677 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
INTELLIGENT IMPROVEMENT of a COUNTRY CEMETERY 
Everj’one is familiar with the typ- 
ical small cemetery, serving rural 
communities or small towns, and 
knows the conditions of desolation 
and neglect that, through long asso- 
ciation, seem to have become a part 
of it. 
There are several reasons for these 
conditions. The land has been pur- 
chased cheaply and it was usually 
necessary to sell it at a correspond- 
ingly low figure, and as a conse- 
quence, with no provision for care 
and maintenance. Utility has been, 
very rightly, uppermost, though of 
course not the far sighted utility 
that should have been considered. 
Beauty has been a very secondary 
consideration, left to the private lot 
owners: and their scattered efforts 
have added little if any to the beauty 
of the whole. In short, organized 
effort and comprehensive planning 
have been lacking: due partly to an 
erroneous impression that the ser- 
vices of a landscape architect or cem- 
etery expert were far beyond the 
reach of cemeteries of their size. 
At Wakefield, Xeb., is a small cem- 
etery of about three acres to which 
it has lately become necessary to add 
more ground. This cemetery is not 
badly neglected, but is disfigured by 
a network of sunken walks and an un- 
controlled display of stonework. 
Realizing that an improvement 
could be made upon the previous ar- 
rangement, the cemetery association 
secured the services of Hare & Hare, 
of Kansas City, to plan the five acres 
of reserve ground. The ground was 
visited, and then complete lot and 
planting plans and other working 
drawings furnished. The accompany- 
ing general plan shows the arrange- 
ment of the new ground and its re- 
lation to the old. A small park sur- 
rounding the entrance made use of 
land from which burying was pro- 
hibited by a neighborhood agreement. 
A lot unit of 12x20 feet was adopted, 
allowing ample room for six graves, 
with a small monument, or five graves 
with a large monument. The custom 
of burying with the feet toward the 
east, being still much respected in 
the community, influenced the ar- 
rangement of lots to some extent. 
It was decided upon recommendation 
of the landscape architects to place 
about half of the lots, those nearest 
the entrance, under perpetual care, 
selling them for enough that at least 
fifteen cents per square foot can be 
set aside. Other recommendations 
made, along with the plans, were 
briefly as follows: To limit the height 
of head markers to six or eight inches, 
or level with the ground: to allow 
monuments only on whole lots; and 
to sell half lots, cheaper lots, and sin- 
gle graves only in suitable locations. 
A point of interest came up in 
changing the lot arrangement from 
that formerly in use, which was 12x14 
foot lots in groups of four surrounded 
by a six foot walk and having a four 
foot walk dividing the group in the 
center; thus using 42 per cent of the 
block area for walks. 
In the new plan ample access is al- 
lowed with five foot walks between 
every other tier of lots, thus using 
only an average of 14 per cent of the 
block area, and effecting a saving of' 
28 per cent over the former plan, 
which, even at the moderate rate of 
twenty cents per square foot, would 
amount to about .$2,400 on each plat- 
ted acre, or many times the cost of 
the complete landscape plans for the 
entire five acres. While it is not 
claimed that so great a saving can 
be made in all cases, it is generally 
true. Economy, as well as beauty, 
are keynotes in modern cemetery 
planning. The closer adaptation of 
roads and lots to the topography may 
also affect a saving in construction 
far in excess of the cost of plans. 
All this is surely as important to a 
small cemetery as to a larger one. 
AQUEDUCT UNDER A 
CEMETERY 
In the claim for $3,000,000 made by 
the Kensico Cemetery Association 
against the City of New York, for 
land condemned for the new Cats- 
kill aqueduct which came up before 
Justice Tompkins, last month, the 
Justice allowed 30,000 plot owners to 
be represented. The Corporation 
Counsel made application for the city 
for permission to amend its petition 
so that the fee in the course through 
the cemetery shall be turned into an 
easement. It was brought out during 
the hearing that the city intends to 
lay three pipes large enough to al- 
low an automobile to pass through 
four feet below the surface of the 
ground in the cemetery, and it is con- 
tended that there will be a ridge 
through the cemetery that will dis- 
figure the landscape and that it will 
be impossible to bury the dead near 
the route of the aqueduct. Justice 
Tompkins reserved decision. 
