’ cemetery, 
and when thus read shows that the dis- 
tinction of which we speak was not 
overlooked. It would certainly be 
strange if the owner of land by perfect 
title, were he so disposed, could not plat 
it as a cemetery and give, sell, or convey 
to a grantee a title as full, complete, and 
absolute as his own. It is said, how- 
ever, that the deeds given by plaintiff 
were not absolute. The evidence shows, 
as we have before stated, that some of 
the conveyances to lot purchasers were 
made by a warranty deed without any 
qualification, while others made use of 
the expression, ‘subject to all rights 
granted by law to cemetery associa- 
tions.’ search of the statute discloses 
no rjghts conferred upon cemetery as- 
sociations which would have the effect 
to reduce the title conveyed to the 
purchaser of a lot to anything less than 
a fee. Ry Code, Sec. 587, the officers or 
directors having control or management 
of a cemetery may adopt rules governing 
American Society of 
The annual meeting of the American So- 
ciety of Landscape Architects was held in 
Boston recently. The meeting disclosed 
what might be called preparedness in city 
planning. Even while Belgium lies in 
ruins, the Comite Neerlando Beige d’Arte 
Civique has been collecting from all over 
the world ideas to help repair and rebuild 
the devastated country along the most ad- 
vanced lines, aesthetically and economical- 
ly. A year ago the American Society of 
Landscape Architects appointed a commit- 
tee to co-operate with the Comite, and thus 
an immense amount of highly valuable ma- 
terial has been gathered. The society is 
putting through, with the assistance of the 
Department of Agriculture at Washington 
and various nurserymen, a standardization 
its care, ornamentation, and improve- 
ment, but on no fair interpretation can 
this be given the effect claimed for it by 
counsel. The restrictions upon the right 
of a lot owner goes only to the manner 
of his use of the property and not to the 
quality of his title. The deed gives 
more than a mere license or privilege; it 
conveys the property. Many deeds of 
land are made subject to building re- 
strictions and other limitations upon the 
use of the property, but such stipula- 
tions do not render the grantee’s inter- 
est thereby acquired anything less than 
a fee. The one cited precedent which 
at first blush seems to afford support to 
appellant’s position at this point is 
Buffalo City Cemetery vs. Buffalo, 46 
N. Y. 503, where a special assessment 
upon the property of a cemetery associa- 
tion was sustained. But on turning to 
the statute of New York under which 
that association was organized and upon 
which that decision is based we find it 
to be quite identical with the city ordi- 
nance we had to consider in the Ander- 
son Case, and that because of the many 
restrictions imposed by that statute the 
conveyances to purchasers did ‘no more 
than to confer on the holder of a lot a 
right to use it for the purposes of inter- 
ment,’ and that no such estate was there- 
by granted ‘as to exclude the general 
proprietorship of the association.’ We 
have in this state no such statute. In 
the Anderson case, as we have already 
seen, the cemetery was owned by the 
city which by its ordinances and deeds 
of conveyance vested the purchaser with 
no more than a perpetual license to use 
the lot for burial purposes. Here, how- 
ever, as we have already said, is no re- 
striction or condition imposed upon the 
purchaser which is inconsistent with a 
conveyance to him of the general owner- 
ship. The necessary result of this situa- 
tion is that as none of the unsold lots 
abut upon Iowa avenue the town was 
without authority to lay a special as- 
sessment upon the plaintiff’s property.” 
Landscape A rchitccts 
of the common names of plants through- 
out the Lffiited States, very much as the 
ornithologists brought about a standardiza- 
tion of the names of the common birds. 
Another project is being carried on by the 
committee of relations wuth trades, seeking 
to bring about a better understanding be- 
tween the profession and those who supply 
it — chiefly dealers in plant material. And 
still another is that of traveling exhibits 
by which plans, prospective sketches and 
photographs of work already done may be 
shown all over the country. It is also en- 
deavoring to raise a permanent fund to en- 
dow its fellowship in Rome, so that they 
may keep in touch with the best that is be- 
ing thought and done in the older nations. 
