PARK AND CEMETERY. 
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We have frequently pointed out 
in these pages the possibilities of 
the work of educating the public 
on matters of modern cemetery 
design and management through 
the daily papers. 
The story of the modern ceme- 
tery and its development from 
the old country grave-yard to the 
modern park plan burial ground 
is a vastly interesting one and 
one that makes strong appeal to 
the intelligent public when placed 
before them in forcible fashion. 
Where newspapers have been in- 
terested in this work, and have been 
furnished with the proper facts on 
which to base their stories, they have 
placed the modern cemetery before 
the public in a way to inspire inter- 
est and enlist the support of the 
people for advanced ideas of modern 
cemetery development. 
For example, no less a paper than 
the New York Sun took up the mat- 
ter of exploiting the cemeteries, and 
put one of its best reporters on the 
job, and under the handsome, orna- 
mental heading reproduced above, ex- 
tending across an entire page, he pro- 
duced nearly a page of interesting and 
fairly accurate information about the 
modern cemetery. He got his in- 
spiration and suggestion from the 
file of Park and Cemetery in the New 
York public library and most of the 
rest of his material from a morning’s 
visit to Mr. Reese Carpenter of Ken- 
sico Cemetery. 
Following are some interesting ex- 
tracts from the story in the Sun: 
There are few visitors to cities 
who do not include a cemetery in 
their list of places to see. This is 
an unconscious recognition of the 
work of the men who have fixed a 
high standard for cemetery design- 
ing and who have made burying 
places spots of beauty and attractive- 
ness. A trip through a well ordered 
cemetery is a visit to an attractive- 
ly laid out park. 
Passing through an appropriate en- 
trance the visitor follows winding 
roads that are flanked with clusters 
of blooming shrubs or beds of flow- 
ers. There is usually a lake with 
swans on it and edged by feathery 
willow trees, while about it knolls 
rise up to afford variety to land- 
scape. Here and there out of the 
frame of trees rises a stately mono- 
lith pointing skyward and marble 
tombs may be seen through the 
arches of the foliage. 
Nothing suggests the morbid. It 
is an atmosphere of peace, of quiet 
beauty and of rest that prevails. Some 
striking statue, perhaps carved by a 
world famous sculptor, arrests the at- 
tention, while the simpler monuments 
that dot the long sweep of lawn form 
a pleasing contrast to the green car- 
pet of the grass. One may follow 
miles of well kept roads with some- 
thing of interest even to the casual 
visitor at every turn. 
When towns in the United States 
were small the burying places nat- 
urally centered about the churches. 
In the hamlets of the South and 
elsewhere the country churchyard 
still exists and funeral processions 
that wind from the doors of the 
church to the grave may still be seen. 
In other regions these burying places 
are still seen, but rather as historical 
monuments than in actual use. In 
New York old Trinity and its church- 
yard are an example of this. 
At one time such cemeteries as 
Trinity sufficed for the needs of a 
city. Then as New York grew there 
developed a demand for more provi- 
sion for the dead. Greenwood Cem- 
etery was the answer to the difficulty 
and then came Cypress Hills, both in 
Brooklyn. 
These were at a distance from the 
city itself when New York’s center 
was in lower Manhattan. The first 
spreading of the cemeteries did not 
carry with it any hew conception. 
People bought lots and fenced them 
in with iron palings. Straight lines 
and rows of monuments, just as 
in the churchyard, were still the 
custom. It may be that the park 
idea, generally followed now, had 
its origin when the cemetery of- 
ficials found that it was very ex- 
pensive to keep up a cemetery 
w'hen each lot was separated from 
its neighbor l)y a fence. 
It was not until the ’80s that the 
lawn system found its first advo- 
cate in Supt. Strauch of Spring 
Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati. It 
has become a general plan now. Wood- 
lawn Cemetery and on a still larger 
scale Kensico are examples of it near 
New' York. 
The suburban railroad systems 
opened up the possibility of securing 
cemetery sites away from the town 
and safe from the encroachment of 
business. It was not so many years 
ago when it was an all day drive 
from the church to the cemetery. 
Now the funeral train is considered 
the proper thing and nobody regards 
is improper to have his dead con- 
veyed to the place of entombment in 
a private car. 
These things worked out slowly. 
There were men of business acumen 
and artistic sense who saw the trend 
of things and made arrangements to 
supply the coming demand for out-of- 
town cemeteries. They realized that 
the mortuary requirements of a grow- 
ing city could no longer be met by 
the existing facilities and they laid 
their plans accordingly. They bought 
the most sightly and the best located 
tracts of land they could find and 
announced their intention of making 
them cemeteries. 
It was not easy to finance the new 
cemeteries. To turn hundreds of 
acres of rolling land which was 
covered with stubborn second growth 
timber into a park and make it at- 
tractive was an enterprise that re- 
quired a great outlay of money. The 
returns would be slow and men who 
had money for new enterprises were 
not always ready to undertake an 
investment which it would take years 
to get tangible returns on. Some 
men were far sighted enough to see 
results further away than a few 
months and financial backing was se- 
cured. 
