Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn A Modern Vision for an Historic Cemetery | Page 5

Bigelow Chapel, which reopens this fall following
an ambitious revitalization project, will offer a much-
improved facility to meet the expectations of today’s
families and clients (see previous issue of Sweet Auburn
for more information). With the Chapel’s new addition,
which offers sweeping views of the surrounding landscape
including the renovated Asa Gray Garden, we envision
Bigelow becoming an increasingly popular destination
for memorial services, receptions, coffee and tea services,
and other private functions. Traditionally, those seeking
to use Mount Auburn’s chapels have been families who
planned a burial at the Cemetery or who have made use
of Mount Auburn’s Crematory. In the future, we anticipate
more families—even those with no other connections to
the Cemetery—coming to Mount Auburn specifically to
utilize its impressive nondenominational facilities.
We invite you to experience this new space at one of the
public programs this fall that will celebrate the revitalized
Chapel (see back cover for upcoming events).
…inspiring all who visit…
Thanks to modern technology, remembering and
preserving the memories of those now buried at the
Cemetery has new meaning. This spring, Mount Auburn
unveiled its new Online Memorial Pages, a service offered
through its website that collects and shares the stories of
those buried at the Cemetery. Also tied to our mobile
app, these memorial pages will allow visitors and family
members alike to learn more about those buried at the
Cemetery while visiting Mount Auburn both physically
and virtually. We are excited to offer this service not only
to our current families, who may use this tool to curate
stories of loved ones as part of their grieving process, but
also to the descendants of those who have been buried
at Mount Auburn for generations. As the pages for those
buried at Mount Auburn throughout its history become
populated, we will have an interactive resource that
preserves and celebrates the more than 100,000 lives that
now make up Mount Auburn’s community of the dead.
Learn more about our new memorial pages on pages 6–7.
On some level, contemporary burial and commemora-
tion practices may seem far removed from what the
Cemetery’s founders envisioned. But our present-day
practices are very much in keeping with the spirit that has
guided Mount Auburn since its founding. We are confident
that the generations who have stewarded this cherished
space since its start would be delighted that 100,000 burials
and 187 years later, Mount Auburn remains a vital and
relevant resource for the living with an exciting future yet
to come.
Looking Ahead
Our need to evolve as an active Cemetery is about more than
honoring our founders’ vision that Mount Auburn be the
place of burial and commemoration for the citizens of Greater
Boston (and beyond). The revenue we generate today from
the sale of burial space and the provision of Cemetery Services
is what ensures Mount Auburn’s future as a financially
sustainable institution that is able to continue caring for this
beloved landscape with the highest of standards.
Over the next decade, fees from cremations, facilities rentals,
and cemetery services will become a much more significant
percentage of Mount Auburn’s annual earned revenue. The
sale of new burial space (78% of which is allocated to Mount
Auburn’s endowment) continues to be important, but it is a
revenue with more modest growth, as the Cemetery carefully
controls the development of new burial space to protect the
historic and aesthetic qualities of its landscape.
Cemetery Sales Cremation Services
Ancillary Cemetery
Services Facility Rentals
2018 Volume 1i | 3