New England Oddities

Mt. Auburn Cemetery

Founded in 1831, Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts is considered to be America’s first garden-style cemetery, with plots and stones arranged amongst landscaped hills, rather than in the rigid lines found in churchyards of prior periods. The garden style cemetery emphasizes peaceful rest, rather than sorrow, and represented society’s changing attitudes toward death and the afterlife.

This is one of the largest and most elaborate cemeteries we have had the chance to visit, and those of you who may have visited this site before know that we’ve seen many!  One could walk for days and not see everything there is to see, as the cemetery covers around 175 acres and contains over 10 miles of roads.  In addition to beautiful monuments and chapels, Mt. Auburn is also famous for it’s 700 varieties of trees and numerous species of birds.

Photography by Katie Harper:

 

Photography by Chris Kwarciany: