Rock Creek Cemetery — also Rock Creek Church Yard and Cemetery — is an 86-acre (350,000 m2) cemetery with a natural rolling landscape located at Rock Creek Church Road, NW, and Webster Street, NW, off Hawaii Avenue, NE in Washington, D.C.'s Michigan Park neighborhood, near Washington's Petworth neighborhood. It is across the street from the historic Soldiers' Home and the Soldiers' Home Cemetery. It is also home to the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington.
It was first established in 1719 as a churchyard within the glebe of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Rock Creek Parish. The Vestry later decided to expand the burial ground as a public cemetery to serve the city of Washington and this was established through an Act of Congress in 1840.
The expanded Cemetery was landscaped in the rural garden style, to function as both cemetery and public park. It is a ministry of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Rock Creek Parish with sections for St. John's Russian Orthodox Church and St. Nicholas Latvian Church.
Rock Creek Cemetery's park-like setting has many notable mausoleums and tombstones. The best known is Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White's Adams Memorial, a contemplative androgynous bronze sculpture seated before a block of granite. It marks the graves of Marian Hooper “Clover" Adams and her husband, Henry Adams, and is sometimes mistakenly referred to as Grief.[2][3] Saint-Gaudens called it The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding.
Other notable memorials include the Frederick Keep Monument, the Heurich Mausoleum, the Hitt Monument, the Hardon Monument, the Kauffman Monument, known as The Seven Ages of Memory, the Sherwood Mausoleum Door, and the Thompson-Harding Monument.[4]
On August 12, 1977, Rock Creek Cemetery and the adjacent church grounds were added to the National Register of Historic Places as Rock Creek Church Yard and Cemetery.
Notable interments [edit]
- Cleveland Abbe (1838–1916), prominent American meteorologist (section M)
- John James Abert (1788–1863), Chief of the Corps of Topographical Engineers
- Henry Adams (1838–1918), American writer, descendant of two U.S. Presidents. Grave is marked by the Adams Memorial (section E)
- Clover Hooper Adams (1843–1885), Washington hostess and accomplished amateur photographer, wife of Henry Adams. Grave is marked by the Adams Memorial (section E)
- Alice Warfield Allen (1869–1929), mother of the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson (section G)
- Doug Allison (1846–1916), American baseball player
- Frank Crawford Armstrong (1835–1909), Confederate general
- James B. Aswell (1869–1931), American educator and member of the House of Representatives from 1913 to 1931
Gravesite of Emile Berliner and family members
- Abraham Baldwin (1754–1807), Yale graduate, US Senator, attorney, signer of the U.S. Constitution, first president of the University of Georgia (section E)
- Melville Bell (1819–1905), Scottish teacher and inventor, father of Alexander Graham Bell, Hubbard Bell Grossman Pillot Memorial (section A)
- Emile Berliner (1851–1929), German-born American inventor of the gramophone (section M)
- Montgomery Blair (1813–1883), Lincoln's Postmaster General (section A)
- Robert C. Buchanan (1811–1878), American military general during the American Civil War and the Mexican War
- Catherine Cate Coblentz (1897–1951), writer and wife of William Coblentz (section O)
- William Coblentz (1873–1962), American physicist, notable for pioneer contributions to infrared radiometry and spectroscopy (section O)
- Charles S. Fairfax (1829–1869), Virginia born California politician who was entitled to the British title 10th Lord Fairfax of Cameron
- Stephen Johnson Field (1816–1899), American associate justice of Supreme Court (section A)
- Peter Force (1790–1868), American politician, American lieutenant in the American Revolutionary War and in the War of 1812, newspaper editor, archivist, and historian who served as the 12th mayor of Washington, D.C., and whose library of historical documents became the Library of Congress's first major Americana collection (section B)
- Israel Moore Foster (1873–1950), American Republican Representative in Congress
- William H. French (1815–1881), American military major general during the American Civil War and the Mexican War (section B)
- John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911), American Supreme Court associate justice, known as the "Great Dissenter;" he wrote the lone dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson (section R-11)
- Patricia Roberts Harris (1924–1985), Ambassador, first African American female to serve in a Presidential Cabinet (section 20).
