The Art of Memory: Historic Cemeteries of Grand Rapids, Michigan

By Thomas R. Dilley

In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the look and feel of cemeteries in the United States changed dramatically, from utilitarian burial grounds to the serene parklike spaces that we know today. The so-called park cemetery was innovative not only for its distinctive landscape architecture but also because its staff designed, ran, and maintained the cemetery, which led to a very consistent appearance. By the mid-1800s, the influence of park cemeteries began to spread from big cities on the East Coast to the Midwest—eventually producing fifteen transitional examples in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In The Art of Memory: Historic Cemeteries of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Thomas R. Dilley details the history of Grand Rapids’ park cemeteries, finding that their development mimicked national trends and changing cultural beliefs about honoring the dead.

Dilley begins by outlining the history and evolution of cemetery design from its earliest days to the present, including information about key design elements and descriptions of important designers. He continues by introducing readers to the fifteen historic cemeteries located in the city of Grand Rapids, detailing their histories, formats, and developmental changes along with more than two hundred photos. The cemeteries are divided between public and private properties, and are discussed chronologically, according to the dates of their founding. Dilley also considers the artistic and architectural forms that appear in the Grand Rapids cemeteries, including a thorough discussion of the religious and decorative symbols used on markers, the use of sometimes florid epitaphs, and variations in the form, structure, and materials of cemetery markers of the time. A brief section on the future of the cemetery and an extensive list of bibliographic sources and suggestions for further reading round out this informative volume.

Readers with roots in Grand Rapids as well as those interested in social and cultural history will enjoy The Art of Memory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Sep 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9780814340202

Thomas R. Dilley

Thomas R. Dilley is a retired attorney and frequent lecturer on cemetery history in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is the author of several books of local history, and he is a member of the Grand Rapids Historical Commission, trustee of the Grand Rapids Historical Society, past chair of the Grand Rapids Public Library Foundation, and trustee of the Grand Rapids Public Museum Foundation.

Book preview

The Art of Memory

Historic Cemeteries of Grand Rapids, Michigan

Thomas R. Dilley

A Painted Turtle Book

Detroit, Michigan

© 2014 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

ISBN 978-0-8143-4019-6 (cloth)   ISBN 978-0-8143-4020-2 (e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014936564

To Debbie, Sarah, Cosmo, and Wilbur.

They know why.

Contents

Preface

A Word about Grave Location

Cemetery Map

Introduction: Our Silent Cities

1. The History and Development of the Cemetery

2. The Cemeteries of Grand Rapids

Public Cemeteries

Fulton Street Cemetery

Oak Grove Cemetery

Fairplains Cemetery

Oak Hill Cemetery

Greenwood Cemetery

Woodlawn Cemetery

Private Cemeteries

Garfield Park Cemetery

Washington Park Cemetery

Lithuanian Freedom Cemetery

Jewish Cemeteries

Temple Emanuel Cemetery

Beth Olam Cemetery

Ahavas Israel Cemetery

Catholic Cemeteries

St. Andrew’s Cemetery

Mt. Calvary Cemetery

Holy Cross Cemetery

SS. Peter & Paul Cemetery

Other Catholic Cemeteries

Permit Grounds

Conclusion

3. The Art and Architecture of the Cemetery

The Art of the Cemetery

The Epitaph

The Treestone

Ledger Graves

Hip Tombs

Plants as Symbols

Other Symbols

The Urn

Pudding Stones

Monuments of Metal

Genealogy Stones

The Cross

Sculptural Monuments

The Architecture of the Cemetery

The Greek and Classical Revival

The Romanesque Revival

The Egyptian Revival

The Eclectic Style

The Art Deco and Art Moderne

Monument Makers

Conclusion: The Future of the Cemetery

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

My fascination with the burial places of Grand Rapids can be reliably dated to a Friday afternoon in the fall about fifty years ago, when my older sister Kathy and I rode the city bus downtown from our parents’ home in the southeast end. Our purpose was to attend the weekly practice of the Junior Choir at Fountain Street Church, then under the direction of Chuck Bertsch, a man whose musical talents were exceeded only by his nearly infinite patience with a bunch of ten- to twelve-year-olds whose collective musical attention span ran somewhere between two and three minutes.

