Pittsburgh's Allegheny Cemetery and the Victorian Garden Ofthedead

Pittsburgh's Allegheny Cemetery and l the Victorian Garden of the Dead Book Review Essay by Roy Lubove Allegheny Cemetery: A than aquarter-century, 1830-1860). city of the dead, in essence, was the Landscape in Itbrought forth, among educated prototype for the city of the living. Romantic wealthy urbanites, a visionofthe city Pittsburgh ofthe dead as a model for the city of The American rural cemetery like By Walter Kidney tne living.Allegheny Cemetery thus Allegheny was rooted, in part, in Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh History & exemplified anextraordinary episode changing attitudes toward burial and Foundation, i Landmarks 1990. Pp. 156. in western Before examin- funerary architecture ineighteenth $34.95 culture. Forcword, illustrations, index. j Waher Ki^y^superbly illus- century France, culminating in the I trated volume on Allegheny Ceme- famed Parisian cemetery of Pere [T]hese cemeteries were all the tery^ it is necessary to explore that Lachaise (1804). Inhis monumen- rage, and so deeply was the want broader context ofAnglo-American tal analysis of The Architecture of felt which they supplied, and so aesthetic theory, social values, and Death, Richard Etlinasserts that Pere { beautiml were they inthem- 1 truly landscape design in the 18th and Lachaise "represents a turningpoint selves, that itis not to be won- 19th centuries. in one thousand years of Western dered at ifpeople were slow to The first and most in ntial of history." Itembodied new attitudes perceive that there was a certain the romantic cemeteries was Mount toward death and burial translated— incongruity between a graveyard Auburn, established in1831inCam- into a new form language the and a place of recreation. The bridge,Mass. Itwas emulated, inthe picturesque landscape or garden of truth is, people were glad to get following decade, by Laurel Hill, the dead: "Almost every plot was fresh air,and a sight ofgrass, and Philadelphia, 1836; Green-Wood, surrounded by a railing of wood or trees, and flowers with,now and Brooklyn, 1838; Mount Hope, iron and planted with shrubs and then, apretty piece ofsculpture... Rochester, N.Y.,1838; and Albany fragrant flowers. The tombstones without considering too deeply Rural Cemetery% 1841 , Cemeteries themselves were hung with wreaths whether itmight not be better to based on these models then spread ofleaves and flowers, and wildtrain- have itall without the graves and widelythroughout the East and Mid- ing vines were abundant." 2 It was the funeral -Clar- processions. wcst#1 The mral cemetery was an redolent also with history, the rest- enccC. Cook, ADescription ofthe extraordinary during place France, - • cultural icon ing ofthe illustrious of New YorkCentral Park, 1869 tc u^™™,, k^,^ ™^_ its briefK f hegemony because its\+* pic- and with—a riot of great funerary turesque landscape and moral tute- sculpture a kind ofunearthly com- lage offered the living guidance on petition among the dead toinhabit MOSTPittsburghersdonotrealize that the 300-acre the qualities of a benign environ- the greatest, grandest tomb. Allegheny Cemetery, es- ment and social order, one which The radical transformation of the tablished in the city's Lawrenceville contrasted favorably with the emer- city of the dead could not have oc- neighborhood in 1844, has more gent industrial civilization. Therural curred without a new sensibility in than local significance. Yet the Vic- cemetery served its educated, elite Western culture, one which viewed torian rural or romantic cemetery, sponsors as an experiment inUtopia the traditional cemetery (i.e., the embodied inAllegheny, profoundly building;itenabled them to design a mass communal grave inthe heart of influenced and reflected American totally controlled environment which Paris) as "pernicious to the health attitudes toward lifeas well as death would reflect their aesthetic, reli- and revolting to the senses." More- (although itflourished forlittlemore gious, social,and cultural values. The over, the treatment of the dead as so much refuse was an affront to "the RoyLubove, aprofessor ofsocial welfareand history at the University ofPittsburgh, dignity ofhuman life itself." 