The Cementerio Católico San Vicente de Paul ( en, Saint Vincent de Paul Catholic Cemetery) is a cemetery in the city of

Ponce, Puerto Rico Ponce (, , , ) is both a city and a municipality on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government. Ponce, Puerto Rico's most populated city outside the San Juan metropolitan area, was founded on 12 August 1 ...

. It is the only cemetery in Puerto Rico with a group of niches built forming a basement, in which the burials occurred beneath ground level, thus giving the effect of a

catacomb Catacombs are man-made subterranean passageways for religious practice. Any chamber used as a burial place is a catacomb, although the word is most commonly associated with the Roman Empire. Etymology and history The first place to be referred ...

.. The cemetery is named after

Vincent de Paul Vincent de Paul, CM (24 April 1581 – 27 September 1660), commonly known as Saint Vincent de Paul, was a Occitan French Catholic priest who dedicated himself to serving the poor. In 1622 Vincent was appointed a chaplain to the galleys. Afte ...

(24 April 1581 – 27 September 1660), the French

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

priest who dedicated his life to serving the poor. It was listed on the U.S.

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1988..

Location

Cementerio Catolico San Vicente de Paul is located off Puerto Rico Route

PR-123 Puerto Rico Highway 123 (PR-123) is a secondary highway that connects the city Arecibo to the city of Ponce. It runs through the towns of Utuado and Adjuntas, before reaching Ponce. A parallel road is being built, PR-10, that is expected to tak ...

in barrio

Magueyes Urbano Magueyes Urbano is one of the 31 barrios in the municipality of Ponce, Puerto Rico. Along with Canas Urbano, Machuelo Abajo, Portugués Urbano, and San Antón, Magueyes Urbano is one of the municipality's five originally rural barrios that a ...

. PR-123 used to be signed

PR-10 Puerto Rico Highway 10 (PR-10) is a major highway in Puerto Rico. The primary state road connects the city of Ponce in the south coast to Arecibo in the north; it is also the shortest route between the two cities. Construction on the modern PR- ...

, and this last route numbering might still be seen in some older documents about this cemetery. The cemetery is located on a site with a steep terrain

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gradi ...

History

During the turn of the 20th century the priests of San Vicente de Paul built a private Catholic cemetery in Ponce. The site was blessed on 15 August 1901 and opened to the public. The wealthy families of the area bought plots for $60 and began to develop the cemetery with magnificent

grave A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as grave ...

s and

mausoleum A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A mausoleum without the person's remains is called a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be consid ...

s. Today (February 2016), the cemetery is "squeezed" between sprawling urban residential developments that now fully surround it.

Background and significance

Ponce, located in the south coast of Puerto Rico, was one of the wealthiest settlements of the island at the turn of the 20th century. Given the status of area cemeteries at the time, the Catholic cemetery offered an exclusive precinct in which the rich could bury their dead. For this reason almost all the tombs are magnificent in their design, ornamentation, and construction. Some of the best examples of funerary architecture in Puerto Rico of the early 20th century period can be seen in this cemetery. Marble sculptures from

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

and other parts of Europe adorn many of the tombs. Most tombs are covered with Ponce's ubiquitous stylish pink marble as well. The larger mausolea, which belong to the wealthiest families of southern Puerto Rico, are magnificent examples of monumental funerary architecture of the period. Some of the best examples are the mausoleums of the Serralles, Mercado, Toro, and Valdivieso families. The cemetery is unique among others in Puerto Rico: "A unique feature of the cemetery is a group of niches that were built forming a basement, in which the burials occurred beneath ground level, thus giving the effect of a

Design

The cemetery has a simple entrance gate. It consists of an iron gate flanked by two masonry

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s. Although

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, this cemetery never had a

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common ty ...

by the entrance, or anywhere in the entire precinct. The layout of the cemetery was done following the Spanish tradition of having two main axes forming a cross. The rest of the precinct's layout was done in a square grid fashion. The cemetery follows the contour lines of the steep site it is located on. As a results, some of the approach paths were built as stairs. The main axis culminates with the

pantheon Pantheon may refer to: * Pantheon (religion), a set of gods belonging to a particular religion or tradition, and a temple or sacred building Arts and entertainment Comics *Pantheon (Marvel Comics), a fictional organization * ''Pantheon'' (Lone S ...

for the priests of the Paul order. "In this truly monumental tomb, sculptural forms are integral part of architecture. An interesting feature in this design with double function is the

baldachino A baldachin, or baldaquin (from it, baldacchino), is a canopy of state typically placed over an altar or throne. It had its beginnings as a cloth canopy, but in other cases it is a sturdy, permanent architectural feature, particularly over h ...

, which protects not only the altar, but also the tomb. The

baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

style of this structure can be appreciated in the free use of forms, its large scale and sweeping vistas, and the complexity of its composition." The cemetery has a clear arrangement of larger tombs placed along the major central and secondary axes. The other graves then radiate from there. Many of these larger tombs are mausoleums in different

architectural style An architectural style is a set of characteristics and features that make a building or other structure notable or historically identifiable. It is a sub-class of style in the visual arts generally, and most styles in architecture relate closely ...

s ranging from the

classical revival Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing style ...

to the

art-deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the United ...

Architecture

The style of the cemetery is characterized more by its architectural than by its sculptural features. The quality of the construction is such that "it is considered the posthumous mansion" of those buried there. A considerable number of the mausoleum in this cemetery are made of marble, a testimony to the wealth of those interred there. Of special significance for their architectural value are the Serralles family mausoleum composed of a central chapel raised over a raised plaza, the Mario Mercado Montalvo family mausoleum also over a raised plaza, and the Valdivieso family mausoleum. The Toro family mausoleum also presents a funerary chapel but it is not raised over a plaza nor is the Chardon family mausoleum.

Recent developments

Many of these magnificent tombs have been abandoned after their owners moved corpses of their dead to the

Cementerio Civil de Ponce Cementerio Civil de Ponce (Ponce Civil Cemetery), a.k.a., Cementerio Municipal de Ponce, is a historic burial ground in Ponce, Puerto Rico. It was founded in 1901. It was designed by Manuel V. Domenech. Some of the people buried at Cementerio ...

. This was due in part to the high cost of maintenance and the strict regulations set by the administration. Under no condition would they allow a non-Catholic to be buried there. Some families did not want to be separated by this rule and moved their loved ones to the Cementerio Civil. As a result, some graves have been abandoned and cannot be sold by the cemetery administration since they are private property and have a legal, albeit uninterested, owner.

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cementerio Catolico San Vicente De Paul Roman Catholic cemeteries National Register of Historic Places in Ponce, Puerto Rico 1988 in Puerto Rico 1901 establishments in Puerto Rico Cemeteries in Ponce, Puerto Rico Barrio Magueyes Urbano