It was a wet but bright day in late autumn, after most of the leaves had fallen. We boarded the bus at Giddings and Hall, and it then headed west, down Hall Street. After crossing Eastern Avenue, the bus entered into that several-block-long stretch where there is cemetery on both sides of the street. I don’t remember paying much attention to most of Oak Hill Cemetery as it passed by my window, until suddenly—and to my ten-year-old eyes, shockingly—I spied something that I had never seen or even imagined could have existed in my hometown: a pyramid.

I was electrified. Sure, I had seen pictures of the pyramids of Egypt during some now-forgotten school lecture. But there was nothing in my consciousness suggesting that such an icon of the exotic could possibly exist only a few blocks from where I lived.

After choir practice broke up that day, we raced to my dad’s office in the Michigan Trust Building to ride home with him, pestering him with questions about what I had seen. He generously acceded to my request that we retrace the bus route on the way home in hopes of seeing the wonder once again. Alas, by the time we came to the Oak Hill environs, probably about 6:00 in the evening, the sun had set, and my pyramid was shrouded in darkness and mystery.

After I had (inexplicably to my parents) perused the pyramid entries in the family encyclopedia, one day I persuaded my mother to interrupt her errands to drive me past Oak Hill so that I could see my pyramid again. Perhaps a little part of me believed that it had never really been there at all. But there it was, and once again, though I do not remember actually going into the cemetery, I was dazzled by it. So it was there, on that day, that the cemetery hook was set. And it was then that my abiding interest in the exploration and study of cemeteries was born.

Over the decades that followed, I visited Oak Hill Cemetery many times, usually by myself. Sometimes a friend or sibling, mildly curious, would accompany me, but generally my companions thought the whole experience bordered strongly on the weird. As I discovered the Greek and Egyptian temples and Romanesque masterpieces that lay within the cemetery, out of view from the street, I remember wondering: Who had built these things, and why would they spend such copious amounts of time and money in a cemetery?

After some time in college studying architectural history under the venerable Dr. Leonard K. Eaton, I came to understand that every structure is a statement made by the owner or the designer of that structure. Often the statement exceeds the structure’s obvious purpose; it expresses beliefs and aspirations. Wandering around Oak Hill, Fulton Street, and St. Andrew’s cemeteries, I came to realize that all these remarkable buildings and monuments were statements, and that deciphering them, trying to hear these statements, was the hard part of a cemetery experience, but it was also the fun part, the endlessly fascinating part. And it was the part that has over the years revealed to me some of the enthralling stories, great art and architecture, and some of the intriguing characters in the long history of our city.

This is what has kept me coming back to the cemeteries of Grand Rapids and elsewhere. In my wanderings, I have found incontrovertible evidence that these cemeteries are not just places where the dead rest—they are spaces where generations of those who have come before us speak to us, if we will only take the time and expend the effort to listen. My quest for what really lies in the silent cities of Grand Rapids has been one of unending fascination to me, and it is my hope that this book will open that revelation to others.

A Word about Grave Location

All the cemeteries of Grand Rapids, whether public or private, have maps of their layouts, many of which are quite useful in locating the many graves, markers, and monuments that are discussed in this book. Making use of the excellent comprehensive database created by the City of Grand Rapids, which includes nearly all the burials that have occurred in city-owned cemeteries (www.grcity.cemeteries.us), I have developed a system that I am hopeful will assist readers in the respectful visitation of the many sites discussed. The locations of burial markers and sites in local Catholic or privately owned cemeteries are somewhat less precise, but still reference the general areas corresponding to the available maps of these sites. Maps of cemeteries owned and operated by the City of Grand Rapids may be viewed and printed from the city website: www.grcity.us/cemeteries

