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Oak Hill Cemetery (Washington, D.C.)

Historic cemetery in Washington D.C.

Historic cemetery in Washington D.C.

FieldValue
nameOak Hill Cemetery
imageLooking NW and vertical at Italianate gatehouse - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg
captionItalianate gatehouse, Oak Hill Cemetery
established1848
countryUnited States
location30th and R Streets, NW
Georgetown, Washington, D.C., U.S.
coordinates
typeprivate
owner
size22 acre
website
findagraveid104443
politicalgeoDC/wa-buried.html#cms00803
mapframeyes
mapframe-zoom16
mapframe-wikidatayes

Georgetown, Washington, D.C., U.S. | mapframe-zoom = 16 | mapframe-wikidata = yes Oak Hill Cemetery is a historic 22 acre cemetery located in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was founded in 1848 and completed in 1853, and is a prime example of a rural cemetery. Many famous politicians, business people, military people, diplomats, and philanthropists are buried at Oak Hill, and the cemetery has a number of Victorian-style memorials and monuments. Oak Hill has two structures which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places: the Oak Hill Cemetery Chapel and the Van Ness Mausoleum.

The cemetery's (temporary) interment of "Willie" Lincoln, deceased son of president Abraham Lincoln, was the inspiration for the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.

History

Oak Hill began in 1848 as part of the rural cemetery movement, directly inspired by the success of Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston, Massachusetts, when William Wilson Corcoran (also founder of the Corcoran Gallery of Art) purchased 15 acre of land. He then organized the Cemetery Company to oversee Oak Hill; it was incorporated by act of Congress on March 3, 1849.

Oak Hill's chapel was built in 1849 by noted architect James Renwick, who also designed the Smithsonian Institution's Castle on Washington Mall and St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. His one-story rectangular chapel measures 23 by 41 feet (7×12 m) and sits on the cemetery's highest ridge. It is built of blue gneiss, in Gothic Revival style, with exterior trim in the same red Seneca sandstone used for the Castle.

By 1851, landscape designer Captain George F. de la Roche finished laying out the winding paths and terraces descending into Rock Creek valley. When initial construction was completed in 1853, Corcoran had spent over $55,000 on the cemetery's landscaping and architecture.

On October 4, 2022, historic preservationist Paul K. Williams became the cemetery's 14th Superintendent in residence and COO of the Oak Hill Cemetery Historic Cemetery Foundation.

Notable interments

Main article: List of burials at Oak Hill Cemetery

  • Dean Acheson
  • Madeleine Albright
  • Gamaliel Bailey
  • Margaret Lucy Shands Bailey
  • James G. Blaine (formerly interred)
  • Ben Bradlee
  • William P. Burch
  • Adolf Cluss
  • Lorenzo Dow
  • Peggy Eaton
  • Roberta Flack
  • Katharine Graham
  • Joseph Henry
  • Herman Hollerith
  • Willie Lincoln (formerly interred)
  • Myrtilla Miner
  • Francis G. Newlands
  • Edwin P. Parker Jr.
  • Paul J. Pelz
  • Charles Anthony Schott
  • Mark Shields
  • E. D. E. N. Southworth
  • Edwin M. Stanton
  • Cornelius Stribling

References

Bibliography

References

  1. Kelly, John. (2017-04-17). "Perspective {{!}} 'Lincoln in the Bardo' novel has people flocking to a Georgetown cemetery". Washington Post.
  2. (2010-03-18). "The Famous Tenants of Oak Hill Cemetery". The Georgetown Metropolitan.
  3. (2009-05-26). "'The Camel Club,' by David Baldacci".
  4. (2016-09-12). "A Spy's Cache".
Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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