Spring Grove Cemetery: a place of peace and beauty
Visitors to Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum will find 733 acres of beautiful gardens, a restful place to remember loved ones lost or to contemplate nature.
This Cincinnati landmark, America's second-largest cemetery, is on the National Register of Historic Places and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2007. In its century and a half, Spring Grove has served as the final resting place for dozens of generals, 10 governors, Revolutionary War veterans, seven Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, a whiskey baron and a cross section of Cincinnati's residents, both high-born and low.
In 1844, inspired by cemeteries with garden settings such as Père Lachaise in Paris and Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass. (the first garden cemetery in the United States), the Cincinnati Horticultural Society decided to create a similar cemetery in the Queen City.
The cemetery's chapel and entrance were designed by James K. Wilson — the same architect who designed the Smithsonian Institution. The first burial came on Sept. 1, 1845. Since then, both the notable and those known only to family and friends have been laid to rest in Spring Grove.
Buried at Spring Grove is a who's who of Cincinnati's most prominent citizens. Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, U.S. Treasury secretary, U.S. senator, Ohio governor and attorney general and anti-slavery activist, was reinterred here. That's only fitting, as Chase helped to found Spring Grove Cemetery. Buried next to Chase lies his daughter Kate, lauded during the Civil War as the "Belle of Washington." Docents sometimes dress as Kate Chase for tours. Legendary basketball coach Skip Prosser was buried here in 2007. Bernard Kroger, founder of the Kroger supermarket chain, was laid here in 1938.
Others buried at Spring Grove include Quaker abolitionist Levi Coffin, nicknamed the "President of the Underground Railroad"; William Proctor and James Gamble, founders of Proctor and Gamble; 40 Civil War generals, the family of President William Howard Taft; yeast magnate Charles Fleischmann and several bishops and politicians. Whiskey baron Edmund Dexter lies in the Gothic Revival mausoleum erected for his family circa 1869. The Dexter mausoleum landed on National Register of Historic Places in its own right in 1980, a year after the cemetery did.
The cemetery's arboretum was part and parcel of the cemetery from the first. By 1850, the cemetery boasted 4,300 distinct ornamental plant varieties and a stock of 11,300 nursery plants! By the 1860s, trees from all over the world grew at Spring Grove, making it the second-most diverse landscape in the United States, second only to New York's Central Park. Today the arboretum has well over 1,200 species — including two patented after being developed in the arboretum's laboratory.
The cemetery offers tours throughout the year, some highlighting the cemetery's history and some, the horticulture. Suggested donations begin at $50 for a group of 10 or more. However, visitors can download the online map and take a self-guided tour. Student tours of 30 or fewer are free.
- by Ivonne Rovira, Cincinnati Reporter for HelloMetro
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