The location of the burial sites are clearly noted within the text and captions by the use of initials for the cemetery and numbers denoting the block, lot, and space of burial. These coordinates correspond to the maps of the cemeteries. For example, OHN 05-01-01 will locate the site of the mausoleum/grave of Amasa B. Watson in Oak Hill Cemetery (north side) at block 5, lot 1, space 1. Likewise, HCC Old (Chapel), will locate the site of the burial and marker of Stanley Ketchel at Holy Cross Cemetery at section C, Old (Chapel) on the map. The cemetery abbreviations used in this book are as follows:

AIC   Ahavas Israel Cemetery

BOC   Beth Olam Cemetery (within Greenwood)

FC   Fairplains Cemetery

FSC   Fulton Street Cemetery

GC   Greenwood Cemetery

GPC   Garfield Park Cemetery

HCC   Holy Cross Cemetery

MCC   Mt. Calvary Cemetery

OGC   Oak Grove Cemetery

OHN   Oak Hill Cemetery (North of Hall St.)

OHS   Oak Hill Cemetery (South of Hall St.)

SAC   St. Andrews Cemetery

SPPC   SS. Peter & Paul Cemetery

TEC   Temple Emmanuel (within Oak Hill)

WCE   Woodlawn Cemetery (east of Kalamazoo Ave.)

WCW   Woodlawn Cemetery (west of Kalamazoo Ave.)

WPC   Washington Park Cemetery

It should always be borne in mind during a visit to any cemetery, whether public or private, that most of these historic sites are active burial sites, and all are places of remembrance, where appropriate, respectful behavior is required. Visitation, study, and reflection are welcome, but nothing at a gravesite should ever be removed or damaged.

CEMETERY MAP

Introduction: Our Silent Cities

It has been correctly observed that much of what we know of our most ancient forebears comes to us from the study of their graves and tombs. This truth is clearly evident in any study of Neolithic peoples as well as the histories of the earliest Native peoples of most any part of the world, including North and South America.¹ This is also true of the more recent but still ancient cultures of Greece, Rome, and Egypt, as well as those of Asia and Africa. The studies of such burials, both monumental and common, have revealed much about the daily lives and rituals of these people who long ago vanished from the earth, including how and what they worshipped, what they feared and valued, and what they expected in the way of a life after death. These factors and the insights gained from such study are as valid in more modern cemeteries as they are in the most ancient of burial sites.

The graveyards and cemeteries that of necessity surround us not only contain the physical remains of those who have come before but also provide us—in the same way as is true of the ancients—with a vast range of clues, some subtle, some more obvious, about what our forebears thought, felt, and believed—and, most important, what they had to say about themselves. Were they religiously minded or more secular in their outlook? What shaped and influenced the forms that their memorials took? Were the sentiments expressed intended to be public, or are they more privately revealed through a code of symbolism? Was the burial site merely a place to inter the dead, or was it to be a site of peaceful remembrance and reflection? Answers to all these questions and others may be revealed in the study of a cemetery, if we will only look.

To be sure, the cultural knowledge thus gained from places of burial, however vast, is not a complete cultural image. A cemetery cannot tell us everything, but it nevertheless delivers information and insight about those who have preceded us, clearly demonstrating the very real value of cemetery studies in contexts both ancient and modern. The sometimes rather subtle aspects of more recent cultures, including our own, though not locked as exclusively within burial sites as is true of the ancients, lies waiting, available to those willing to take more than a casual look at the cemeteries present in every community in the United States, including Grand Rapids, Michigan.

1

The History and Development of the Cemetery

Typical of many early seventeenth-century grave markers, this stone for Magdelene Lynsen bears the image of a winged head, either angel or skull, similar to those that surround it in the churchyard of the First Reformed Church of Fishkill, New York. The marker was placed in the late 1740s.

The need for earthly interment of human remains has always been a matter of significance from the very beginnings of human civilization. From the first, most ancient days of human habitation, the necessity of disposal of the dead, even among primitive peoples who possessed not the slightest understanding of medical hygiene, was apparent, so that the question was how, not whether, the remains of the deceased should be dealt with. Though burial, whether within a tomb or in free soil, may have been the most common practice, it was not universally used in ancient cultures. Among the Native peoples of the northern Americas, as was doubtless true in other parts of the world, the dead were sometimes cremated or placed in trees or upon elevated platforms in designated areas, there to be reclaimed by the elements, rather than buried, based upon the nature-oriented religious beliefs of these people as well as the general absence of any real digging tools, making subterranean interment difficult. Though the precise reason and need for the actual disposal of the dead may have remained poorly understood for many centuries, and was and is still often imbued with supernatural justification, it is clear that even the earliest people understood the necessity of separating the living from the dead.

