Crown Hill Cemetery: Difference between revisions

'''Crown Hill Cemetery''' is a historic [[rural cemetery]] located at 700 West Thirty-Eighth38th Street in [[Indianapolis, Indiana|Indianapolis]], [[Marion County, Indiana]]. The privately owned [[cemetery]] was established in 1863 at Strawberry Hill, whose summit was renamed "The Crown", a high point overlooking Indianapolis. It is approximately {{convert|2.8|mi}} northwest of the city's center. Crown Hill was dedicated on June 1, 1864, and encompasses {{convert|555|acre}}, making it the third largest non-governmental [[cemetery]] in the [[United States]]. Its grounds are based on the landscape designs of [[Pittsburgh]] landscape architect and cemetery superintendent John Chislett Sr. and [[Adolph StrauchPrussian]], a [[Prussianhorticulturalist]] [[horticulturalistAdolph Strauch]]. In 1866, the U.S. government authorized a [[United States National Cemetery|U.S. National Cemetery]] for Indianapolis. The {{convert|1.4|acre|adj=on}} [[Crown Hill National Cemetery]] is located in Sections 9 and 10.

Crown Hill contains {{convert|25|mi}} of paved road, over 150 species of trees and plants, over 225,000 graves, and services roughly 1,500 burials per year.{{citation needed|date=July 2014}} Crown Hill is the final resting place for individuals from all walks of life, from political and civic leaders to ordinary citizens, infamous criminals, and unknowns. [[Benjamin Harrison]], twenty-third23rd [[president of the United States]], and [[Vice Presidents of the United States|Vice Presidents]] [[Charles W. Fairbanks]], [[Thomas A. Hendricks]], and [[Thomas R. Marshall]] are buried at Crown Hill. Infamous bank robber and "Public Enemy #1" [[John Dillinger]] is another internee. The gravesite of Hoosier poet [[James Whitcomb Riley]] overlooks the city from "The Crown".

The cemetery's administrative offices, mortuary, and crematorium are located at Thirty-eighth38th Street and Clarendon Road on the cemetery's north grounds. Crown Hill's Waiting Station, built in 1885 at its east entrance on Thirty-fourth34th Street and Boulevard Place, serves as a meeting place for tours and programs. The Crown Hill Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit corporation established in 1984, raises funds to preserve the cemetery's historic buildings and grounds. Crown Hill Cemetery was listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]] on February 28, 1973.

Crown Hill was not Indianapolis's first major cemetery. [[Alexander Ralston]] included a cemetery site in his 1821 plan of Indianapolis at the south end of Kentucky Avenue, where it intersects South and West Streets.<ref name=Sloan1>{{cite book| first=Sarah| last=Sloan| title=The True Treasure of Crown Hill Cemetery| publisher=Crown Hill Cemetery Association| year=1973| location=Indianapolis| page=1}}</ref> Prior to the establishment of Crown Hill Cemetery in 1863, the city's main cemetery was expanded in the 1830s to create the {{convert|25|acre|adj=on}} [[Greenlawn Cemetery (Indianapolis, Indiana)|Greenlawn Cemetery]] on the city's southwest side.<ref name=Sanford15>{{cite book| first=Wayne L.| last=Sanford| title=Crown Hill, 1863–1988: 125th Anniversary Edition| publisher=Crown Hill Cemetery Association| year=1988| location=Indianapolis| page=15}}</ref> During the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], Greenlawn was quickly filling with burials of [[Union Army|Union]] soldiers and [[Confederate States Army|Confederate]] [[prisoners of war]] and faced encroachment from west side industrial development.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Douglas A. |last1=Wissing |author2=Marianne Tobias |author3=Rebecca W. Dolan |author4=Anne Ryder| title=Crown Hill: History, Spirit, and Sanctuary| publisher=Indiana Historical Society Press| year=2013 | location=Indianapolis | pages=2, 7 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PKFULwEACAAJ&q=Crown+Hill:+History,+Spirit,+and+Sanctuary| isbn=978-0871953018| url-access=subscription}}</ref> By the end of the 1870s it was closed to further interments due to lack of space.<ref name=Sanford15/>

