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Stephanie | profile | all galleries >> USA >> Pennsylvania >> Philadelphia >> Laurel Hill Cemetery tree view | thumbnails | slideshow

Laurel Hill Cemetery

LAUREL HILL CEMETERY, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the second major garden or rural cemetery in the United States.
It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1998, one of only a few cemeteries to receive the distinction.
The cemetery has spectacular vistas and thousands of 19th- and 20th-century marble and granite funerary monuments on 74 acres terraced above the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia's East Falls section.
Obelisks dot the rolling terrain, which is highlighted by elaborately sculpted hillside tombs and mausoleums.
Overall, Laurel Hill contains more than 33,000 monuments and more than 11,000 family lots.
The cemetery was founded in 1836 by John Jay Smith, a librarian and editor with interests in horticulture and real estate who was distressed at the way his deceased daughter was interred in a Philadelphia churchyard.
He and other prominent citizens decided to create a rural garden cemetery five miles north of Philadelphia, a location that was viewed as a haven from urban expansion and a respite from the increasingly industrialized city center.
The city later grew past Laurel Hill, but the cemetery retained its rural character.

I visited this gorgeous cemetery on Saturday evening/night with my camera club.
We had a howling good time!
George Gorgon Meade
George Gorgon Meade
Kirk
Kirk
Mrs. Margaret Mann et al
Mrs. Margaret Mann et al
Multiplicity
Multiplicity
RIP Lawrence S. Pepper
RIP Lawrence S. Pepper
For all eternity
For all eternity