watertown

Winchester Family Tomb, Mount Auburn Cemetery

from George Eastman Museum

• elemsee said:

  The history of Mount Auburn Cemetery: "Mount Auburn Cemetery has been designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of the Interior, recognizing it as one of the country's most significant cultural landscapes. Founded in 1831, it was the first large-scale designed landscape open to the public in the United States. Today its beauty, historical associations and horticultural collections are internationally renowned." More: www.mountauburn.org/national_landmark/history.cfm

• laney maxwell said:

  i wonder what southworth and hawes were doing traipsing around a cometary. i think they must have been really cool people. uninhibited.

• phoenixesrose said:

  at the time, cemeteries were better taken care of than now. It's because families were generally alot closer (including extended families living in the same houses or even next to each other). Since parks were few, people would have picnics, clean the family plots, and so on. Photographing cemeteries may be "rare" now and then, but some of us do still enjoy the same past time. :)

• Katya Killer of Light said:

  Winchester house is better.

• thetallguy747 said:

  The concept of "landscape architecture" was in its infancy at this time. As noted above, the idea was to turn the cemetery into a public space that could be aesthetically enjoyed by all. This and other cemeteries like it across the U.S. would become the site of family outings, picnics, etc., even for people who had no loved ones buried there. The presence of a camera crew would be unusual only to the extent that cameras were somewhat rare in the 1850's.