The normal demands of a growing city, along with the capacity issues at Greenlawn, prompted a group of Indianapolis's civic-minded men to establish a new and larger cemetery within five miles of the city. On September 12, 1863, the men met with John Chislett Sr., a [[Pittsburgh]] landscape architect and cemetery superintendent, to discuss ideas for a cemetery that would be based on the park-like settings becoming popular in Europe, most notably the [[Pere Lachaise Cemetery]] in [[Paris]].<ref>Wissing, pp. 7–8, 13.</ref> On September 25, 1863, the group formed the Association of Crown Hill.<ref name=Sloan1/> Its selection committee bought a {{Convert|166-|acre|adj=on}} farm and tree nursery owned by Martin Williams for $51,500. The site for the new cemetery at Strawberry Hill, a high point overlooking Indianapolis, was {{convert|2.8|mi}} northwest of the city. The committee also acquired adjacent acreage of naturally rolling terrain from other sources.<ref name=Sloan1/> On October 22, 1863, a thirty30-manmember Board of Corporators (trustees) formally established Crown Hill as a privately owned cemetery.<ref>Wissing, pp. 14, 17, 241–43.</ref><ref name=Sanford1>Sanford, p. 1.</ref>

Once the initial land was secured, the board hired Chislett's son, Frederick, as Crown Hill's first superintendent. He arrived in Indianapolis with his wife and children on December 31, 1863. Frederick supervised the construction of the cemetery's first roads and developed the property's grounds based on the landscape designs of his father and Prussian horticulturalist [[Adolph Strauch]].<ref>Wissing, pp. 13, 17.</ref> The design retained many of the cemetery's natural features and laid out winding roads to create a landscape in the Victorian Romantic style.{{sfn|National Park Service}} The cemetery's first main entrance was off old Michigan Road (alsolater known as Northwestern Avenue and later,currently as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard).<ref>Sloan, pp. 1, 17.</ref>

Crown Hill Cemetery was dedicated on June 1, 1864.<ref name=Wissing17>Wissing, p. 17.</ref> The first burial at Crown Hill was the body of Lucy Ann Seaton, aged thirty-three33, a young mother who had died of [[tuberculosis|consumption]].<ref name=Sloan1/> Later that year, James Pattison built a stone gateway for $2,300 at the cemetery's west entrance off of Michigan Road. The cemetery's east entrance at Thirty-fourth34th Street opened in 1864.<ref name=Sanford3>Sanford, p. 3.</ref> Omnibus transportation reached the cemetery in 1864. Visitors could also travel by steam-powered boat up the Central Canal to reach Crown Hill. Automobiles were allowed on the grounds beginning in 1912.<ref>Wissing, pp. 31, 38–39, 101.</ref>

In 1866, the federal government purchased {{convert|1.4|acre}} of land within the grounds of Crown Hill for a national military cemetery. The bodies of more than 700 Union soldiers who had died in Indianapolis during the Civil War were moved from Greenlawn Cemetery to new graves at the National Cemetery.<ref name=Sloan1/> On May 30, 1868, Crown Hill, along with Arlington National Cemetery and 182 others in twenty-seven27 states, took part in the country's first Memorial Day celebrations. An estimated crowd of 10,000 attended the Crown Hill ceremony, beginning an annual tradition at the site.<ref>Wissing, pp. 36–37.</ref>

