Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn In Celebration of 175 Years | Page 4

cally over the years, especially as imported plants from all
corners of the world—particularly from Asia during the
nineteenth century—became available. Burial customs go
in and out of fashion. Trends in memorialization and com-
memoration have changed again—and again—since the
Cemetery’s founding. For example cast-iron fencing was
replaced by granite curbing, and elaborate marble monu-
ments gave way to simple, machine-made markers flush
with the earth.
The services we offer have changed as well since the
days of the horse-drawn hearse and black silk mourning
band. The mobility of Americans has decreased the demand
for the multi-generational family lots that were so com-
mon when the Cemetery was founded. We began offering
cremation at the beginning of the twentieth century and
it is a growing part of our activity in the new millennium.
In 1974 Mount Auburn built New England’s first com-
munity mausoleum. The advances in computer technol-
movement—preservation was already in the minds of its
founders. In designing the Cemetery’s first lots and paths
these pioneers were careful to preserve many of the natural
features that had attracted them to the site, the hills, ponds
and dells that constitute its beautiful topography, as well as
the ancient majestic trees. And that desire to preserve the
historic landscape is our first priority today.
New Directions
During the last few years Mount Auburn has made an
integrated commitment to preservation by investing in
staff and facilities, both with up-to-the-minute capabili-
ties. Beginning in the mid-1990s Mount Auburn brought
in outside experts to begin training our staff in preserva-
tion techniques, such as how to put
lead into monument joints, and, when
Clockwise from top:
Worker conserving 19th-century “tabletop”
style monument on Agave Path (Photo by
David Gallagher)
Preservation Supervisor David Gallagher
gently steam-cleans a 19th-century marble
angel in the Preservation and Services Building
workshop. (Photo by Jennifer Johnston)
Workers stabilizing the marble Wade monument (c. 1860) on Lawn
Avenue (Photo by Meg Winslow)
ogy have transformed how we track burials
and offer information to our clients. And we
have taken on an ever-greater educational
role to enrich our visitors’ understanding of
the Cemetery’s complex layering of history,
horticulture, preservation and art.
But through all of these decades, through all of these
changes, preservation and service have remained our
mission, with thoughtful innovation another constant.
Preservation: “Part of Everything We Do”
When Mount Auburn was founded as the first large-scale
designed landscape open to the public in North America—
and simultaneously inaugurated the landscaped cemetery
2 | Sweet Auburn
Members of the Massachusetts
Horticultural Society found
Mount Auburn Cemetery.
1831
taking inventory, how
to describe the details
of monuments. Mount
Auburn hired our first
professionally trained
preservation staff
member in 1999, and
we made a bricks-and-
mortar commitment
to preservation when
we built our Preserva-
tion Services Building
(PSB), which opened in August 2003. The building’s airy
1,500 square-foot workshop is a veritable “monument hos-
pital.” Here angels come to regain their wings and other lot
ornaments—stone cherubim, roses, dogs, and so on—get
repaired. We now have two full-time preservation positions
that are assisted by summer interns. Their tools of the trade,
stored in the PSB, include chisels to remove old lead and
mortar when re-pointing structures and a fine caulk cutter
The Entrance Gate, Bigelow
Chapel, and an iron fence around
part of the Cemetery’s perimeter
are built.
1842-1844
Washington Tower is built.
1852-1854