Cypress Lawn Memorial Park

Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, established by Hamden Holmes Noble in 1892, is a rural cemetery[1] located in Colma, California, a place known as the "City of the Silent".

Cypress Lawn Memorial Park
Lakeside Columbarium and pond with topiary sign; San Bruno Mountain can be seen in the background
Details
Established1892
Location
1370 El Camino Real
Colma, California
CountryUnited States
Coordinates37.670°N 122.457°W / 37.670; -122.457
TypeNonprofit
Owned byCypress Lawn Cemetery Association
No. of interments200,000+
Websitewww.cypresslawn.com
Find a GraveCypress Lawn Memorial Park
The Political GraveyardCypress Lawn Memorial Park

History
1892 entrance gate from El Camino Real to East Campus

Noble was a Civil War veteran who moved to California in 1865 and was a member of the San Francisco Stock Exchange prior to founding Cypress Lawn.[2]: 15  On March 9, 1892, Noble was granted a permit to establish a non-sectarian cemetery[3] and plans for Cypress Lawn were made public as work had begun on a mortuary chapel and receiving vault.[4] Noble was responsible for the initial layout and landscape architecture of the cemetery.[2]: 16 

The prominent castle-like granite entry gate east of El Camino was designed by the B. McDougall architecture firm in San Francisco in 1892, incorporating Mission Revival elements,[5] and completed in 1893.[2]: 17  The site was dedicated on May 28, 1893.[6] A crematory also was completed in 1893, housed in a building designed by Albert Pissis and William P. Moore; it was damaged beyond repair during the 1957 San Francisco earthquake and subsequently demolished.[2]: 36–37 

The idea of rural or garden cemeteries (as opposed to city cemeteries) became popular in the mid 19th-century in the United States following the founding of Mount Auburn Cemetery, and cities like San Francisco began relocating their badly maintained urban cemeteries to suburban settings.[7] Between February 1940 until 1945, many of the remains from the Lone Mountain Cemetery complex in San Francisco had been moved to Cypress Lawn Memorial Park and were placed in a mound.[8][9] In 1993, a memorial obelisk was added to the grassy mound to commemorate those that had been re-interred.[9][10]

The cemetery was among those profiled in the PBS documentary A Cemetery Special (2005) by Rick Sebak.[11]

Site

The original cemetery occupies 47 acres (19 ha) east of El Camino Real and west of Hillside Boulevard and is known as the East Campus; the site was expanded by 101 acres (41 ha) west of El Camino, acquired in 1901,[12][13] named the West Campus.[2]: 19  Lakes were added in the 1920s.[2]: 18  In 2006, Cypress Lawn opened the 45-acre (18 ha) Hillside Gardens, northeast of the original campus. The Mount Olivet cemetery, founded in 1896 on 65 acres (26 ha) adjacent to Hillside Gardens, was acquired by Cypress Lawn in 2020 and renamed Olivet Gardens.[14]

Several structures are on the original (East Campus) site, including the 1892 entrance gate, the Noble Chapel and Crematory, named for the founder and completed in 1894, and the original columbarium, completed in 1895 to a design by Edward Hatherton and T. Paterson Ross. The Lakeside Columbarium, also on the East Campus, was designed by Bernard J. S. Cahill and started in 1927, but construction was suspended in 1930 due to the Great Depression and never resumed.[2]: 22  On the West Campus, both the Public Mausoleum and Catacombs (completed 1921) and the Administration Building (1919) were also designed by Cahill.[2]: 19–22 [15]

  • Public Mausoleum (West Campus, 1916)
    Public Mausoleum (West Campus, 1916)
  • Eastern entrance to East Campus, from Hillside Blvd
    Eastern entrance to East Campus, from Hillside Blvd
  • Noble Chapel (East Campus, 1894)
    Noble Chapel (East Campus, 1894)
  • Original columbarium (East Campus, 1895)
    Original columbarium (East Campus, 1895)
  • Entrance gate to Hillside Gardens
    Entrance gate to Hillside Gardens
  • Olivet Gardens garden court
    Olivet Gardens garden court
  • Floral topiary sign and tourist trolleys (West Campus)
    Floral topiary sign and tourist trolleys (West Campus)
  • Catacombs and Administration buildings (West Campus)
    Catacombs and Administration buildings (West Campus)

Since 2020, an annual Arboretum day is held in November to celebrate the site's trees, some of which were selected and planted by Noble. One of the notable trees on the original campus is a Monterey cypress which was estimated to be planted before 1906.[16]

Notable burials

Cypress Lawn Memorial Park is the final resting site for several members of the celebrated Hearst family, people from the California Gold Rush, plus other prominent citizens from the city of San Francisco and nearby surroundings. By 1992, more than 300,000 had been interred at the site.[2]: 7 

