page_title: Oakdale Memorial Gardens
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Oakdale Memorial Gardens / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The community or public mausoleum at Oakdale Memorial Gardens in Davenport, Iowa. Designed by Seth J. Temple, built 1931 by the Heister Mausoleum Company. Formerly known as Oakdale Abbey. This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 15000194
context_page_description: Oakdale Memorial Gardens, formerly Oakdale Cemetery, is located in east-central Davenport, Iowa, United States. It contains a section for the burial of pets called the Love of Animals Petland. In 2015, the cemetery was listed as an historic district on the National Register of Historic Places, and as a local landmark on the Davenport Register of Historic Properties. It is also listed on the Network to Freedom, a National Park Service registry for sites associated with the Underground Railroad.
context_section_description: Oakdale was established as a non-profit cemetery by a group of Davenport businessmen as an alternative to the overcrowded Davenport City Cemetery and the for-profit Pine Hill Cemetery. It was incorporated as the Oakdale Cemetery Company May 14, 1856. The cemetery board hired Captain George F. de la Roche, who had finished the design of Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C. five years earlier, to complete the design and platting of the cemetery. It was designed as a rural or garden cemetery, but it transitioned to a landscape-lawn cemetery beginning in the late 19th century.  It covers more than 78 acres (32 ha). The first numbered burial at Oakdale was that of three-month-old Mary Larned Allen on September 15, 1857, though several earlier burials were recorded at a later date, some from as early as October, 1855. Some of the graves in the cemetery had been transferred from the overcrowded City Cemetery in the west end. The cemetery is located across Eastern Avenue from the former Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home, and it contains the graves of the orphans that died at the home.  There are also at least 11 graves of former slaves who escaped to freedom by way of the Underground Railroad, which led to its inclusion on the Network to Freedom.
  Two special receiving vaults were built in the cemetery, although neither exists anymore.  A brick vault was constructed in 1873 for those who died in the winter when the ground was frozen.  A wooden vault was built next to it in 1918 because of the large number of deaths as a result of the Spanish flu epidemic.
caption: Community mausoleum
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