354 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
ORGANIZING and DEVELOPING A MODERN CEMETERY 
I. — The Cemetery Requirements of a 
City. 
The “Modern Cemetery” or the “Modern 
Park Cemetery” are terms much used 
By Sid J. Hare and S. Herbert Hare, 
Landscape Architects, Kansas City, Mo. 
The modern cemetery may properly be 
considered a public utility. While many 
of the most successful burial grounds have 
been, and now are, operated by individuals 
The death rate will vary considerably in 
different cities, depending upon living and 
housing conditions, foreign or negro popu- 
lation, climate, and other factors. As a 
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and sometimes abused. While we continue 
to use the word “modern,” the real active 
development of this class of burial ground 
began in our country many years ago. The 
term, as we take it, really applies to ceme- 
teries. which were a reaction from the 
more or less unsatisfactory and hideous 
graveyards of former days. The more im- 
portant ideas apt to be conveyed by the 
term “Modern Cemetery” are : the recog- 
nition of the possibilities of greater beauty 
through applying the principles of land- 
scape composition, as employed in land- 
scape architecture or landscape gardening; 
more especially the development of nat- 
ural or naturalistic, or, in other words, 
park landscape ; the adoption of such rules 
as will safeguard the unity and beauty of 
such landscape treatment; and the applica- 
tion of modern business methods, including 
adequate provision for the future. 
or corporations, the general trend toward 
municipal ownership of utilities of all kinds 
may have some effect in the future. 
In locating and organizing an industrial 
establishment for the production of a 
certain article, the first thing to be con- 
sidered is the demand for the product. 
In establishing playgrounds in our cities 
the number, location, extent and equip- 
ment would depend upon the demand ; that 
is, the present or future population which 
they will serve. So in the case of a ceme- 
tery, whether owned and administered by 
a private corporation or by the municipal- 
ity or community in which it is located, 
the first consideration should be the real 
demand. This can be studied through the 
local statistics of death rate, per capita 
wealth, growth of population, as well as 
proximity to other communities which 
might be served, and other local conditions. 
whole the death rate is declining in the 1 
United States. In the registration areas, j 
that is, in communities or districts where | 
records are kept, the rate has decreased i 
from 19.8 per thousand in 1880 to 14.1 in 
1913. This decrease seems to be quite 
steady and regular, and therefore reliable. 
Upon examination it is found that the 
variation in death rate in the various cities 
is mostly in the lower classes or foreign 
population, the classes that contribute to 
pauper graves, or are buried in cheap 
single graves, or separate cemeteries. Good 
examples of this variation can be found in 
the Southern cities, where the percentage 
of negro population is great. For instance, , 
in 1910 the death rate in Atlanta, Georgia, 
where the colored population is one-third 
of the total, was 18.9 per thousand f 1 5.5 
for whites and 25.5 for colored) : in Mo- , 
bile, Alabama, where the negro population 
