Burial Ground at Old "Bonnie Brae"

The Archdiocese of Baltimore established New Cathedral Cemetery on forty acres of the old "Bonnie Brae" country estate in 1869. The church spent seventeen years moving bodies and headstones from the 1816 Cathedral Cemetery at Riggs and Fremont Avenues and, in 1936, moved hundreds more from St. Patrick’s Cemetery on Orleans Street.

Among the scores of well known locals buried on the grounds are Clarence H. 'Du' Burns, Baltimore's first black Mayor, Sister. Mary Antonio of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, and four former Orioles players (all in the Baseball Hall of Fame).

4300 Old Frederick Road, Baltimore, MD 21229

A "finely located place for the dead" on Edmondson Avenue

“This is a new and finely located ‘place for the dead,’” The Iris reported in 1846. Early plans included a chapel and a residence for a cemetery superintendent. Lots were priced at the “extremely moderate” cost of $5 for an 8’ by 10’ area.

Just three years later, in December 1849, the Maryland Assembly passed "An Act to Establish the Western Cemetery" allowing the Trustees of the Fayette Street Methodist Episcopal Church to open a "public" or nondenominational 55-acre cemetery west of the city in Baltimore County. Like Green Mount Cemetery, Western tried to create a park-like open space for visitors to stroll as well as greive.

Early burials at the cemetery included both city and county residents from a range of backgrounds. In 1858, the Sun reported on the burial of William Fairbank, a Baltimore County resident who worked as a conductor on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad between 1830 and 1850 and as the keeper of the bridge on the Baltimore and Washington Turnpike. In the fall of 1861, a number of Union soldiers stationed in Baltimore, likely including soldiers recovering from injuries taken at the Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas) in July 1861, died from typhoid fever and were interred at the Western Cemetery.

In 1915, Baltimore City acquired a portion of the cemetery property for the construction of Ellicott Driveway. This required the closure of the “the railroad crossing at the Cemetery lane entrance to Western Cemetery” and an agreement between Baltimore City, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and the officers of the cemetery company.

The cemetery continued to serve as a popular place of internment for military veterans and police officers during the 20^th century. In July 1926, the Sun reported on a huge crowd of “several thousand persons” who attended the burial of Patrolman Webster E. Schumann, noting, “A full firing squad of eight men from Camp Meade fired three volleys into the air and a bugler sounded ‘taps’ as the services for the war veteran ended.”

After World War II, the cemetery, along with nearby Leakin Park, took center stage in West Baltimore’s highway fights. Relatives of the interred joined forces with environmental activists and local residents in opposing the extension of a proposed highway through Leakin Park and into the city. Fortunately, Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro responded to this effort and, in 1969, encouraged state highway designers to consider a new route for the Rosemont section of the East-West Expressway to bypass Western Cemetery.

3001 Edmondson Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21223

The cemetery is open to the public during daylight hours.

Officially dedicated on July 13, 1839 and born out of the garden cemetery movement, Green Mount Cemetery is one of the first garden cemeteries created in the United States. After seeing the beautiful Mount Auburn Cemetery in Connecticut in 1834, Samuel Walker, a tobacco merchant, led a campaign to establish a similar site in Baltimore. During a time in which overcrowded church cemeteries created health risks in urban areas, Walker's successfully garnered support and commissioned plans from architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, II to establish the Green Mount Cemetery on sixty acres of the late merchant Robert Oliver's estate.

During his life, Walker spared no expense tailoring the beauty of the estate, and left the grounds highly ornamented upon his death. Latrobe's design incorporated all the beautiful features associated with garden cemeteries including dells, majestic trees, and numerous monuments and statues. Amongst the towering hardwood trees in the cemetery is a rare, small-flowered red rose known as the Green Mount Red. Created by Green Mount Cemetery's first gardener, James Pentland, the Green Mount Red can only be found here at Green Mount and on George F. Harison's grave at Trinity Church Cemetery in New York.

Walking into Green Mount Cemetery, the first thing visitors notice is the imposing Entrance Gateway designed by Robert Cary Long, Jr. An example of the Gothic style, the gateway features two towers reaching forty feet and beautiful stained glass windows. The haunting chapel, designed by John Rudolph Niernsee and James Crawford Neilson, is made of Connecticut sandstone and features flying buttresses and an impressive 102 foot spire.

Green Mount Cemetery is famously known as the resting place of a large number of prominent historical figures ranging from John Wilkes Booth, to local philanthropists Johns Hopkins and Enoch Pratt. The graves and sculptures that scatter the cemetery make Green Mount Cemetery a treasury of nineteenth century art.

William Henry Rinehart, considered the last important American sculptor to work in the classical style, had many commissions at Green Mount, and is credited with some of the cemeteries most awe-inspiring pieces. Commissioned by Henry Walters for the grave of his wife, Ellen Walters, Rinehart's "Love Reconciled as Death" depicts a classical Grecian woman cast in bronze strewing flowers. Poetically resting on Rinehart's own grave is his bronze statue of Endymion: the beautiful young shepherd boy who Zeus granted both eternal youth and eternal sleep.

Perhaps the most striking sculpture in the Green Mount Cemetery is the Riggs Memorial, created by Hans Schuler. Schuler was the first American sculptor to win the Salon Gold Medal in Paris, and his mastery shows in the Riggs Monument depicting a grieving woman slouched over a loved one's grave, holding a wreath in one hand and a drooping flower in the other.

1501 Greenmount Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21202