PARK AND CEMETERY. 
235 
THE MONUMENT AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 
An address before the National Retail Monument Dealers’ Association Convention at 
Milwaukee, August 20, by James Currie, Supt., Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee. 
Monument dealers, as well as many lot 
I owners, are not all in full accord with all 
the ideas of cemetery officials relative to 
monumental structures, neither are they all 
willing to admit primarily at least that all 
cemetery rules and regulations are neces- 
sary, consistent, fair, and impartial; hence 
the cemetery superintendent who is ex- 
pected by the trustees, whom he represents, 
to do his duty and guard well the interests 
of the management and welfare of the lot 
! owners, may well but with reasonable ex- 
pectations of sympathy from his brothers 
in the profession, quote the immortal lines 
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” 
With these thoughts in mind I was re- 
i luctant to consent and at first inclined to 
i tender my thanks, ask to be excused and 
1 thereby avoid the responsibility the subject 
would impose upon me ; but on more ma- 
1 ture consideration I became impressed with 
the belief that this was an opportunity af- 
forded me in good faith and in the most 
i friendly manner by your program com- 
mittee to express my opinion publicly rela- 
tive to monumental art in the cemetery. 
I do not wish in these preliminary re- 
i marks to convey the impression that any 
hesitancy I felt was in any measure due to 
a fear that I would be confronted by a 
1 spirit of antagonism and unfriendliness, for 
I feel confident from experience that by 
far the greater number of men of your pro- 
fession are fully in accord with a policy 
: which manifestly aims at a higher develop- 
i ment of the cemetery and promotion of the 
best interests of its lot owners. My only 
fear is that I may fail to present the sub- 
i ject impressively and as I would hope, con- 
vincingly; but craving your patience and 
indulgence I shall endeavor to catch a little 
inspiration which may enable me to enlist 
your interest and invite your co-operation 
towards the improvement of monumental 
! art and a higher development of landscape 
in cemeteries wherever your influence may 
extend throughout our broad land, and I 
trust I may succeed in explaining to the 
entire satisfaction of all present, the rea- 
sons why the management of Forest Home 
Cemetery is somewhat insistent in the ob- 
i servance of certain rules and regulations, 
which I am painfully aware appear to cer- 
tain individuals in your profession as arbi- 
trary and unwarranted. 
As I did not have the choosing of my 
subject or the designation of its title, I may 
be excused if I fail to respond to the mo- 
tive your committee had in view; but I ap- 
prehend the subject “The Monument and 
Its Surroundings” was intended to be con- 
I sidered in a two-fold but co-relative aspect. 
! In other words, I believe I am expected to 
1 primarily consider the monument in its re- 
lation to its environment and not except in 
a very general way in its architectural fea- 
tures, a phase of the subject which has been 
assigned to another speaker better qualified 
than I am to address you authoritatively on 
the architecture of monuments. 
The monument, as you are well aware, is 
a factor which is no longer accepted as a 
matter of course or considered an essential 
feature to be received in the cemetery by 
the management with indifference, on the 
supposition that its selection and erection is 
the inherent right and privilege of every lot 
owner, regardless of all other considera- 
tions. In many of the leading cemeteries, 
particularly those laid out on the lawn or 
landscape plan, monumental structures are 
supervised and studied by the management 
with the same attention and care as all 
other features essential or incident to the 
planning and highest development of the 
general scheme, that the cemetery may be 
a credit to the management, a source of 
pride to lot owners and an acknowledged 
beauty spot in the community. Towards 
that end the co-operation of the several in- 
terests is desirable so that the plan in all 
its features may be carried towards com- 
pletion in perfect harmony and to the entire 
satisfaction of all concerned. 
It is perhaps natural for dealers in monu- 
ments to view with concern amounting al- 
most to resentment the attitude of the man- 
agement of the modern landscape cemetery 
towards monumental structures in general. 
Extremists would eliminate the monument 
entirely, which they aver is disturbing to 
the quiet and repose which should reign 
supreme in the last resting place of the 
dead. They maintain that architectural fea- 
tures in the cemetery are discordant in as- 
sociation with Nature’s adornment of trees, 
shrubs and flowers. A noble or well de- 
veloped tree is considered by these devotees 
of the landscape cemetery a more appro- 
priate and grander memorial than the finest 
structure of stone that can be produced. It 
is an indisputable fact, as all fair-minded, 
discerning men of your profession must ad- 
mit, that the landscape cemetery with its 
broad stretches of level lawn and undulat- 
ing surfaces clothed with beautiful velvety 
grass, its graceful, curving avenues and 
walks, its diversity and artistically arranged 
groups or beautiful individual specimens of 
trees and shrubs with here and there a 
touch of color produced by a skillful setting 
of hardy or more delicate flowering plants,' 
is a plan of cemetery which appeals strongly 
to persons of artistic temperament, is in 
harmony with progressive ideas and elicits 
the approval and admiration of everyone 
who has the slightest appreciation of 
beauty. Who is there now who would pre- 
fer the old time graveyard with its incon- 
gruous assortment and multiplicity of 
curious and inartistic monuments and tomb- 
stones, which the scraps of lawn and few 
trees or shrubs fail to obscure or distinguish 
the place from some unusually large, untidy 
and badly arranged stoneyard. But alas, 
are we not all familiar with more than one 
modern cemetery admirably adapted by Na- 
ture and originally designed, as the plan 
still indicates, for a place of beauty, but 
now utterly and hopelessly ruined in ap- 
pearance by a vast number of ill-assorted 
and misplaced monuments, many of them 
very poor, or merely passable in design, yet 
here and there we may observe a really 
beautiful and meritorious structure; but 
with beauty marred by its dominating bad 
surroundings ? 
I am not one of those who believe that a 
cemetery may at the present time satisfac- 
torily serve its purpose entirely without 
monuments. The time may come when the 
erection of monuments and other memorials 
in the cemetery may be abandoned. Whether 
or not that is a consummation to be wished 
or whether it may ever occur is idle to dis- 
cuss and is at least foreign to our present 
purpose. While it is true there are many 
owners of lots and the proportion is ap- 
parently rapidly increasing, who are not in 
favor of monuments and will never erect 
any structure on their own lots except in- 
dex stones of very simple design, yet there 
are many who wish to give expression to 
their sentiments by the erection of some 
suitable memorial. In these you and I are 
at present interested, and it should be our 
first consideration to promote their best in- 
terests in conformity to the general policy 
of the cemetery. The evolution in monu- 
mental art in the cemetery, dating from a 
comparatively recent period, has been really 
wonderful in its progress and achievement. 
Our cemeteries are at the present time re- 
plete with many of the finest conceivable 
examples of the designer’s art and the ar- 
tisan’s skill. Stately mausoleums rivaling 
in beauty the most famous structures of 
ancient Greece and Rome and handsome, 
costly monuments and memorials in almost 
endless variety abound, yet one of the 
problems confronting us today in the 
further development and maintenance of 
the cemetery with some approach to the 
ideal, is the achievement of a fuller appre- 
ciation of monumental art, and by that I 
mean a truer conception of the art of de- 
signing for intelligent expression as well 
as beauty, and a better and more general 
understanding of the artistic relation of the 
monument and its environment. Until 
those two ideas are co-relatively considered 
in the study of a monument we cannot 
hope to produce perfect harmony in the se- 
lection and arrangement of monuments in 
the cemetery. 
