Photograph by Chris Naffziger
Liggett Mausoleum, Bellefontaine Cemetery
The rural cemetery movement of the early 19th century brought some of the most beautiful and iconic public spaces in America. One of the earliest was our own Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis. While the founding of these burial grounds was often immediately preceded by epidemics of disease in rapidly growing cities in the 1800s, the cultural trends responsible had been growing and evolving since the 18th century. In particular, garden design and cemetery planning grew close together over the course of the 19th century.
Western civilization has long sought to place a geometric, rational grid onto the supposedly irrational and irregular natural world. Travel along an ancient Roman road, and it passes arrow-straight through mountains and valleys, ignoring the topography of the countryside, conquering it in the process. By the 17th century, and the cultural influence of the court of the French King Louis XIV, garden design continued to focus on symmetry and rigid geometry. While the Rococo style popular in the early 18th century challenged some of that French classicism, the Neoclassicism later in the 1700s and early 1800s reasserted Greek and Roman notions of geometric garden design. Likewise, cities in America at the time were relatively small, and churchyard cemeteries served their populations adequately.
But as the 19th century wore on, and American cities exploded in population, civic leaders came to detest urban cemeteries. There are even legends in New York City of churchyards becoming so overfilled that the ground supposedly rippled and moved when people walked on top of the barely dirt-covered caskets. Reacting to cold, emotionless Neoclassicism, Romanticism offered a return to nature and pastoral scenes in art and literature. The English Garden, which most Americans would simply call a park, sought to create a carefully engineered image of nature.
Inspired by English Romantics and garden design, the American rural cemetery movement moved far outside the city—but not too far. We know from rules and regulations, books by landscape architects, and even state statutes that established some of the rural cemeteries, that there are similar characteristics between the major examples throughout the United States. Bellefontaine Cemetery here in St. Louis was part of the larger trend throughout the Midwest and East Coast during the 1840s.
Library of Congress
Detail of Compton and Dry's Pictorial St. Louis, Plate 109
All sources recommended that the new rural cemeteries be located 3 to 4 miles away from their urban centers, which probably seemed like a reasonable distance at the time (all of the first rural cemeteries are now engulfed by the cities they serve), and should be along paved roads. In the case of the cemetery being along a toll road, there were even statutes in place to allow for free travel for a funeral procession. In one version of a cemetery’s bylaws, it was closed on Sundays to the public, though families of the interred could receive permission from the gatekeeper. It is important to realize that the cemeteries were places that functioned as both burial grounds and as parks to be visited for relaxation.
And the design of these parks was carefully prescribed by landscape architects, along the lines of English Romantic ideals. A straight path is boring, in their eyes, as the same view is afforded the visitor at a slow pace. A curved path, however, is visually interesting, as a new composition is revealed to the visitor as the carriage travels slowly through the grounds. Likewise, the paths are not just curved, ignoring the topography of the land to create concentric circles; rather, the roads should follow the topography of the land, and in the process, they can almost create outdoor “rooms” within the natural lay of the hills and valleys.
Perhaps where the writers become most opinionated is in the construction of tombstones and mausoleums and their landscaping. Referring to the regulations of Greenwood Cemetery in New York, we learn that there are even certain bushes and trees that are preferred, such as the arborvitae. Post and chains should not be used to enclose family plots, due to their tendency to rust and because children like to sit and swing on them. Another source, Modern Park Cemeteries by Howard Weed, who also authored Spraying for Profit, argues that all boundary walls detract from the beauty of monuments and mausoleums, preferring for the grass to lead straight up to the stone.
Granite is the stone of choice. While this was not always available in St. Louis until after the Civil War, it was far more durable than the locally quarried limestone. Greenwood Cemetery again warns if builders do use limestone, that the masons lay the stones with the grain parallel to the grounds. If they do not, the sedimentary stone is liable to flake off like the “pages of a book,” which is a scene far too common on older mausoleums. Foundation recommendations vary from 5 to 6 feet. Concrete is too unreliable unless provided by a skilled company. Small bushes should be placed in front, and tall trees should be placed behind to properly frame a mausoleum.
Cemetery administrations should forbid the construction of identical mausolea and monuments, and certainly not next to each other, as it breeds visual boredom for the visitor. Also, mausoleums should not be allowed on plots smaller than 50 feet in depth, Mr. Weed says, to prevent crowding, voiding the very purpose of a rural cemetery. And as I wrote back in 2016, the mausolea should project a Romantic view of the ancient world, one of a faded, glorious past, not one that is beholden to it.
All the advice comes back to a simple observation: As more and more European immigrants who had been born in rural agricultural areas immigrated to American cities, the draw of the country became all the more valuable. The smoke and dirt of the city was difficult to avoid, and a trip out to a rural cemetery was a welcome respite from their new life that was so different than the one they had left behind in Europe. Eventually, parks filled that void after the Civil War, but rural cemeteries provided a permanent, quiet, and natural final resting place for those escaping the city.
Chris Naffziger works as the archives researcher in the office of the Recorder of Deeds of the City of St. Louis. His email is naffzigerc@stlouis-mo.gov.
