Lake View Cemetery
Lake View Cemetery is a privately owned, nonprofit garden cemetery located in the cities of Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, and East Cleveland in the U.S. state of Ohio. Founded in 1869, the cemetery was favored by wealthy families during the Gilded Age, and today the cemetery is known for its numerous lavish funerary monuments and mausoleums. The extensive early monument building at Lake View helped give rise to the Little Italy neighborhood, but over-expansion nearly bankrupted the burial ground in 1888. Financial recovery only began in 1893, and took several years. Lake View grew and modernized significantly from 1896 to 1915 under the leadership of president Henry R. Hatch. The cemetery's cautious management allowed it to avoid retrenchment and financial problems during the Great Depression.
Two sites within the cemetery are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The first is the James A. Garfield Memorial, erected in 1890 as the tomb of assassinated President James A. Garfield. The second is Wade Memorial Chapel, which began construction in 1898 and was completed in 1901. It honors the memory of Jeptha Wade, one of the cemetery's co-founders, and was donated by his grandson.
Founding of the cemetery
Creation of the Lake View Cemetery Association
In 1868, prominent Cleveland businessmen Jeptha Wade, Henry B. Payne, and Joseph Perkins began discussing the need for a new cemetery for the city of Cleveland. They believed that the city's then-preeminent burial ground, Woodland Cemetery, was too small for the growing city as well as overcrowded, ill-maintained, and not scenic enough. They issued an invitation on May 8, 1869, to about 40 of the city's other leading businessmen, asking them to meet at the end of the month to discuss the organization of a new cemetery. Thirty of them showed up to the meeting on May 24.The group of 30 formed the nonprofit Lake View Cemetery Association on July 28, 1869. The trustees were William Bingham, Hinman B. Hurlbut, Henry B. Payne, Joseph Perkins, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Taylor Sherman, Amasa Stone, Worthy S. Streator, Jeptha Wade, and Stillman Witt. Wade was named president, and Liberty E. Holden the association clerk. The group resolved to build a garden cemetery in the style of Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston, Massachusetts, or Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Judge Sherman chose the name: Lake View Cemetery. Lake View was "non-sectarian" and open to all, which meant that its intended clientele were Protestant.
The group sold 7 percent annual interest bonds in the association, hoping to raise $150,000. Within six weeks, they'd raised the money and set a new goal of $200,000, which was also reached. Selah Chamberlain, Payne, Perkins, Stone, Wade, and Witt held $60,000 in bonds, while another 11 individuals held $55,000 in bonds.
Site selection, design, and construction
A committee was formed to choose a site for the new cemetery. Its members consisted of Holden, Payne, Perkins, Sherman, and J.C. Buell. The committee wanted a location on the lake shore, but found nothing suitable. While traveling on Euclid Avenue, Holden came upon the cemetery site by chance. The area was known as "Smith Run". Beginning on the Erie Plain in the northwest, the site rose into the foothills of the Portage Escarpment. Dugway Brook and several small streams ran south-to-north through the area, carving out a number of ravines The Dugway Brook ravine was particularly deep, and Euclid bluestone had once been quarried there.By late September 1869, the Lake View Association had purchased of land on this ridge adjacent to Euclid Avenue. This gave the cemetery about of frontage on the avenue. The combined cost of the two purchases was $148,821.84. Located in what was then East Cleveland Township, the site was somewhat isolated. With the city pushing eastward at a swift pace, city and county government officials were already planning additional roads in the area, several of which would reach the new cemetery.
Landscape architect Adolph Strauch, who designed Cincinnati's celebrated Spring Grove Cemetery, was hired in October 1869 to design Lake View. Joseph Earnshaw of Cincinnati was the civil engineer, and O.D. Ford was hired as the first superintendent. During the winter of 1869–1870, work crews began grading and laying down roads and paths, terracing part of the site for in-ground plots and mausoleums, and removing underbrush and unwanted trees. By February 1870, two sections were being laid out with a total of about 500 plots.
The 300 plots in the first section went on sale on June 23, 1870, according to The Plain Dealer newspaper. The cost of a standard size in-ground grave was set at $4.00. Larger sites for families, monuments, or mausoleums went for 20 cents a square foot. The cemetery's distance from Cleveland's population center and the price of its plots meant that only those with a middle class income or better could afford to be buried at Lake View.