By the mid-1800s, Crown Hill was a burial ground as well as a popular location for recreational activities such as picnics, strolls, and carriage rides. It is well known for its views of downtown Indianapolis from "The Crown.".<ref>Wissing, pp. 40–41.</ref> In addition to developing the cemetery grounds, Crown Hill's Corporators built new structures on the site. A Gothic chapel and vault was erected in 1875.<ref name=Sloan1/> The main entrance was moved to Thirty-fourth34th Street on the cemetery's east side, where the cemetery's Waiting Station building and a three-arched gateway were erected in 1885. A new gate and gatehouse were built at the west entrance in 1900 to replace earlier structures that were demolished.<ref>Sanford, pp. 3, 17.</ref> Over several decades Crown Hill's grounds expanded to include substantial parcels of land north of Thirty-eighth38th Street (known then as Maple Road). In 1911, the acquisition of {{convert|40|acre}} at the northwest corner of Crown Hill made the {{convert|550|acre|adj=on}} grounds the third largest nongovernmental cemetery in the United States.<ref>Wissing, pp. 38, 80, 123.</ref>

Crown Hill's Pioneer Cemetery was established on the north grounds in 1912. The bodies of 1,160 early settlers from Greenlawn Cemetery were moved to this new section at Crown Hill. The remains of thirty-three33 people from Rhoads Cemetery, established on the city's west side in 1844, were interred in the Pioneer Cemetery in 1999. Bodies from the Wright-Whitesell-Gentry Cemetery located near Castleton on the city's northeast side were moved to the Pioneer Cemetery in 2008–09.<ref>Wissing, p. 296.</ref>

The cemetery's grounds continued to change. In 1914, landscape architect [[George Kessler]] designed a brick and wrought-iron fence nearly three miles{{Convert|3|mi|spell=in}} long. It was completed in the early 1920s and surrounded three quarters of the cemetery's south grounds and the southern end of the north grounds along Thirty-Eight38th Street. A bridge/underpass that became known as the Subway passed beneath Thirty-eighth38th Street to connect the north and south grounds.<ref name="Sloan1-3">Sloan, pp. 1, 3.</ref> Although Crown Hill faced competition from other cemeteries in the area, it continued to expand. More than 100,000 people were buried there by the late 1930s and more than 155,000 by the late 1970s.<ref>Wissing, pp. 128, 155, 193.</ref> The cemetery's Community Mausoleum was formally dedicated in 1951. Building five of the Garden Mausoleums, a series of outdoor mausoleums, was completed in 1962. A new administrative building by [[Bohlen, Meyer, Gibson and Associates|Bohlen and Burns]] was dedicated in 1969.<ref name=Sanford10>Sanford, p. 10.</ref> By the early 1980s, Crown Hill was valued at nearly $3 million. Its annual sales were estimated at $250,000, with an operating budget of $895,000. The cemetery employed fifteen15 salaried employees, twenty-one21 full-time maintenance workers, and twenty-five25 seasonal workers.<ref>Wissing, pp. 227–28.</ref>

The first female and African American, Cynthia Strayhorn Whisler, joined the Crown Hill Board of Corporators in 1997. Milton O. Thompson, a lawyer, former deputy Marion County prosecutor, and founder of a sports and entertainment management company became the board's first African American member. Hilary Stour Salatich, a [[Conseco]] executive and civic leader, became the first female corporator.<ref name="Wissing241-43">Wissing, pp. 241–43.</ref>{{Clarify|reason=How can Whisler and Salatich both be the first female Corporator?|date=May 2022}}

