The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-11-19

yard impression. As for any landscape have none. The stone chills it into life lessness.
 The tendency today is to discourage monuments in graveyards. It is the monument more than anything else, that has made the cemetery undesirable in neighborhood. If every burying ground in Chicago were today stripped of its ghostly white shafts and made to con- form to the physical lines of a park, more than half of a neighborhoods objections would be wiped out"
 At the Pittsburg convention 1t was brought out that in many cemeteries in the United States the mound effect in burial lots has been dispensed with. It has been found that the mound inter- feres with keeping the lawns smoothly cut, and in doing away with this feature the dropping of the tombstone idea has been made easier. In some of the most pretentious of graveyards this level ef- feet in landscape gardening has given rise to something new in tombstones. A foot wide and six inches thick is made to do duty as birth and death record. The lettering is cut into the polished sur face. and the stone laid flat into bed of concrete. It is set so low that it does not interfere with the free running of lawn mower while its effect on the lawn
 is not noticeable. Even the corner stones are sunk to the grass level. Graceland cemetery in Chicago has done a great deal in furtherance of the park effect in burying grounds. In vir- | tually all of the newer portions Of the cemetery the tombstone has been ruled against, the terms under which lots are sold specifying the heights of stones. The Maplewood section of the cemetery | is one of the newest additions. and in | this plat 1t Is expressly stipulated that no curbing shall be laid and that no | headstones shall rise more than one inch above the grass line. There are no grav- eled walks in this portion, of the ceme- tery, all being sodded and presenting a | grassy effect once unknown.
 | Yet this radical departure from the conventional has been well received, and | plained that five times as many lots were sold this year as were sold last | year in the same plat.
 In this cemetery this evolution toward park effects has been gradual. In the Bellevue section of the cemetery several years ago the limit for headstones was i set at eight inches above the grass. In
 the Fairlawn section the limit later was | change to almost the ground level shows the trend of cemetery methods.
 | Already in this cemetery there had
 been evidences that to get away from
 sirable. In Ridgeland section, where lots are owned by some Of the most promi-
 nent families in Chicago. there are no
 lots is Bryan Lathrops transplante( | elm, standing for the memory of his
 parents, and next to 1t is the Henry D. | Field lot, with only granite powder and the name Field cut into it.
 Certainly there are indications that l the park idea in cemeteries is coming,
 said Superintendent o. C. Simons ol | Graceland Cemetery. Tt Is not to be ex- | pected that, the monuments now standing
 are to be leveled, but 1t means a good
 deal for the future of cemetery parks | that the public Is reconciled to buying | lots in which headstones may not rise | above the grass.
 The economic side of cemetery with | out monuments is considerable. mil lion dollars will not go far in granite | shafts and marble pillars, while in sim ply fiat blocks of granite this cost for headstones would be a minimum. Now
 adays the idea of perpetual caretaking | goes with the sale of most cemetery | lots, and with the flat lawn surfaces and
 fiat stones over which a lawn-mower
 will run easily, this cost of caretaking,
 too, should be cut almost in half.
 That while the cemetery is taking on | the aspects of a park, the park may aS-
 sume some of the characteristics of the | cemetery Is scarcely more than possible.
 In Chicago the north end of Lincoln l Park approaches this most nearly of any | of them. But even there this sculpture
 is so different to the tombstone style that | that the chilliness of stone and bronze | is lost in great measure.
 Of late, too, park statuary in Chicago
 has not been in repute as 1t once was | Looking a gift statue in the mouth has
 come to be good form in this city and | the fate of two or three Christopher
 Columbuses which have graWtated tc
 garbage dumps in recent years has had | the effect of bearing the statue market | As 1t Is, there are several statues in Chi
 cago parks toward which the public feels | that decent interment would be the best
 mark of appreciation. and so long as | these are left above ground their effect promises to be against any radical in- crease in the statue colonies in the va | riOuS parks