Oak Hill Cemetery is a historic cemetery located in the
Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was founded in 1848 and completed in 1853, and is a prime example of a
rural cemetery
A rural cemetery or garden cemetery is a style of cemetery that became popular in the United States and Europe in the mid-nineteenth century due to the overcrowding and health concerns of urban cemeteries. They were typically built one to five ...
. Many famous politicians, business people, military people, diplomats, and philanthropists are buried at Oak Hill, and the cemetery has a number of
Victorian
Victorian or Victorians may refer to:
19th century
* Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign
** Victorian architecture
** Victorian house
** Victorian decorative arts
** Victorian fashion
** Victorian literature ...
-style memorials and monuments. Oak Hill has two structures which are listed on the
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 ...
: the
Oak Hill Cemetery Chapel and the
Van Ness Mausoleum
The Van Ness Mausoleum was designed by George Hadfield. It is said to be a copy of the Temple of Vesta in Rome.
History
The mausoleum was constructed in 1824 for the daughter, Ann Elbertina Middleton, and granddaughter, Marcia Helen Middleton, ...
.
The cemetery's interment of
"Willie" Lincoln, deceased son of president
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
, was the inspiration for the
Man Booker Prize
The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...
-winning novel ''
Lincoln in the Bardo
''Lincoln in the Bardo'' is a 2017 experimental novel by American writer George Saunders. It is Saunders's first full-length novel and was the ''New York Times'' hardcover fiction bestseller for the week of March 5, 2017.
The novel takes place d ...
'' by
George Saunders
George Saunders (born December 2, 1958) is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in ''The New Yorker'', '' Harper's'', ''McSweeney's'', and '' GQ''. He also contributed a w ...
.
History
Oak Hill began in 1848 as part of the rural cemetery movement, directly inspired by the success of
Mount Auburn Cemetery
Mount Auburn Cemetery is the first rural cemetery, rural, or garden, cemetery in the United States, located on the line between Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts, Watertown in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middl ...
near
Boston, Massachusetts, when
William Wilson Corcoran
William Wilson Corcoran (December 27, 1798 – February 24, 1888) was an American banker, philanthropist, and art collector. He founded the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Early life
Corcoran was born on December 27, 1798, in Georgetown in the Di ...
(also founder of the
Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University.
Overview
The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...
) purchased of land. He then organized the Cemetery Company to oversee Oak Hill; it was incorporated by act of Congress on March 3, 1849.
Oak Hill's chapel was built in 1849 by noted architect
James Renwick, who also designed the
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
's Castle on
Washington Mall
Washington Mall was an enclosed shopping mall located in South Strabane Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania, just outside the city of Washington, formerly managed by J J Gumberg Co. and now by Oxford Development Company. It is owned by ...
and
St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. His one-story rectangular chapel measures 23 by 41 feet (7×12 m) and sits on the cemetery's highest ridge. It is built of blue gneiss, in
Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
style, with exterior trim in the same red Seneca sandstone used for the Castle.
By 1851, landscape designer Captain George F. de la Roche finished laying out the winding paths and terraces descending into
Rock Creek Rock Creek or Rockcreek may refer to:
Streams
United States
* Rock Creek (California)
* Rock Creek (Fountain Creek tributary), Colorado
* Rock Creek (Idaho)
* Rock Creek (Kankakee River tributary), Illinois
* Rock Creek (Wapsipinicon River tribut ...
valley. When initial construction was completed in 1853, Corcoran had spent over $55,000 on the cemetery's landscaping and architecture.
On October 4, 2022, historic preservationist Paul K. Williams became the cemetery's 14th Superintendent in residence and COO of the Oak Hill Cemetery Historic Cemetery Foundation.
Notable interments
*
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson (pronounced ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman ...
*
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright (born Marie Jana Korbelová; May 15, 1937 – March 23, 2022) was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 64th United States secretary of state from 1997 to 2001. A member of the Democratic ...
*
Gamaliel Bailey
Gamaliel Bailey (December 3, 1807June 5, 1859) was an American physician who left that career to become an abolitionist journalist, editor, and publisher, working primarily in Cincinnati, and Washington, D.C. Anti-abolitionist mobs attacked his o ...
*
Margaret Lucy Shands Bailey
Margaret L. Bailey (, Shands; December 12, 1812 – 1888) was an American anti-slavery writer, poet, lyricist, as well as newspaper editor and publisher. She served as editor of ''The Youth's Monthly Visitor'', a children's magazine, and as the pu ...
*
James G. Blaine
James Gillespie Blaine (January 31, 1830January 27, 1893) was an American statesman and Republican politician who represented Maine in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1863 to 1876, serving as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representative ...
(formerly interred)
*
Ben Bradlee
Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee (, 1921 – , 2014) was an American journalist who served as managing editor, then as executive editor of ''The Washington Post'', from 1965 to 1991. He became a public figure when the ''Post'' joined ''The New Y ...
*
William P. Burch
*
Adolf Cluss
Adolf Ludwig Cluss (July 14, 1825 – July 24, 1905) also known as Adolph Cluss was a German-born American immigrant who became one of the most important, influential and prolific architects in Washington, D.C., in the late 19th century, respons ...