Early years: 1869 to 1880
It's not clear when the first interments at Lake View Cemetery were made, but several plots were in use by October 21, 1870.Improvements to and expansion of the cemetery continued over the next few years. The first ravine was bridged in November 1870, and in December the association purchased an unspecified number of acres that doubled the length of its frontage on Euclid Avenue. The cemetery sold $400,000 in bonds in 1871 to pay for more improvements. To secure the bonds, the cemetery pledged all but sold lots, roads, and water features. By August 1871, six sections of the cemetery were laid out and the receiving vault for use by plot-holders, designed by local architect Joseph Ireland, was almost finished. A superintendent's lodge at the front gate on Euclid Avenue was finished at the end of the year. By this time, several large, artistic funerary monuments had been erected at Lake View. The association purchased another of land in October 1872 and in January 1873. By June 1873, the cemetery had a total of. It had spent $65,643 on landscaping, with eight sections landscaped, plotted, and open for burials. The cemetery even dammed Dugway Brook in places to create ponds.
Plots at Lake View Cemetery in its first three years sold for half the average price of plots in established cemeteries. Plot sales generated little income initially. At the close of the 1872–1873 fiscal year, the cemetery was technically bankrupt, with more debt than assets. Plot sales were brisk, however, and the cemetery was proving extremely popular with local residents. As much as 40 percent of all burials at Lake View Cemetery between 1870 and 1873 were removals from Woodland Cemetery. Another of land were purchased in August 1873, and the cemetery's acreage totalled in 1876.
Euclid Avenue was paved up to Lake View Cemeteryn in 1874. Lake View Cemetery purchased another of land in 1875, issuing $150,000 in 6 percent annual interest bonds to pay for it.
By 1877, The Plain Dealer estimated, more than $100,000 in funerary monuments dotted the landscape at Lake View Cemetery. These included the highly visible obelisks and shafts over the Doan, Kelley, McDermott, Potter, and Tisdale plots; the Goodrich and Jaynes memorials; the Keynes column ; the Jeptha Wade shaft, which was topped by an angel; and the Hurlbut pillar topped with a weeping figure. There were also a number of monuments with well-designed, expertly carved bas-relief or freestanding sculptures. These included the angel atop the Truman P. Handy memorial, the weeping woman atop the Bucher and Hanna monuments, the group of angels supporting a cross atop the Cross grave, figures carved on the upright slabs over the Johnson and Garretson plots, a sculptural group named "Hope" atop the Perkins monument, and another sculptural group atop the Chamberlain monument. Although a number of large mausoleums had been built in the cemetery, the newspaper noted that the most elaborate of these was the tomb being erected by H.J. Wilcox. Wilcox had visited Italy, where he employed artisans to design a vault that mimicked the look of an Italian Renaissance chapel.
With lots selling quickly, cemetery officials used the revenue to redeem debt. By 1878, only $10,000 of the 1871 bond issue remained unredeemed, and just $30,000 of the 1875 bond issue. The trustees decided to retire both debts by issuing $40,000 in new bonds at 7 percent annual interest. Although the new bonds were sold, the old debt was inexplicably not retired.
Expansion: 1881 to 1890
Building the Garfield Memorial
President James A. Garfield, a resident of nearby Mentor, Ohio, was shot in Washington, D.C., on July 2, 1881. He died on September 19, 1881. Garfield himself had expressed the wish to be buried at Lake View Cemetery, and the cemetery offered a burial site free of charge to his widow, Lucretia Garfield.Mrs. Garfield agreed to bury her husband at Lake View. Garfield was temporarily interred in the cemetery's public vault on September 26, 1881, then transferred on October 22 to an empty mausoleum owned and designed by noted local architect Levi Scofield. Even before Garfield's funeral, plans were laid by his friends and admirers for a grand tomb to be erected at the highest point in the cemetery.
The popularity of the garden-like cemetery and the public's desire to see Garfield's resting place were such that large crowds began thronging Lake View every Sunday. Roughly 50,000 people a year were visiting the crypt. The cemetery received no revenues from the memorial committee despite the wear and tear on its property. Cemetery officials began requiring tickets in the summer of 1882 to enter the grounds in order to control the crowds and maintain a suitable atmosphere for mourning. Relic hunters were so willing to vandalize the Scofield tomb that a wire fence had to be erected to keep them away. In 1891, the cemetery barred all non-lotholding visitors from the cemetery on Sundays unless they had a pass. With only about 230 Sunday passes available, hundreds of people were turned away.
The Garfield Memorial Committee selected the highest point in the cemetery in June 1883 for the president's final resting place. Lake View Cemetery built a road around the memorial in early 1885, and began work on cutting a road from the Euclid Gate to the memorial site in the fall of that year. The cemetery also began work on making improvements to the landscape, water, and drainage around the site. The Garfield Memorial was dedicated on May 30, 1890. Lucretia Garfield, the president's widow, died on March 13, 1918, and was interred in the Garfield Memorial on March 21.