94 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
tion and tinted by the crops of grass or young wheat. 
Look at them carefully, and you will soon want to take 
down the fences in some places, though you may not 
mind putting them up in others. You will want to 
take down those that run across a hollow or along the 
side of a hill. Go into the parks, public or private, 
that have been designed by artists and look at the large 
open spaces. You will find that they are hollow, either 
completely or in general efifect. Their surfaces may 
be rolling, but there are no rounded lines of elevations 
to cut oft" half of the near or distant trees and recede 
as you approach them. Convex surfaces that cannot 
be seen in their entirety are generally things to be 
avoided. 
Perhaps these few remarks about general principles 
mav be useful to some one who desires to enlarge his 
knowledge of the subject. General principles are of 
little value unless they can be applied to particular 
cases, but particular cases cannot be understood except 
in the light of general principles. 
The San Francisco Cemeteries 
The ordinance which was passed by the city of San 
Francisco, Cal., in March, 1900, prohibiting any fur- 
ther burials of tbe dead in the cemeteries within the 
limits of the city and county of San Francisco on and 
after August 1, 1901, together with the litigation which 
has been in progress to nullify it, has created an in- 
terest in the whole cemetery situation of that locality. 
The state courts have unreservedly upheld the ordi- 
nance, and certainly so far as the wellfare of the Gold- 
en Gate City is concerned, it had become practically 
necessary in a general sense. 
In a communication received a short time since, Mr. 
Thomas FI. Douglas, of the well known firm of R. 
Douglas' Sons, Waukegan Nurseries, speaks as follows 
of these much-discussed cemeteries : “After seeing them 
I concluded that the city fathers were indeed wise 
men. The older cemeteries as a rule were in a very 
dilapidated condition, greatly neglected now, if they 
were ever kept in good order. Of course the people 
in the early days of San Francisco, like all the rest of 
the world at that time, looked upon the cemetery as 
merely a place to inter their departed relations or 
friends, and from the great number of single graves 
in the earlier burials I think they were mostly the lat- 
ter. Some of the plots were surrounded with heavy 
stone coping, some with the coping and the entire 
surface covered with heavy slabs, some with only a 
board for a head stone and others surrounded with 
dense hedges. No wonder such burial grounds ran 
down ; even now they give the few morbid strangers 
who visit them a queer, uncanny feeling. 
“Following these single and earlier burials, as the 
dates upon them show, come the family plots. Here 
we see a great monument, there a mass of fine Italian 
marble put together without style or design ; other 
plots have neither head nor foot stones to mark the 
graves ; and others were planted with inappropriate 
shrubs and trees, which have been left to take care 
of themselves. As newer additions were made to 
these grounds some system began to show itself, but 
even this was evidently not under control, the dif- 
ferent fraternities apparently taking care of their own 
plots, and in no sense conforming to the general plan 
or system surrounding them. Such plots were neces- 
sarily single ones, and one grave will possess a fine 
monument, that of a high official, while adjoining it 
the grave of one of the rank and file will be decorated 
with a wooden headstone. 
“These cemeteries were undoubtedly originally fully 
up to the standard of the East at that time, but the 
fogs and high winds of San Francisco lead to much 
quicker decay. The stone and board headstones are 
covered with a green moss, which gives them a much 
more aged and dilapidated appearance than elsewhere 
in the same length of time.” 
It is regrettable to realize that Mr. Douglas’ severe 
picture of these older cemeteries is more or less repre- 
sentative of the burial grounds in most of our larger 
cities, to say nothing of the smaller ones. 
However, some years ago the cemetery situation of 
San Francisco assumed altogether a different aspect, 
when a number of cemeteries were laid out in an avail- 
able section of San Mateo County, within a few miles 
of the city limits: There are now seven of them : 
“Cypress Lawn” ; “Holy Cross,” Catholic ; the “Jew- 
ish Cemeteries, “Salem”, “Home of Peace”, “Hills of 
Eternity” ; “Mount Olivet” and the new “Masonic”. 
With these should be mentioned “Mountain View” 
Cemetery, of Oakland. 
Tbe cemeteries now out of business by virtue of the 
ordinance, within the city are: “Odd Fellows”; “Ma- 
sonic” ; “Laurel Hill” and “Calvary”. The ordinance 
exempted the San Francisco National Cemetery. 
Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, is beautifully 
situated and commands some delightful scenery. It 
contains 220 acres, only part of which is yet used for 
cemetery purposes, and it was dedicated May 25, 1865. 
It is a private corporation, but owned by the lot- 
holders, and no stock has been issued. There is about 
10 per cent, of the area under lawn plan rules with 
constantly increasing ratio. Its topography is strik- 
ing ; its sloping hillsides are picturesque and afford 
grand views of the Golden Cate, Pacific Ocean, Mount 
Tamalpais, and the bay and city of San Francisco, 
etc. Its highest point is 515 feet and its lowest 156 
feet above sea level. The number of interments ap- 
proaches 24,000. 
“Cypress Lawn,” one of the group of cemeteries in 