Though actual burial of the dead in the earth occurred among the earliest of civilizations, as is demonstrated by the elaborate tumuli, or burial mounds, found in the remains of Neolithic settlements in Europe and North and South America, including the Grand Rapids area, it is likely that the custom of individual burial, whether in a tomb or grave, at least in the manner it is practiced in the modern era, came to us later, from the amalgamated end-of-life customs of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Though the burial practices of each of these ancient civilizations differed significantly from one another, and the monumental emphasis, based upon what remains today, was clearly placed upon the interment of those whose religious, political, or financial status merited such handling, they all engaged in and encouraged individualized burials of the dead in areas near but separated from the places of daily life, in burial places that today we might correctly view as cemeteries.

The remains of civilizations that predate the Christian era by many hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, often providing the only real remnants of our cultural ancestors, consist primarily of burial sites along with the artifacts and sometimes memorials that were buried or erected by their authors for eternity—and these speak to us today of their fears, their beliefs, and what mattered to them in their daily lives. The earliest surviving sites, located in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, date from 4000 to 6000 BCE. As previously mentioned, they consist of mounds of earth, or tumuli, heaped up through great labor, under which were interred the remains and often possessions of persons of great cultural significance, often chiefs, warriors, or religious leaders. These burials were frequently comprised of large stones heaped around and over the human remains, which were then buried under mounded earth, now exposed by the effects of time and climate. We know little of these early cultures, except that their simple tools were of stone, bone, and shell, and that their culture apparently embraced beliefs in some form of afterlife in which possessions, including food, personal items, and weapons (all of which were buried with the deceased), would be of some value.

It is tempting, based upon the predominance of religious and burial structures and the relative paucity of domestic structures among existing ruins, to characterize most of the ancient cultures of Greece, Rome, and Egypt as obsessed with death and an afterlife to the exclusion of more mundane, day-to-day activity. This is, to a degree, a false impression; it is important to bear in mind that most everyday structures of these ancient cultures, most of which have long ago vanished with little trace, were never intended by their builders to stand for the ages and were therefore crafted of far less permanent and less costly materials.¹ As is true for every culture into the modern era, early cultural commemoration of life at its end, including very extensive reference to an afterlife, was of very great importance, both at the time of initial construction and as a cultural reflection for the ages to come.² In this way, the impulse to mourn the end of life, and to define and memorialize its passing, seems to have arisen, in one form or another, in the earliest days of humankind and to have remained strong, though refined and evolved, to this very day.

The ancients of both Greece and Rome either cremated or interred their dead in tombs of varying complexity, both above and below ground level, generally outside of urban settings, often creating in the process veritable cities of the dead that were often visited by survivors. Echoing the desire of the ancients to bury and commemorate their dead, as well as adhering to the then still poorly understood public health necessity of doing so, early communities and later cities in medieval and Renaissance Europe dealt with the disposal of last remains by interment in urban graveyards and churchyards, where burials were not infrequently made in a common pit or, for those who could afford to pay for it, within the confines of the churches and cathedrals then proliferating throughout the European continent.

The location of such sites, literally within the developing, largely unplanned urban environment, likely arose from a number of factors and interests. As settlements in the first millennia gradually coalesced into European cities, the growing efforts of the Christian (then exclusively Roman Catholic) Church to overcome and replace local, centuries-old pagan practices and traditions continued as well. These conversion efforts (and the political power that accompanied them) were best accomplished by focusing on existing population centers. In these efforts, one of the earliest features of the Christian faith, in company with the taking of the Sacrament and the confession and absolution of sin, was the requirement that the burial of all true believers, without exception, would occur in ground that had been sanctified, and was therefore controlled, by the church itself. During the first millennium, as the power and influence of the church began to rise to enormous heights, burial in unsanctified ground was universally viewed as an assurance of damnation, reserved only for suicides, felons, and excommunicates. Indeed, required burial in church-controlled sanctified ground, which carried predictable restrictions and fees, became one of the many elements that would fire the Reformation and the rise of the Protestant Church in sixteenth-century Europe.

