Mount Auburn Cemetery was consecrated in 1831 and is situated in Watertown and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Designed by Henry Dearborn with assistance from Alexander Wadsworth, Mount Auburn is celebrated as the first landscaped rural cemetery in the United States. Winding paths hug the cemetery’s natural hills and valleys, while dramatic plantings of shrubs and weeping trees—particularly the willow—were intended to encourage pensive strolls among dramatic arches, urns, “ruins,” decorative ponds, tombs, and burial plots. Later in the century, park advocates would point to these bucolic cemeteries to highlight the inadequacies of small urban parks, prompting the development of large, public open spaces within city limits.
IIIF Manifest