Albany Rural Cemetery
Cemetery Ave., Menands, NYThe rural cemetery movement in America began in Cambridge,Massachusetts in 1831 with the design of the Mount Auburn Cemetery.It gained its impetus from the happy convergence of three forces: The Romantic movement in literature and art, an increased interest in horticulture and landscaping and the poor, overcrowded conditions of many graveyards within city limits where land was limited. Thus was born the need for both a pastoral setting and a decent burial site: the rural cemetery. Albany Rural Cemetery founded in 1844 is an early example in the movement following Greenwood Cemetery in New York City by only four years, and Mount Auburn in Cambridge, the earliest rural cemetery in America by thirteen years. It is significant as a fine example of this type of cemetery which rapidly became popular throughout the East and Midwest. The Victorian approach to death was a sentimental one.Many of the monuments employ symbols which spoke eloquently to the Victorians: crosses, anchors, draped urns, mourning figures, tree stumps,small Grecian temples,” all were regarded as suitable memorials to the dead. The irregular landscaping, the winding roads, lakes and picturesque vistas all bespoke a sense of sylvan placidity to our Victorian ancestors,marking a fit place for the dead to repose and for the living to wander.The rural cemetery provided people in the nineteenth century with an easily viewable collection of American sculpture: a kind of outdoor sculpture museum.
The Albany Rural Cemetery contains records in stone of the feelings and attitudes about death as expressed by relatives of the deceased and by the craftsmen who created the memorials. These feelings are expressed in the design of the memorials, the materials, size, lettering, and choice of words that are used to remember the dead, as well as by the pastoral setting. The cemetery reflects changing tastes and attitudes about death from 1844, when it was founded, until the present day. It contains a fine collection of nineteenth and twentieth century mortuary art which reflects the changes in decorative art taste during that period.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
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.