Oakwood was designed by John C. Sidney, a Philadelphia engineer familiar with cemetery design, with the help of Garnet Douglass Baltimore, the first African American to earn a degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.[9] The plan consisted of roads, man-made lakes, dense vegetation, and rolling hills, covering about 300 acres (120 ha), including the modern sections A through Q. Sidney also designed the original superintendent's house and receiving tomb, neither of which exist today. For all Sidney's extensive planning, the first plots were laid out in a seemingly haphazard manner by the first superintendent, Robert Fergusson.[2]