3 A is a frequent contributor to Pittsburgh History. His numerous books and articles very new include several in environmental studies: "Social History and the History of concept of burial, compatible Landscape Architecture" {Journal ofSocialHistory,1975); "Landscape, Landscape with a new romantic sensibility, re- Architecture and Community Development inAmerican Life"{Journal ofSocial quired a landscape of consolation History,1990); "H.W.S. Cleveland and the Urban-Rural Continuum inAmerican rather than terror and fear. AnArca- Landscape Architecture" (introduction to Cleveland's Landscape Architecture as dian tableau beyond the city, in- Applied to the Wants ofthe West [Pittsburgh, 1965]). spired byeighteenth-century English 148 Book Reviews aesthetic theory and landscape gar- ington. Its aesthetic theorist was the preposterous because a painting rep- dening, would enable the living to ThirdEarl ofShaftesbury. Thepub- resents afixed,one-dimensional per- commemorate and unite with the licists included Joseph Addison in spective, whilealandscape is a three- dead in a kind of cosmic continuity The Spectator and Alexander Pope in dimensional experience whichvaries mediated bynature. Such commun- The Guardian. They subscribed to over time and space. Rather, the ion would be impossible amidst the the aesthetics of Platonic Idealism great landscape art of Poussin and stenches and disease -generating mi- delineated by Shaftesbury in The his contemporaries suggested a sim- asmas of the traditional graveyard. Moralists (1709). He declared that ilar enhancement ofnature through Itwould be a didactic commun- harmony, proportion and balance art using trees, water, and soil in- ion in which the living would be were the essence ofboth beauty and stead ofpaint. inspired and instructed by the illus- morality (ortruth— ).Beauty and truth The landscapes of Brown and trious dead. The new cemetery would inlandscape the qualities ofhar-— Repton, for the most part, favored function as an academy of moral mony, proportion and balance the beautiful as the most appropriate philosophy, "a call to the glory that demanded a repudiation of the se- expression ofShaftesbury's neo-clas- rewards beneficent virtue and intel- verely geometric and architectonic sical aesthetic ofharmony, balance, lectual prowess." The new Parisian landscapes of the French, Italians and proportion. Thus the English cemetery and its successors in the countryside became a worldoflakes, United States thus testified toa "faith serpentine paths, gently undulating inthe natural harmony ofethics and "Almost every plot terrain, clusters oftrees, shrubs, bush- esthetics, and in the necessary docil- was surrounded es, and flowers. But this concept ofa ity of the public to lessons which by gentle pastoral universe was sharply came to them through the sens- a railing of wood or challenged in the late eighteenth es...." 4 century by exponents of the pictur- These lessons would be commu- iron and planted esque. Rev. WilliamGilpinpublished nicated through the cemetery's ar- with shrubs and his Observations Relative to Pictur- rangement of art and nature to re- esque Beautyin 1789.He singled out flect the attributes of beauty and fragrant flowers. "roughness" as the foundation of picturesqueness. Alongwiththe con- the picturesque aesthetic: "rough- cept of the sublime, the beautiful The tombstones ness of texture, with irregularity of and the picturesque were the con- themselves were outline, withcontrasting lights and trolling aesthetic values in the ex- shades, withvariegated and gradu- traordinary transformation of the hung with wreaths ated colors." ButGilpinrepresented eighteenth century English landscape a dead end in the application of the associated withWilliamKent,Lance- ofleaves and picturesque to landscape because of lot (Capability) Brown and flowers, and wild his identification of the picturesque Humphry Repton: with painterly or pictorial represen- training vines were tation.7 Itwas at Rousham, between 1720 More forceful advocacy came and 1725, and later at Stowe, that abundant." from Sir Uvedale Price, author of Kent created the first two great Essay on the Picturesque \u25a0 (1794) and works of that picturesque land- and Dutch (especially, at the outset, his friend, Richard Payne Knight. scape art which Brown was to the topiary style). Fornearly a centu- Price did not define the picturesque practise with such distinction and ry the English would struggle to as landscapes which emulated pic- on such an enormous scale thathe define the alternative landscape, and tures; rather, he pursued "principles did what no one man had ever specifically the mixofsublime, beau- ofcomposition governing all visual done before or has everdone since , tifuland picturesque which best ex- phenomena, isolated to be sure in transformed the countryside of a pressed the beauty and truth inher- the works of great painters." 8 This land. In both cases he created ent in nature. 6 involved sharp critiques ofthe beau- gardens as landscape paintings, Significant also in shaping the tiful as an exclusive basis for land- using 'classical' buildings, hills, new aesthetic of nature and its ex- scape design, a sustained effort to water, trees and carefully planned pression inlandscape gardening was define the attributes of the pictur- perspectives to make 'natural' the tradition of17th century land- esque which distinguished

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