166 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
PRINCIPLES OF CEMETERY DEVELOPMENT 
Extracts from an address before the Canadian Cemetery Association, by 
H. B. & L. A. Dunnington-Grubb, Garden Architects , Toronto, Canada. 
Amongst early civilizations the builders 
of cemeteries called to their aid the great- 
est artists and the most perfect craftsman- 
ship of their day. No effort was too great. 
No attention to minute details overlooked. 
This was the spirit that produced such 
immortal works as the pyramids, the cata- 
combs, and, at a later period, the Taj 
Mahal, the tombs of Castel Barco, at 
Verona, and of Edward the Confessor, at 
Westminster Abbey. 
The industrial revolution of the last 
century resulting in the concentration of 
vast numbers of people in great cities has 
produced immediate problems in almost 
every sphere of public activity involving 
readjustment of our ideas. This applies 
among other things to our system for the 
burial of the dead. The churchyard is no 
longer able to cope with the problem under 
the new conditions and the large highly 
organized civic burial ground has become 
a necessity. 
Evidences of a revolt against the ugli- 
ness of our cemeteries have for many 
years been apparent especially in the LTnited 
States. The ldst thirty or forty years have 
witnessed an immense improvement in 
American cemeteries through the influence 
of several famous landscape gardeners. 
Tt was only natural perhaps that, in some 
instances, they should immediately jump to 
another extreme and lose the obvious 
characteristic which every cemetery ought 
to possess, that of a burial ground for the 
dead. 
One of the first principles of design 
which applies as much to cemeteries as to 
anything else is that the object being de- 
signed, whether a house, a chair, or a 
dinner plate, should fulfill the purpose for 
which it is intended. A church must look 
like a building in which people worship 
God and not like a barn. We wish a rail- 
way station to look like a railway sta- 
tion and not like a hotel. When con- 
structing a cemetery we demand that the 
place look like a cemetery and not like a 
pleasure park. How are these objects to 
be accomplished? 
Success in cemetery design will not be 
accomplished by discarding all the prin- 
ciples which the cumulative experience of 
previous centuries has built up. The at- 
mosphere with which ancient civilizations 
surrounded their tombs was one of im- 
pressive grandeur and restfulness. Owing 
to our inability to reproduce it few of 
our cemeteries possess that command over 
our imagination which tells us, without any 
inscription over the entrance, that we stand 
in the awful presence of death. Some 
cemeteries are so evidently merely closely 
packed burial grounds that one would pre- 
fer to have their very existence kept a 
secret while in others there appears no 
obvious reason why games of tennis should 
not be proceeding unless a funeral pro- 
cession happens to come along and re- 
mind us of the use to which the ground 
is being put. 
Evidences of the existence of death ought 
traffic distribution will be primary con- 
siderations. In order to secure dignity, 
a controlling feature formal in treatment 
to which everything else will be entirely 
subservient, is essential. This central fea- 
ture will usually be found in the approach 
from the entrance to the chapel with the 
latter as a central climax. 
MODERN CEMETERY, WITH GOOD LAWN TREATMENT AND WELL-PLACED 
MAUSOLEUM AND MONUMENTS. 
not to be allowed to be repulsive. The 
place of interment of our fellow human 
beings ought not to be a place which 
we shun. It ought not even to be a place 
where the evidences of death must be 
concealed, as far as possible in an at- 
tempt to sugar the pill by trying to make 
it appear that it is not. The cemetery 
should be made, what we all try to imagine 
it is, a monument erected to the glorious 
memory of lives well spent while with us, 
and expressing in outward form our belief 
in the persistence of personality in a life 
beyond. 
In our choice of a site as much nat- 
ural beauty as possible should be ob- 
tained. Well grown trees, undulating or 
hilly land and, if possible, a stream or 
water frontage will add immensely to the 
attractiveness of a cemetery. If these 
features are unobtainable within a reason- 
able distance or at a reasonable price the 
cemetery will have to rely on the design- 
er's ability to produce beauty by artificial 
means. 
Having secured the site, the next step 
is to prepare an accurate topographical 
survey of the property, showing all natural 
features such as trees, water, outcrops of 
rock, etc. With this data in hand the 
skilled designer can commence work. His 
first efforts will be directed toward the 
location of the principal features of his 
scheme. The entrance and office, the 
church or chapel, the sites for the prin- 
cipal mausoleums and the main scheme of 
The location of the entrance is a matter 
of the utmost importance, as much of the 
success of the cemetery will depend on it. 
In the treatment of the entrance the visitor 
will be given his first glimpse of what he 
must expect to find within its gates. Here 
he will get his first impression of the 
cemetery as a monument. A certain 
amount of formality is essential if dignity 
is to be secured and the necessities of an 
entrance adapt themselves admirably to this 
purpose. The cemetery office will serve 
the purpose of a gatehouse. Both entrance, 
chapel and the principal mausoleums 
should be designed by the - same hand if 
unity is to be achieved. For small ceme- 
teries the picturesqueness of the Tudor 
style of architecture is admirably suited, 
while for larger schemes the formality of 
the Renaissance adapts itself much more 
readily to a monumental treatment. The 
Renaissance, moreover, lends itself much 
more readily than Tudor or Gothic to the 
accomplishment of that atmosphere with 
which a cemetery should be surrounded. 
The layout around the entrance, the 
main approach, and the chapel should be 
strictly uniform in character and should 
aim at a certain amount of stiffness and 
formality in treatment. Bright flower bor- 
ders would be wholly out of place, as the 
feeling should be one of quiet dignity. 
The restful feeling which all of us have 
experienced in old-fashioned churchyards 
is produced very frequently as much by 
