787 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
But what was to be done next? 
There were few precedents to go by. 
The trustees of these cemeteries 
usually engaged some landscape gar- 
dener to make plans, and he fre- 
quently didn’t know how. An inci- 
dent in* the lajdng out of Kensico 
Cemetery illustrates this point. 
The man who had been retained to 
do the landscape gardening had in 
mind a series of' catacombs rising on 
the slope of the hill 'and a series of 
spokelike straight avenues radiating 
from the base. To make one of these 
it was necessary to cut through a 
knoll of ground. Reese Carpenter, 
who bought the land for the cemetery 
and was then, as he is now, its 
comptroller, objected. 
It was decided to bring the matter 
up before a meeting of the board of 
trustees. The architect spoke first. 
He outlined his plans for a cemetery 
and gave precedents from famous 
burying grounds in Europe with won- 
derful tiers of catacombs. It was to 
be the wonder of the new world, a 
place which people would visit from 
ever}* part of the globe. Then Mr. 
Carpenter was asked to give his 
opinions. 
"It makes me weep to think of cut- 
ting through that knoll,” he told the 
business men who formed the board. 
‘T know that Jay Gould paid $60,000 
for a hill not half as fine as that, and 
now the landscape gardener’s plans 
include the levelling of it. You are 
planning a cemetery not so much 
to be a place so unique that men will 
visit it as an eighth wonder of the 
world as to be a spot which men and 
women will select as the final abode 
of their loved ones. 
“Let us suppose the case of a young 
woman of means whose home is in 
Westchester county, where she has 
lawns and sloping grounds about her 
residence Her mother dies and is 
buried in our cemetery. Will this 
young woman prefer to stand near 
some marble catacomb and wave her 
hand at the passing trains and call 
out ‘Here’s where mother is buried,’ 
or will she prefer to have her 
mother’s grave in some quiet loca- 
tion on a brow of the hill, perhaps, 
where she can go quietly and medi- 
tate? 
“Don’t you think she would pre- 
fer to have her last home situated 
similarly to the one she occupied 
when she lived? My notion is that 
nature needs no improvement, all that 
we need to do is to smooth the rough 
places and make out roads, not in 
straight lines, but following the 
easiest line of ascent, just as the cow- 
paths now lead.” 
His argument prevailed, for it ex- 
pressed the idea which lies at the 
bottom of modern cemtery planning. 
The site first, something as good as 
can be obtained and away from the 
noise of the city, and then merely 
nature assisted, not changed. 
The artistic planner of a burying 
ground has a horror of laying out 
grounds. He , objects to straight 
lines and rows of anything. They 
are never found in nature, and the 
man who can combine the charm of 
the wilderness with the conveniences 
of civilization is the one who will 
make a success of a cemetery, ac- 
cording to the advocates of the mod- 
ern plan. It requires no little in- 
genuity and tact to bring about the 
results he is after, and particularly 
when he must please many people of 
varying opinions and artistic ideas, or 
lack of them. 
The superintendents of the park and 
lawn cemeteries of today understand 
the psychology of their business. It 
is a long cry to the present day from 
the time when men put the skull and 
crossbones, symbols of dissolution 
and death, at the doors of their 
tombs. The entrance to the cemetery 
must be suggestive and give the 
visitor a proper impression at the 
first. 
When the interior of the grounds is 
reached there are other even more im- 
portant details to be considered. The 
roads must be shady and walking easy. 
If it is possible to have a stream and a 
body of water it helps a great deal to- 
ward securing the general tone desired 
in the place. In the rules and regula- 
tions of the best cemeteries it is usu- 
ally stipulated that the designs of lot 
owners for their monuments must 
have the approval of the trustees. 
This is done to preserve the uniform- 
ity of monumental construction in the 
place. 
Many cemetery lots are laid out 
along paths among flowers with only 
a suggestion of a marking, just 
enough to perpetuate the name of the 
deceased. 
The modest marble slab has been re- 
duced to smaller compass and the be- 
wildering rows of stones are avoided 
as much as may be. 
The cemetery of the future will 
not be much different from the best 
of to-day, it is believed. The park 
and lawn plan has come to stay and 
in the future there will be merely a 
development of the ideas which now 
obtain. 
“There are too many mausoleums 
being built, I think,” said Reese Car- 
penter, who has had a good many 
years of practical cemetery experience. 
‘•‘In the early days when a man buried 
his relative he went to the nearest 
stone fence and pulled out the best 
stone he could find and put it on the 
grave. Then the next fellow got a 
bigger one and perhaps scratched in- 
itials on it. The next step seems to 
have been to put the family history 
on the tombstone with as much po- 
etry as there was room for. 
"From an artistic point of view I 
would prefer to see fewer mausoleums, 
but more are being built than ever 
before. .They are spoiling the appear- 
ance of a good many cemeteries and 
it is very sure that everybody can’t 
be buried in them. I am having a 
bill introduced in the Legislature re- 
quiring interments to be made under 
the ground. 
“It is the long stretches of lawn 
and fine views with small monuments 
which do not destroy the beauty of 
the grounds and shut out the view. I 
am still of the opinion that the cities 
of the dead should be made as at- 
tractive as time and money can make 
them and I think that the condition 
which an architect complains of when 
he says that ‘cemeteries are monstros- 
ities in their barrenness and sameness’ 
is passing, at least in so far as the 
larger and newer burying places are 
concerned. 
“The cemetery business is a ticklish 
business and an error of judgment 
may often mean the failure of the 
cemetery to attain its possibilities. 
Those who bring their dead to a cem- 
etery must be treated with sympathy 
and consideration and they must be 
made to feel that their rights are pro- 
tected and that as nearly as human 
foresight can do it they are assured 
that their resting places will receive 
perpetual care.” 
This descriptive and really inform- 
ing article occupied the first page of 
an entire section devoted to the cem- 
eteries, and including a number of 
large illustrated advertisements of 
cemeteries in the vicinity of greater 
New York. 
This section inspired a similar ef- 
fort in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, 
and perhaps other papers in other 
cities. The Seattle paper re-hashed 
the Sun’s interesting story, and added 
some pictures and descriptive matter 
of local cemeteries, and allied indus- 
tries to make a similar section. 
Cemetery men elsewhere can enlist 
the aid of the people in modern 
methods of management in similar ways 
