Mount Auburn Cemetery has been designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of the Interior, recognizing it as one of the country's most significant cultural landscapes. Founded in 1831, it was the first large-scale designed landscape open to the public in the United States. Today its beauty, historical associations and horticultural collections are internationally renowned.
Mount Auburn Cemetery is one of the most beautiful and historic landscapes in America. Its impressive collection of over 5,000 trees includes over 700 species and varieties. Thousands of shrubs and herbaceous plants weave through 175 acres of hills, dells, ponds, woodlands and clearings. The landscape reflects different styles ranging from Victorian-era plantings to contemporary gardens, from natural woodlands to formal ornamental gardens, and from sweeping vistas through majestic trees to small enclosed spaces. The Cemetery is widely known for its meticulous maintenance.
Mount Auburn is the final resting place of thousands of distinguished people. Here are a few:
- Nathaniel Bowditch (1773 - 1838), navigator and mathematician
- Phillips Brooks (1835 - 1893), rector of Trinity Church, Boston, Episcopal Bishop
- Charles Bulfinch (1763 - 1844), architect
- Mary Baker Eddy (1821 - 1910), religious leader
- Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983), architect, visionary
- Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840 - 1924), art patron
- Charles Dana Gibson (1867 - 1944), artist
- Asa Gray (1810 - 1888), botanist
- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894), author and poet
- Winslow Homer (1836 - 1910), artist
- Julia Ward Howe (1819 - 1910), reformer and author
- Harriet Jacobs (1813 - 1897), author and abolitionist
- Edwin H. Land (1909 - 1991), inventor, photography pioneer
- Henry Cabot Lodge (1850 - 1924), U.S. Senator
- Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (1902-1985), U.S. Senator
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882), poet
- Amy Lowell (1874 - 1925), poet
- James Russell Lowell (1819 - 1891), poet
- Bernard Malamud (1914 - 1986), novelist
- Josiah Quincy (1772 - 1864), Mayor of Boston
- Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842 - 1924), civil rights leader, journalist
- Charles Sumner (1811 - 1874), abolitionist and U.S. Senator
