Return to Oak Hill Cemetery

by Thomas Dilley

The grandest of the historic cemeteries of Grand Rapids, Oak Hill Cemetery has been in existence for more than 150 years. Here are buried many of the most important players in the history of the city, and here are many of the most interesting and elaborate monuments to those people. Please join us for a walking tour of the southern half of this historic cemetery, and learn about its history and occupants, as well as the art and architecture of this wonderful, historic place.

Oak Hill Cemetery was opened, at the eastern edge of the limits of the city of Grand Rapids, in October, 1859. The original parcel, located entirely north of Hall Street, consisted of approximately 35 acres, and was privately administered by an association of lot owners until 1885 when it was taken over by the city. As the much talked about opening of the new cemetery approached, the city purchased roughly 40 acres on the south side of Hall Street, and opened the Valley City Cemetery, also in 1859. The two cemeteries, of similar design, were operated separately until when they were joined together, under City administration, as Oak Hill Cemetery, in 1885.

Oak Hill represents the local high water mark of the influence of the rural, garden cemetery movement, which swept the eastern United States between 1830 and 1900. The rural (as opposed to urban) garden cemetery offered a far different look and approach to burials than had been the case for centuries before, and as is illustrated locally by the Fulton Street Cemetery, opened in 1838. The theory and practice of the garden cemetery offered a far more relaxed, welcoming, park-like arrangement of burial spaces than had been the case previously. Gone were the rigid rows and individualized plots, replaced with curving drives and vistas, and larger, family oriented lots, intended to serve a single family for generations.

All of this was reflective of a significant change which had occurred, beginning in the early 19th century, in the beliefs of the predominantly Christian Protestant population of the nation, with particular emphasis on their view of the end of life. While the earliest graveyards here and elsewhere, taking their inspiration from the pre-colonial graveyards of New England (from whence most of the early settlers of Michigan came), offered rather stark and sometimes forbidding messages of loss and grief, the garden cemetery took up and reflected a more hopeful, resurrection oriented viewpoint, which is more familiar to us today. While the earliest graveyards were usually laid out in a firm grid pattern, reminiscent of the fields of the farmers buried there, and allowing little opportunity for sentimental decoration, the garden cemetery, with its self-espoused message of being at rest, offered an atmosphere of peaceful, commemorative reflection, which proved far more attractive to visitors, whether family members or not. The garden cemetery also welcomed, for the first time, the placement of larger, more decorative markers and monuments on graves, which allowed lot owners to memorialize their families, and to satisfy the seemingly insatiable Victorian appetite for elaborate, and sometimes ostentatious display. Today many of these markers and monuments provide fascinating insights about what was important to the people who placed them, as well as the world in which they lived.

The walking tour will encompass only a part of the southern, formerly Valley City portion of the cemetery. We will visit the last resting places of men and women who built the city of Grand Rapids and its industries during a time of phenomenal growth in Grand Rapids, and the entire Midwestern United States. We will also take an opportunity to view some of the monuments as the art objects which they truly are, preserved for us in stone, for all time.

On Saturday, September 3, 2016, we will return to Oak Hill Cemetery for another walk with cemetery scholar and historian, Thomas R. Dilley. We will explore the southern half of the finest example of a “park cemetery” to be found in western Michigan, visiting some sites we have seen before, as well as sites that will be “new” to attendees. Emphasis will be given to the history and architecture of the cemetery, and its place in the developmental history of cemetery spaces in 19th century America.

“Return to Oak Hill Cemetery” Saturday, September 3, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. (rain date: Saturday, September 10, 2016) Located at Eastern Avenue at Hall Street presented by Thomas Dilley.