The precise location of burial within a churchyard or building was, at the time, of great significance. Those most venerated, or those who could pay for the privilege, were interred nearest to the church altar or, failing this, near to the eastern wall of the church, which was viewed as the most holy of locations and would therefore receive the most prayerful attention. For all others, burial was permitted only at sites designated by the church, which generally meant in the yards adjacent to the growing number of churches and cathedrals being built in cities all across Europe.³

Burials in church interiors, usually confined to the royal, the wealthy, and the religiously venerated, sometimes consisted only of simply marked tombs located in the walls and floors of religious buildings, though as the wealth of cities and their inhabitants increased, some of the tombs, precursors of much later sepulchral monuments, became elaborate, highly decorated memorials. In these tombs are found the replication of the practices of the ancients, an effort to carve in stone the story, however idealized, of the life and times of the deceased, for commemoration and to instruct later generations about what had come before.

Doubtless other, less religious factors also played a role in the nearly universal urban location of burials of the time as well, including fears about graves being disturbed by scavenging animals or robbers or the simple human desire to keep loved ones close, even after their demise. For any, and all of these reasons, burials in the increasingly Christianized Europe of the early centuries of the Christian era were overwhelmingly urban, giving rise to a strong belief that the resurrection of the dead, so much a part of the increasingly powerful Christian dogma, was most readily assured by the close proximity of graves to church altars, where the prayers necessary for heavenly admission could be regularly offered.

Not surprisingly, as the size of urban populations, both living and dead, grew, urban burial spaces, increasingly hemmed in by the expanding cities, became hopelessly crowded, necessitating some changes in the original burial customs, which at a time when space was abundant, would likely never have been considered.

It is interesting to contemplate the then unappreciated but nevertheless inescapable interconnection of several urban problems at this time. The nascent urban governments of the first millennium failed to appreciate and address the need to control urban development as they failed to plan for hygienic housing and water supplies as well as proper disposal of sewerage. The latter issue, though generally unappreciated by residents of the time, contributed greatly to the horrendous death rates accompanying the periodic pandemics that thrived in teeming, unsanitary urban settings. Crowded, shallow urban burials contributed to this problem as well. The stresses on burial space thus produced gave rise to a number of burial practices that developed largely of necessity which, though widely accepted at the time, seem ghoulish to the modern eye. As has been mentioned, the burial—or simple disposal—of the dead in communal pits left open until they were filled and then covered, was common in European cities well into the eighteenth century. Devoid of visible sentiment or commemoration, these mass gravesites held the remains of hundreds of commoners as well as those of not a few more notable people. Indeed, Mozart was thus namelessly interred at St. Marx Cemetery outside Vienna in 1791.

The relentless crowding of urban European graveyards, almost always in the immediate vicinity and under the control of the Catholic Church, also gave rise to the use of grave or tomb space on a temporary basis, typically for a period of twelve years (the period of time thought necessary for full natural decay), for which a rental fee would be paid to the church and its sexton. At the end of the lease period, unless it was renewed, the bones of the deceased would be disinterred and placed communally in perpetual storage in a charnel house, or ossuary, a sometimes rather elaborate structure built within the graveyard or situated under the church itself for this specific purpose. The burial space thus vacated could then be (and always was) reused in a like manner.⁴ This practice was never common in the United States.

The advent of the Protestant Reformation in northern and central Europe in the early 1500s ushered in many changes to life there, and not a few to death. The often stern Calvinist Reformationist teachings were a strong reaction against the long-established tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, and they flatly resisted many of the ideas and practices surrounding the end of life that had evolved over the preceding centuries. For example, the Catholic Church requirement for salvation, that burial (however temporary) occur only in sanctified ground, was rejected by fervent Reformationists as yet another version of the hated paid-for papal indulgence, viewed as a means to feather the nest of the local prelate while ignoring essential Christian orthodoxy. Instead, the Calvinist Puritans favored permanent burial in unsanctified ground, well away from churches or dubious religious relics and generally without any but the most austere markers.

