Cemetery Chapel, San Marcos Cemetery
TX 12, San Marcos, TXAmerican Gothic Revival tastes ran the gamut from frilly to stark. San Marcos' Cemetery Chapel is in the latter category, "Carpenter Gothic". The open air plan also recalls the brush arbors that served the first pioneers until they could afford genuine sanctuaries.
The earliest settlers used a plot in the Lindsey addition, a block from where the First Methodist Church now stands, as a cemetery. Mrs. W.W. Moon was the first person buried there, in 1846. The City of San Marcos Cemetery Association in 1876 bought a plot further from the town where a few people, including six slaves, had already been interred. This became the present cemetery.
Before the chapel was built, mourners had to make a long carriage journey into town for the service and then another out to the cemetery. This was too time consuming for those who wanted to be back on the farm by dark. Also, cemetery chapels were "in vogue" across the southwest where mild weather made them possible. So architect Edward Northcraft and builder Ralph Smith were contracted in 1886 to erect a chapel on a cross plan. They would have five months to complete the $450 structure. Their work was well received. The chapel has hosted the last rites of the town's most respected citizens and veterans of the Civil, Spanish-American, and World Wars.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.