Lake View Cemetery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lake View Cemetery is located on the east side of the City of Cleveland, Ohio, along the East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights borders. It was founded in 1869 and sits on 285 acres (1.2 km²) of land. There are over 101,000 people buried at Lake View, with more than 700 burials each year. There are 70 acres (0.3 km²) remaining for future development. Known locally as "Cleveland's Outdoor Museum," Lake View Cemetery is also home to the Wade Chapel, featuring an interior designed by Louis Tiffany, as well as an 80 million gallon capacity concrete-filled dam.
The cemetery is so named because it is partially located in the "heights" area of Greater Cleveland, with a view of Lake Erie to the north. It was modeled after the great garden cemeteries of Victorian era England and France. The Italian stonemasons brought in to create the Cemetery founded the Cleveland neighborhood of Little Italy just to its northeast.
The James A. Garfield Memorial is the most prominent point of interest at Lake View Cemetery. The ornate interior features a large marble statue, stained glass, bas relief, and various historical relics from Garfield's life and presidency. The monument also serves as a scenic observation deck and picnic area. President and Mrs. Garfield are entombed in the lower level crypt, their coffins placed side by side and visible to cemetery visitors.
The other prominent structure in the cemetery is the Wade Chapel. A small-but-magnificent chapel with Tiffany windows and elaborate Bibically-inspired mosiacs on the walls, the edifice is still used for small weddings and located north and down the hill from the Garfield monument. Behind the chapel is a large pond.
[edit] Notable interments
- Newton D. Baker, U.S. Secretary of War during World War I.
- Francis Payne Bolton, United States House of Representatives.
- Charles F. Brush, inventor and businessman.
- Ray Chapman, baseball player, the Cleveland Indians. Chapman is the only Major League Baseball player to die of injuries sustained on the playing field during a game.
- Charles Chesnutt, author
- Harvey Cushing, pioneer brain surgeon
- James A. Garfield, 20th president of the United States
- Lucretia Garfield, former First Lady of the United States
- Marcus A. Hanna, U.S. Senator and Republican Party boss.
- John Hay, former United States Secretary of State and aide to President Abraham Lincoln. Hay's monument was created by sculptor James Earle Fraser.
- Adella Prentiss Hughes, founder of the Cleveland Orchestra.
- Garrett A. Morgan, inventor of the gas mask and the three-colored traffic light.
- Eliot Ness, detective, investigator and Cleveland safety director best known member of The Untouchables. (More precisely, Ness's ashes were scattered over a pond in the cemetery, he is not actually buried here.)
- John D. Rockefeller, billionaire oil baron and philanthropist.
- Carl B. Stokes, Mayor of Cleveland. United States ambassador. The first African American elected Mayor of a major American city.
- Mantis James Van Sweringen, railroad baron, financier and co-founder of Shaker Heights, Ohio.
- Oris Paxton Van Sweringen, railroad baron, financier and co-founder of Shaker Heights, Ohio.
- Jeptha Wade, founder of Western Union Telegraph company
- Victims of the 1908 Collinwood School Fire
