HomeMy Public PortalAboutSweetAuburnMagazine-DavidRusso8 | Sweet Auburn
In 2013, I was contacted by an intern at the
Massachusetts Historical Commission (MHC), who was
following up on an old inventory done on Mount Auburn
in the mid-1970s. It listed the familiar monuments and
buildings that we often read about in these pages and
elsewhere. MHC was interested in learning the locations of
each and whether they still existed.
Fairly quickly, I was able to answer the questions: of the
23 items on the MHC list, 22 were extant (only the Rest
House was demolished), and I recorded the location of
each resource on a Cemetery map. But the request spurred
the idea of a bigger project: we needed complete invento-
ries of these and other resources within the Cemetery that
comprehensively and articulately detailed their significance
and documented it for perpetuity. With MHC’s blessing, this
project was born.
The task of every town’s Historical Commission is to
determine what historic resources exist in its community,
to advocate for those resources, and to make them more
available to the community. The MHC provides inventory
forms that allow users to document landscapes, objects,
and structures in a systematic, organized way. Information
starts with the year of construction, the architect or maker,
materials used, alterations, a design assessment, and a
narrative of its history. But that’s just the beginning. The
forms are very broad and extensive, and require intensive
research to get the information and interpretations just
right. The bonus, though, is that the forms themselves, once
completed, become an important resource that the MHC
and the public can access in perpetuity.
At the start of the project, Meg Winslow, Curator
of Historical Collections at Mount Auburn, always an
insightful and grounding influence, subtly cautioned that
I consider starting with a smaller subset of monuments
(maybe mausoleums?) and then consider moving on to
others. Despite this sound advice, a project that began
with 23 resources soon ballooned to 234. These included
all manner of monuments, mausoleums, landscapes, and
buildings within the Cemetery that collectively capture its
significance. I chose the large and the small, the very old
and the very new, and the first burial and the more recent.
For landscapes, I chose Harvard Hill for its obvious
significance, inventorying every monument on it (44!) and
the lot itself as a landscape. Other significant landscapes
that I included were Consecration Dell, Hazel Dell, Asa
Gray Garden, Auburn Lake, and Halcyon Garden. Each has
a related yet markedly different story to tell. I learned that
the lowest point in the Cemetery is not Consecration Dell
but Auburn Lake at nine feet above sea level. The highest
point is Mount Auburn Hill at 125 feet, the third highest
point in Watertown. Adding Washington Tower’s 62 feet,
those that climb the tower stand a full 187 feet in altitude.
I found some surprises in my research on significant
monuments. I learned that the Sawyer monument on Larch
Cemetery Resources Aid Massachusetts
Historical Commission’s Research
By David Russo, Watertown Historical Commission
2017 Volume 1 | 9
Avenue (a tall Celtic Cross) was the design of Chicago
architect Daniel Hudson Burnham, known as one of the
founders of the American skyscraper; he also designed
the Flatiron Building in New York City. Another surprise
was that the Moulton monument on Vesper Avenue was
designed by Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson. Mount Auburn
also boasts two examples of collaborative work between ar-
chitect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens:
the Nevins monument and the Booth monument.
Other times, mysteries would present themselves. While
looking at invoices for the Longfellow lot, it appeared that
the large sarcophagus that dominates the lot may have
been replaced in 1924 (it was originally installed in 1884).
However, after reaching out to officials at the Longfellow
House in neighboring Cambridge, Meg and I determined
that the replacement was never more than a proposal.
These kinds of puzzles (or snares?) lurk everywhere and
it is important to understand and accurately interpret the
material so as not to introduce errors into the record.
I included some rarer forms such as the stupa monu-
ment on Story Road, the Kepes “fejfa” monument posts
on Oxalis Path, and the Mountfort monument on Willow
Avenue (a hillside tomb composed of varied pyramidal
forms). These distinctive monument forms add important
texture to the overall feeling of the Cemetery.
In addition to the significant monuments, I included a
representative sample of more ordinary monuments. I chose
notable persons such as Julia Ward Howe and Dorothea
Dix (both on Spruce Avenue) to document monuments of
this type. These stones tend to be unadorned and simple,
but also tasteful and elegant in their own way.
Part of my project involved investigating sculptors,
architects, artists, and other makers. The Carew brothers
(Joseph and Thomas) were sculptors well represented
here at Mount Auburn. We knew that they emigrated
from England and were of Irish extraction, but research
revealed that Joseph had a short career in England before
he left. While his training remains obscure, research did
turn up two of Carew’s early English commissions: a
memorial tablet for Sir John Floyd and a sculpture of Dick
Whittington, the Lord Mayor of London, as a boy. Further
research revealed that, in America, Joseph Carew was an
“Associationist,” that is, a member of the famed Brook
Farm (a utopian experiment in communal living) in West
Roxbury, who sought to combine Transcendentalism with
social reform. Associationist connections likely served him
and his sculpting business well.
A few personal insights occurred to me during my
research. For example, I realized that Washington Tower
and the Bigelow Chapel are both “follies”; that is, they are
fanciful embellishments to the landscape that emphasize the
visual and imaginative pleasures of variety and irregularity.
For this project, the research resources at Mount Auburn
Cemetery helped immeasurably. In addition to the paper
records in the Archives that include lot cards, correspondence,
work orders, and trustee’s minutes, the human resources
were immensely valuable. The assistance, motivation, com-
mentary, best efforts, and even connections provided by the
Curator made my work infinitely easier and more fruitful.
Whoever coined the phrase “the whole is greater than the
sum of its parts” must have been thinking about a place like
Mount Auburn. The bits and pieces that I have captured on
the inventory forms together paint a picture of cultural and
historical life. But it’s the layers upon layers of varied mean-
ing when combined that ultimately create the significance of
Mount Auburn.David Russo leads a tour about the topography of Mount Auburn
in 2011.
Massachusetts Historical Commission Record, Form B.