Three British Commonwealth service personnel of World War I were buried here, but only one, Lieutenant Norman Travers Simpkin (died 1919), Royal Field Artillery, has a marked grave in the cemetery.[17] Two others, Canadian Army soldiers, are alternatively commemorated on a special memorial in Greenlawn Memorial Park in Colma.[18]

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See also

References
  1. Linden, Blanche M.G. (2007). Silent City on a Hill: Picturesque Landscapes of Memory and Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press. p. 295. ISBN 978-1558495715. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  2. Svanevik, Michael; Burgett, Shirley (1992). Pillars of the Past: A Guide to Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma, California. San Francisco, California: Custom & Limited Editions. ISBN 1-881529-00-2.
  3. "Cypress Lawn. Franchise Granted for a Non-Sectarian Cemetery at Redwood City". San Francisco Call. March 10, 1892. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  4. "Cypress Lawn Cemetery: A New Non-Sectarian Cemetery Inaugurated". Times Gazette. March 12, 1892. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  5. "Cypress Lawn Cemetery. A New Burial Place and Crematory at the North End". Times Gazette. April 23, 1892. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  6. "Cypress Lawn Cemetery. Dedication of the New Burial Ground Near San Mateo". Times Gazette. June 3, 1893. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  7. Shelton, Tamara Venit (2008-01-01). "Unmaking Historic Spaces: Urban Progress and the San Francisco Cemetery Debate, 1895-1937". California History. 85 (3): 26–70. doi:10.2307/40495163. ISSN 0162-2897. JSTOR 40495163.
  8. Kastler, Deanna L. (2010-07-22). "Cemeteries". Encyclopedia of San Francisco. Archived from the original on 2010-07-22. Retrieved 2022-10-14.
  9. Svanevik, Michael; Burgett, Shirley (2017-05-17). "Matters Historical: How dead San Franciscans were moved to Colma". The Mercury News. ISSN 0747-2099. Retrieved 2022-10-23.
  10. Branch, John (2016-02-05). "The Town of Colma, Where San Francisco's Dead Live". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-10-25.
  11. Piirto, Jane (2011). Creativity for 21st Century Skills. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 173. ISBN 978-9460914638.
  12. "Cemetery Extension". Times Gazette. May 4, 1901. Retrieved 6 September 2023. Cypress Lawn Cemetery Association has purchased from Thomas Crellin, one the owners of the Morgan Oyster Company, two fifty-acre tracts of land across the county road from the cemetery for $45,000.
  13. "To Enlarge Cypress Lawn". Times Gazette. February 7, 1903. Retrieved 6 September 2023. The Cypress Lawn Cemetery Association has closed a deal whereby it secures a tract of 100 acres of land on the west side of the county road, immediately opposite the present cemetery of the corporation, in the northern end of the county.
  14. "Exploring the May Campuses of Cypress Lawn". Cypress Lawn. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
  15. "New Office for Cypress Lawn". San Mateo Leader. April 25, 1918. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  16. Valentino, Silas (December 12, 2022). "Cypress Lawn Arboretum is a tribute to San Francisco's beloved Monterey cypress". SF Gate. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
  17. Reading Room Manchester (1919-08-18). "Casualty Details". CWGC. Retrieved 2014-07-14.
  18. Reading Room Manchester. "Cemetery Details". CWGC. Retrieved 2014-07-14.
  19. Mino-Bucheli, Sebastian (October 7, 2021). "Some of the Most Famous People Buried in Colma (With Map)". KQED. Archived from the original on 2021-10-07.
  20. "R. C. Chambers Dead". The Ogden Standard. 1901-04-12. p. 1. Retrieved 2022-11-07.
  21. Sullivan, Louis (1990). From Female To Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland. Boston: Alyson Books. p. 172. ISBN 978-1-55583-150-9.
  22. Sue Shephard (2003). Seeds of Fortune – A Gardening Dynasty. Bloomsbury. p. 151. ISBN 0747560668.
  23. "LOW, Frederick Ferdinand – Biographical Information". Bioguide.congress.gov. Retrieved 2014-07-14.
  24. Aaker, Everett (2017). Television Western Players, 1960–1975: A Biographical Dictionary. McFarland. p. 311. ISBN 978-1476628561 – via Google Books.
  25. Chisholm, Jocelyn. "Joel Samuel – Biography". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 12 July 2011.
  26. Binheim, Max; Elvin, Charles A (1928). Women of the West; a series of biographical sketches of living eminent women in the eleven western states of the United States of America. p. 76. Retrieved 8 August 2017.Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  27. Connections in Swing
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