* East gate, Waiting Station, and Porter's Lodge&nbsp;– Adolf Scherrer, an Indianapolis architect of Swiss origins, designed the [[High Victorian Gothic]] gateway and Waiting Station for the cemetery's main entrance at Thirty-fourth34th Street and Boulevard Place. Construction began in May 1885. The three-arched gateway was completed in November 1885, in time for the funeral of [[Vice-President of the United States|vice-president]] and former [[Governor of Indiana|Indiana governor]] [[Thomas A. Hendricks]]. The gate was built of Bedford [[limestone]]. The Waiting Station exterior is brick and limestone. A gatehouse house that became known as Porter's Lodge at the gate's south side was designed by the Indianapolis architectural firm of [[Vonnegut & Bohn|Vonnegut and Bohn]] and built in 1904. The Crown Hill board leased the Waiting Station to [[Indiana Landmarks|Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana]] in 1970 for one dollar per year, provided the preservation organization agreed to restore the historic structure. The restoration was completed by February 1971. HLFI moved to offices on Michigan Street in 1990 and the Waiting Station was leased until the mid-1990s, when Crown Hill began using it for office space. Crown Hill spent an additional $500,000 to restore the Waiting Station in the late 1990s. It was restored again in 2001 and serves as a meeting place for cemetery tours and programs.<ref name="HABS-gateway">{{cite web | title =Crown Hill Cemetery, Gateway, 3402 Boulevard Place, Indianapolis, Marion County, IN | work = Historic American Buildings Survey | publisher =Library of Congress | url =https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/item/in0049/| access-date =2014-06-20}}</ref><ref name=Sanford17>Sanford, p. 17.</ref><ref name="HABS-Obldg-PDF">{{cite web | title =Crown Hill Cemetery, Office Building, 3402 Boulevard Place, Indianapolis, Marion County, IN | work =Historic American Buildings Survey | publisher =Library of Congress | url =http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/in/in0000/in0050/data/in0050data.pdf | access-date =2014-06-20 | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20140726234624/http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/in/in0000/in0050/data/in0050data.pdf | archive-date =2014-07-26 | url-status =dead }}</ref><ref name="HABS-Obldg-S">{{cite web | title =Crown Hill Cemetery, Office Building, 3402 Boulevard Place, Indianapolis, Marion County, IN: Supplement | work =Historic American Buildings Survey | publisher =Library of Congress | url =http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/in/in0000/in0050/supp/in0050supp.pdf | access-date =2014-06-20 | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20140726212206/http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/in/in0000/in0050/supp/in0050supp.pdf | archive-date =2014-07-26 | url-status =dead }}</ref><ref>Wissing, pp. 80, 83, 123, 188, 230, 286.</ref>

* Subway bridge/underpass&nbsp;– The underpass beneath Thirty-eight38th Street that connects the north and south grounds is also known as the Subway. Construction began in 1925 and was completed in 1927 at cost of $170,000. It was restored in the 1980s.<ref name=Sanford19/><ref name=Wissing228/>

* Masonry fence&nbsp;– In 1914 [[George Kessler]] designed a brick and wrought-iron fence to replace the cemetery's wood and wire fencing. The masonry fence surrounded three quarters of the south grounds and the southern end of the north grounds along Thirty-eighth38th Street. It cost nearly $138,000. The fence has a {{convert|4|ft|adj=on}} thick concrete base, brick supports {{convert|8.5|ft}} in height, and sections of wrought iron measuring {{convert|25|ft}} in length that rest on brick support walls. Brick pillars at the entrances are more than {{convert|12|ft}} tall. Construction of the fence, which is approximately {{convert|3|mi}} long, was completed in 1920. A multi-year restoration costing $600,000 began in 1985.<ref name=Sanford20/><ref name=Wissing224>Wissing, pp. 124, 228.</ref>

* Administrative offices&nbsp;– A building erected at Thirty-eighth38th and Clarenden Streets in 1969 serves as Crown Hill's business offices.<ref name=Sanford17>Sanford, p. 17.</ref>

* [[Benjamin Harrison]], twenty-third23rd [[president of the United States]], along with his first wife, [[Caroline Harrison]];<ref name=Heritage>{{cite book| title=Our Hoosier Heritage| publisher=Crown Hill Cemetery Association| year=1970| location=Indianapolis}}</ref> his second wife, [[Mary Dimmick Harrison]];<ref>Sanford, p. 21.</ref> his son [[Russell Benjamin Harrison]]; and his daughter [[Mary Harrison McKee]].