Not far from the Harvard University campus, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, Mt. Auburn Street is busy and clogged with
traffic during the morning rush hour as commuters and their cars
creep across the urban landscape of auto shops, supermarkets,
and liquor stores. But as I turn into the Egyptian Revival
gateway of Mount Auburn Cemetery, a completely different world
comes into view. The 175 acres of America’s first “garden
cemetery” roll gently away from the traffic and noise, dotted
with the gravestones and monuments of more than 97,000 departed
souls—luminaries and ordinary Bostonians alike. In death, they
share the peaceful wooded lanes and groves that made Mount
Auburn, founded in 1831, unlike any American burial ground that
came before it. This final resting place is still active. A
nondenominational cemetery, eleven hundred cremations and five
hundred interments take place there each year. It is also an
outdoor museum of art and architecture and, lastly, a monument
to the seismic shift in American attitudes