National Historic Landmark - Spring Grove Cemetery

Spring Grove Cemetery is nationally significant as the original site and model for the landscape-lawn concept, the dominant trend in American cemetery design from the mid-nineteenth century until well into the 20th century.

Spring Grove was founded in 1845 as the first rural cemetery located west of the eastern seaboard states.

After 1854, Superintendent Adolph Strauch established a new aesthetic standard for cemetery landscapes that was nationally- and internationally admired and replicated.

Instead of a romantic tableau thick with plantings, fencing, and grave markers and mausolea, Strauch reduced the number and variety of monuments, arraying them on an open, grassy lawn lacking lot divisions and enlivened by grouped stands of trees and shrubs.

The cohesive composition resulting from these efforts set the direction of cemetery design for more than a generation.

Courtesy National Park Service National Historical Landmarks