This practice came to the New World with the earliest modern settlers in mid-seventeenth-century New England, and most of the earliest burial grounds in North America were established in that form. In the two and one-half centuries that followed, many of the patterns first set down by Protestant colonists influenced both the use and the appearance of graveyards not only in New England but in most parts of the United States. To be sure, many changes in burial and grave culture, some of them in direct reaction and opposition to very strict Puritan doctrine, would be felt in later centuries, but the original break from the long-prevailing dominance of Catholic burial customs occurred in Calvinist Europe in the seventeenth century and became pervasive both there and abroad in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the American Republic was born.

Many burial grounds in colonial America, in conformity with the then prevailing Protestant view, were municipally oriented, as a town graveyard, rather than associated, either physically or spiritually, with a particular church or congregation.⁵ Though many sites that were originally on the edges of settled areas became urban as towns grew to cities, many did not exist as the property of any church or denomination. The graves were frequently unmarked, the sentiment being that placement of a marker betrayed an undesirable vanity and in any event was generally unneeded to mark the location of a grave that everyone in town had witnessed being filled.

Those grave markers that were used consisted almost entirely of slabs of gray or black slate, perhaps two feet wide and four feet tall, inscribed with only the basic information of the birth and death dates of the deceased. Decoration of the stones was minimal, consisting only of very plain borders and later a skull, the death head, at the top edge, intended as a reminder and a lesson about the inevitable corruption of death.

This austerity, generally consistent with the tone of the prevailing culture, produced a burial ground that was stern and often quite forbidding in appearance, especially with the passage of time. The straight, progressively crowded rows of headstones in a colonial graveyard, originally intended as a visible suggestion of moral order, may also have been a reflection of the agricultural geometry and the bringing of order to the wilderness that influenced the agricultural fields of colonial farmers, all of this reflecting the rejection of the Catholic voluptuousness so vehemently opposed by Puritan dogma as well as the colonists’ determination to master their surroundings. Nature and the untamed appearance of the natural environment provided no solace to the early Puritans, who viewed the forest with fear and apprehension of evil. Their burial grounds, in tandem with their entire settlements, were carved from an environment that was fearsome to them, and rather than hewing to the curves and undulations of the natural world, the strict geometry of these places firmly reflected victory over natural forms and the austere dominance of man. In time, many of the early burial grounds gradually became crowded and unkempt, unpleasant and increasingly dangerous to visit, and for this reason were rarely and poorly attended, except to add to the growing mass of interred humanity. In the New World, as in the Old, as cities grew, the need for more burial space accelerated.

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were times of great change in the substance and appearance of urban environments in both Europe and America as well as in the lives and thoughts of their inhabitants. The beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, with its many comparatively sudden changes in the manufacture and sale of goods, and the accompanying accumulation of wealth, brought thousands of rural workers to the city, and in so doing changed the appearance and very nature of urban environments forever. Growing towns and cities in the eastern United States—and, beginning in the first part of the nineteenth century, in the Midwest—often found themselves ill equipped to attend to the issues presented by the surge in worker populations, including the need for housing and the proper provision of clean water and disposal of sewerage. Provision for proper burial was also a rapidly increasing problem.

Over the passage of decades, as urban populations grew, urban graveyards, never very well attended or maintained, became crowded, unsightly, and ultimately unhealthy. Concerns, primarily in Europe, periodically arose about the multiple use of burial plots, the callous disinterment of remains to make room for new burials, and the sometimes all too obvious hazard of living in very close proximity to such hopelessly overcrowded sites.⁶ Occasional outbreaks of infectious diseases such as typhoid, cholera, and yellow fever, the causes and communication of which were still poorly understood, only added to the stress placed upon limited, largely urban burial spaces. It was surely these burial sites in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, primarily in Europe, whether located within or outside