- George L. Harrison (1887–1958), American banker, insurance executive and political advisor during The Second World War.
- Frank Hatton (1846–1894), U.S. Postmaster General and editor of the Washington Post. (section B)
- Christian Heurich (1842–1945), German-born American founder of Heurich Brewery (1871–1954).
- Samuel Billingsley Hill (1875–1958), U.S. Representative from Washington and member of the United States Board of Tax Appeals (now the United States Tax Court).
- William Henry Holmes (1846–1933), known for scientific illustration of the American West; role in controversy over the antiquity of man in the Americas; leadership at the Smithsonian Institution. (section M)
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Gravesite of Oliver Hudson Kelley
- Jane Lawton (1944–2007), Maryland Democratic politician, member of the Maryland House of Delegates
- Blair Lee, III (1916–1985), American Democratic politician
- George E. Lemon (?–1896), Patent lawyer and founder the journal National Tribune.
- Walter Lenox (1817–1874), Mayor of Washington from 1850 to 1852
- John Lenthall (1807-1882), American naval architect and shipbuilder, Chief Constructor of the Navy from 1849 to 1853 and chief of the United States Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair from 1853 to 1871
- Fulton Lewis (1903–1966), American radio and television broadcaster
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884–1980), Republican Party icon, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt (section F)
- Paulina Longworth Sturm (1925–1957), daughter of Alice Roosevelt and Nicholas Longworth, granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt
- Anthony Francis Lucas (1855–1921), Croatian-born mechanical engineer
Gravesite of George Washington Riggs
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Gravesite of Upton Sinclair
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Gravesite of Charles Doolottle Walcott
- Charles Doolittle Walcott (1850–1927), Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (section L)
- Paul Warnke (1920–2001), American Diplomat, Assistant Secretary of State from 1966–1969; SALT Negotiator and Director of the Arms Control and disarmament Agency under President Clinton
- Sumner Welles (1892–1961), American diplomat, Under Secretary of State from 1937 to 1943 (section 8)
- Burton K. Wheeler (1882–1975), American Democratic politician and U.S. Senator (section 30)
- James Alexander Williamson (1829–1902), Union Army general during the American Civil War, Medal of Honor recipient
- Richard L. Wilson (1905–1981), American journalist
- William Windom (1827–1891), US Congressman, Senator, Secretary of the Treasury (under Garfield & Harrison) (section B)
- Otis Wingo (1877–1930), U.S. representative from Arkansas's 4th congressional district, 1913-1930
- Helen Yakobson, (1913-2002) Academic and Professor at George Washington University.
Sculptors with work in the cemetery [edit]
- Gutzon Borglum, Rabboni-Ffoulke Memorial, 1909
- James Earle Fraser, Frederick Keep Monument, 1920
- Laura Gardin Fraser, Hitt Memorial, 1931
- William Ordway Partridge, Kauffmann Memorial, aka Seven Ages or Memory, 1897
- Brenda Putnam, Simon Memorial, 1917
- Vinnie Ream, Edwin B. Hay Monument, 1906
- Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Adams Memorial, 1890
- Mary Washburn, Waite Memorial, 1908
- Adolph Alexander Weinman, Spencer Memorial, after 1919
- Numerous fine works by unknown sculptors [6][7][8][9]
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2009-03-13.
- ^ "Augustus Saint-Gaudens". Retrieved 2008=-6-29.
- ^ "1886 The Adams Memorial". Retrieved 2008=-6-29.
- ^ "Cultural Tourism DC". CulturalTourismDC.org. Archived from the original on 2007-10-09. Retrieved 2008-01-12.
- ^ Thetus W. Sims at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- ^ Goode, James M. The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C. 1974 pp. 343-352
- ^ http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=1264J12899JU4.893&source=~!siartinventories&profile=ariall&page=1&group=0&term=Rock+Creek+Cemetery,+Washington,+District+of+Columbia&index=&uindex=&aspect=Browse&menu=search&ri=5&ts=1264013183323&deduping=
- ^ Kvaran, Einar E. Cemetery Sculpture in America, unpublished manuscript
- ^ Marion, John Francis, Famous and Curious Cemeteries, Crown Publishers Inc., New York, 1977 pp. 78-80
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