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Mount Auburn Cemetery is the first rural cemetery in the United States, located on the line between Cambridge and Watertown in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, west of Boston. With classical monuments set in a rolling landscaped terrain,〔 it marked a distinct break with Colonial-era burying grounds and church-affiliated graveyards. The appearance of this type of landscape coincides with the rising popularity of the term "cemetery", derived from the Greek for "a sleeping place." This language and outlook eclipsed the previous harsh view of death and the afterlife embodied by old graveyards and church burial plots.〔Bernhard Lang and Colleen McDaniel, ''Heaven: A History''. Yale University Press, 2001.〕 The cemetery is important both for its historical aspects and for its role as an arboretum. It is Watertown’s largest contiguous open space and extends into Cambridge to the east, adjacent to the Cambridge City Cemetery and Sand Banks Cemetery. It was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 2003 for its pioneering role in 19th-century cemetery development. ==History== The land that became Mount Auburn Cemetery was originally named Stone's Farm, though locals referred to it as "Sweet Auburn" after the 1770 poem "The Deserted Village" by Oliver Goldsmith.〔 Mount Auburn Cemetery was inspired by Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and was itself an inspiration to cemetery designers, most notably at Abney Park in London. Mount Auburn Cemetery was designed largely by Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn with assistance from Jacob Bigelow and Alexander Wadsworth. Bigelow came up with the idea for Mount Auburn as early as 1825, though a site was not acquired until five years later.〔 Bigelow, a medical doctor, was concerned about the unhealthiness of burials under churches as well as the possibility of running out of space.〔 With help from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Mount Auburn Cemetery was founded on of land authorized by the Massachusetts Legislature for use as a garden or rural cemetery.〔 The original land cost $6,000; it later extended to . The main gate was built in the Egyptian Revival style and cost $10,000 ($249,818.60 in 2015).〔 The first president of the Mount Auburn Association, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, dedicated the cemetery in 1831.〔 Story's dedication address, delivered on September 24, 1831,〔Joseph Story, (An Address Delivered on the Dedication of the Cemetery at Mount Auburn, September 24, 1831 (Boston, J.T. & Edward Buckingham 1831) )〕 set the model for many more addresses in the following three decades.〔Alfred L. Brophy, ("These Great and Beautiful Republics of the Dead": Public Constitutionalism and the Antebellum Cemetery )〕 Garry Wills focuses on it as an important precursor to President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.〔Garry Wills, ''Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America''〕 The cemetery is credited as the beginning of the American public parks and gardens movement. It set the style for other suburban American cemeteries such as Laurel Hill Cemetery (Philadelphia, 1836), Mt. Hope Cemetery, America's first municipal rural cemetery (Bangor, Maine, 1838), Green-Wood Cemetery (Brooklyn, 1838), The Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland 1838, Allegheny Cemetery (Pittsburgh, 1844), Albany Rural Cemetery (Menands, New York, 1844), Spring Grove Cemetery (Cincinnati, 1844), and Forest Hills Cemetery (Jamaica Plain, 1848) as well as Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse, New York. It can be considered the link between Capability Brown's English landscape gardens and Frederick Law Olmsted's Central Park in New York (1850s). Mount Auburn was established at a time when Americans had a sentimental interest in rural cemeteries.〔 It is still well known for its tranquil atmosphere and accepting attitude toward death. Many of the more traditional monuments feature poppy flowers, symbols of blissful sleep. In the late 1830s, its first unofficial guide, ''Picturesque Pocket Companion and Visitor's Guide Through Mt. Auburn'', was published and featured descriptions of some of the more interesting monuments as well as a collection of prose and poetry about death by writers including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Willis Gaylord Clark.〔 Because of the number of visitors, the cemetery's developers carefully regulated the grounds: They had a policy to remove "offensive and improper" monuments and only "proprietors" (i.e., plot owners) could have vehicles on the grounds and were allowed within the gates on Sundays and holidays.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mount Auburn Cemetery」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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