*
Lorenzo Dow
Lorenzo Dow (October 16, 1777February 2, 1834) was an eccentric itinerant American evangelist, said to have preached to more people than any other preacher of his era. He became an important figure and a popular writer. His autobiography at one ti ...
*
Peggy Eaton
Margaret O'Neill (or O'Neale) Timberlake Eaton (December 3, 1799 – November 8, 1879), was the wife of John Henry Eaton, a United States senator from Tennessee and United States Secretary of War, and a confidant of Andrew Jackson. Their marr ...
*
Katherine Graham
*
Herman Hollerith
Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine
The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed t ...
*
Willie Lincoln
William Wallace "Willie" Lincoln (December 21, 1850 – February 20, 1862) was the third son of President Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. He was named after Mary's brother-in-law, Dr. William Smith Wallace. He died of typhoid fever at the White H ...
(formerly interred)
*
Edwin P. Parker Jr.
Major General Edwin Pearson Parker Jr. (July 27, 1891 – June 7, 1983) was a senior officer in the United States Army. Parker commanded the 78th Infantry Division during the Ardennes-Alsace, Rhineland, and Central Europe, campaigns of World War ...
*
Paul J. Pelz
Paul Johannes Pelz (18 November 1841 – 30 March 1918) was a German-American architect, best known as the main architect of the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
Life and career
Paul J. Pelz was born November 18, 1841, in Seitendorf (now ...
*
Charles Anthony Schott
Charles Anthony Schott (August 7, 1826 – July 31, 1901) was a German-American scientist.
Biography
Charles Anthony Schott was born at Mannheim, Baden, Germany on August 7, 1826. In 1847 he was graduated from the Polytechnic School, at Karlsruh ...
*
E. D. E. N. Southworth
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth (December 26, 1819June 30, 1899) was an American writer of more than 60 novels in the latter part of the 19th century. She was the most popular American novelist of her day.
*
Edwin M. Stanton
Edwin McMasters Stanton (December 19, 1814December 24, 1869) was an American lawyer and politician who served as U.S. Secretary of War under the Lincoln Administration during most of the American Civil War. Stanton's management helped organize t ...
In popular culture
* The cemetery is the setting of the 2017
George Saunders
George Saunders (born December 2, 1958) is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in ''The New Yorker'', '' Harper's'', ''McSweeney's'', and '' GQ''. He also contributed a w ...
novel
Lincoln in the Bardo
''Lincoln in the Bardo'' is a 2017 experimental novel by American writer George Saunders. It is Saunders's first full-length novel and was the ''New York Times'' hardcover fiction bestseller for the week of March 5, 2017.
The novel takes place d ...
.
* The cemetery was a part of the plot in the
David Baldacci
David Baldacci (born August 5, 1960) is an American novelist. An attorney by education, Baldacci writes mainly suspense novels and legal thrillers.
Biography
Early life and education
David Baldacci was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. H ...
novel
''The Camel Club''.
* A tomb in the cemetery is described as the site of a
dead drop
A dead drop or dead letter box is a method of espionage tradecraft used to pass items or information between two individuals (e.g., a case officer and an agent, or two agents) using a secret location. By avoiding direct meetings, individuals ca ...
in the
John Le Carre
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Second ...
novel
The Perfect Spy.
*The cemetery was a part of the plot in the
Brad Meltzer
Brad Meltzer (born April 1, 1970) is an Americans, American novelist, non-fiction writer, TV show creator, and comic book author. His novels touch on the political thriller, legal thriller and conspiracy fiction genres, while he has also writte ...
novel ''
The Inner Circle''
Photo gallery
File:Edwin M Stanton grave - Reno Hill section - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg,
File:George Hughes Revercomb grave - Corcoran section - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg,
File:Grave of Dean Acheson - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg,
File:Hollerith Herman grave.jpg, Memorial stone for Herman Hollerith
Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine
The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed t ...
, mathematician and inventor
File:Jesse Lee Reno grave - Reno Hill section - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg,
File:Joseph Willard tomb - Amphitheater section - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg,
File:Looking SE through rock bridge - Amphitheater section - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg,
File:Maxwell VanZandt Woodhull - Rock Creek section - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg,
File:Nathan Loughborough grave - Rock Creek section - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg,
File:Oak Hill Cemetery (2896506880).jpg,
File:Oak Hill Cemetery (2896529580).jpg,
File:Oak Hill Cemetery (2896539950).jpg,
File:Gravestone of john howard payne oak hill cemetery.JPG,
File:Unknown Revolutionary War soldier marker - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg,
File:William McKee Dunn grave - Joyce section - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg,
File:William Pinkney - fifth Episcopal Bishop of MD - Oak Hill Cemetery - 2013-09-04.jpg,
File:Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington, D.C, from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views.jpg,
References
Bibliography
*
External links
National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary*
{{Authority control
1848 establishments in Washington, D.C.
Botanical gardens in Washington, D.C.
Cemeteries in Washington, D.C.
Georgetown (Washington, D.C.)
*
Rural cemeteries