Perhaps more than any other garden cemetery, SwanPerhaps Point presentsmore than any other garden cemetery, Swan Point presents a comfortable amplitude to any visitor’s experience.a comfortable The land amplitude to any visitor’s experience. The land undulates easily, seemingly spontaneously, and delightfully.undulates easily,The seemingly spontaneously, and delightfully. The variety of specimen trees and shrubbery, both plantedvariety and nativeof specimen trees and shrubbery, both planted and native to the landscape (including a more-than-two-hundred-year-oldto the landscape (including a more-than-two-hundred-year-old Sassafras) makes this a tree-lover’s dream. MonumentsSassafras) enjoy makes this a tree-lover’s dream. Monuments enjoy spacious placement rarely seen in cemeteries of its spaciousage and type.placement The rarely seen in cemeteries of its age and type. The simplicity of most monuments is refreshingly striking,simplicity especially of most in monuments is refreshingly striking, especially in the context of elaborate sculptural compositions typicallythe context found of in elaborate the sculptural compositions typically found in the cemetery’s peers. And the predominance of architecturalcemetery’s monuments peers. And the predominance of architectural monuments sculptures found here. From its inception, Swan Point Cemetery has been Froma place its for inception, both Swan Point Cemetery has been a place for both the living and the dead. It is one of those rare placesthe where living both and havethe dead. It is one of those rare places where both have always comfortably inhabited the same space. Remarkablyalways comfortably few of inhabited the same space. Remarkably few of those remain today. This guide is dedicated to you,those the visitor, remain who, today. This guide is dedicated to you, the visitor, who, in the words of founder Thomas Hartshorn, want toin understand the words howof founder Thomas Hartshorn, want to understand how “…its monuments will be local histories teaching the“…its value monuments of life and will be local histories teaching the value of life and the nature of true worth.” The Tour The Tour processions that pass through these processions that pass through these gates. Here is landscape design gates. Here is landscape design at its most effective in setting at its most effective in setting mood and tone. The simplest of mood and tone. The simplest of elements, large granite boulders elements, large granite boulders so common in the southern New so common in the southern New England soils, are naturalistically England soils, are naturalistically arranged in a composition that arranged in a composition that impressive, yet understated impressive, yet understated and inviting. The bronze dates and inviting. The bronze dates 1. Swan Point Cemetery’s indicate the yearprincipal of the cemetery’s entrance strategically indicate the year of the cemetery’s opening. Visibleoccurs beyond on a the picturesque gates curve of opening. Visible beyond the gates is oak-canopiedBlackstone Holly Avenue, Boulevard as a recessed is oak-canopied Holly Avenue, one of only twocrescendo perfectly in straight the stone wall that one of only two perfectly straight roads in the grounds,forms the leading cemetery’s to its western and roads in the grounds, leading to its heart and focusingnorthern on the borders. emphatic It enhances the heart and focusing on the emphatic verticality of theexperience Barnaby of arrival, especially verticality of the Barnaby monument (4).important for the many funerary monument (4). 1 1 the southwest end 40. The compositionally of the cemetery, striking and commandingly complements the sited Lownes monument style of the existing features a fine bronze sculpture administrative and by Isidore Konti (1862-1938), service buildings. It a Viennese-born artist who contains a chapel studied at that city’s Imperial with seating for Academy. He came to the 100 people, a United States in 1890 to work family room, indoor on decorations at Chicago’s columbarium and World Columbian Exposition mausoleum with an (1893), established a studio array of interior and in New York, and regularly 41. Frank Foster Tingley (1844- exterior crypts. exhibited at the Philadelphia 1921) was a third-generation Academy of Fine Arts; his work member of Providence’s most 2. Immediately inside the gates prominent and long-lived stone- is a random-course granite-ashlar In 2014, the crematory was is in the collection of New York’s renovated and expanded. It houses Metropolitan Museum of Art. carving firm, Tingley Brothers, complex including office, chapel, established in 1811 by Frank’s reception room, mausoleum, a larger committal chapel, and Edgar John Lownes (1870- a viewing room for cremation 1924) was a textile manufacturer grandfather Sylvanus and his crematory, and columbarium. brother Samuel Tingley. Frank The original office-and-chapel committal. Also constructed with strong ties to the design and was a new reception hall that music communities. His wife, trained with, among others, building (1906), designed by architect Alfred Stone (2, 3, 11), Stone, Carpenter & Willson (while has comfortable seating for 80. Therèse Kaffenburg (1877- This room is a popular choice for 1970), presented at court before and the family-firm’s monuments Stone was cemetery President; within the cemetery are numerous, see 3 below) in the manner of late post funeral gatherings. A new Queen Victoria, became an early freestanding columbarium offers advocate for women’s suffrage; an and often signed. The curved Gothic vernacular buildings of the bench Tingley designed for textile English countryside, established a interior and exterior niches to accomplished pianist and soprano, accommodate the rising trend of she married, after Lownes’s manufacturer Lyman Bullock Goff design vocabulary for this complex (1841-1927), probably following appropriate to a rural cemetery. inurnment. death, Dr Eugene A. Noble, the first president of New York’s the early death of his only child, Additions to this building include Lyman Thornton Goff (1868- those by John Hutchins Cady in Both units were designed and Juilliard School of Music. Given constructed under the direction of the Lownes’ interest in cultural 1900), is reminiscent in form of the 1947 (also a cemetery President) monument designed by Richard and Architectural firm Haynes de Haynes de Boer Associates. activity, their selection of a well- known sculptor is not surprising. Morris Hunt for August Belmont Boer Associates in 2002. in Newport’s Island Cemetery, then The Crematory, just repeated for the memorial to Hunt north of the Chapel and built in 1898 on New York’s Fifth Office, was designed by Avenue between 70th and 71st Donald Prout Associates Streets. The highly architectural and completed in 1991. quality of this monument, very much in the tradition established In 2006, Swan Point by Tefft half a century earlier Cemetery opened the (10,18), works especially well Redwood Mausoleum/ here, with vegetation and stone Columbarium/Chapel. wall of the cemetery’s northern The building, located in edge just behind. 2 23 38. The most impressively 4. Located at the eastern landscaped lot in the cemetery terminus of Holly Avenue is that of the Aldrich family. and at what is now the center It rises in modern terraces, of the grounds, this statue- all framed by dry-laid flat-cut topped obelisk marks the granite walls, above Beach burial site of Jerothmul B. Avenue on a hill overlooking Barnaby (1830-1889), a the Seekonk River. The central highly successful dry-goods section is devoted to the merchant, his immediate progenitors of this powerful, family, and descendant influential family. Abby Pierce Barnaby Keeney (1914- (1845-1917) and Nelson W. 1980), Brown University Aldrich (1841-1915), United President (1955-66). Stylish States Senator (1881-1911); elected Romanesque columns girdle overall design. Moreover, the play to fill the seat of Ambrose Burnside 3. Designed by Norman M. Isham, the plinth, and the base and cap of between asymmetry and carefully (34), following the latter’s death); who began his career in Stone’s the smooth obelisk are embellished established axes establish a on the same terrace are three of office, the Alfred Stone Memorial, with Néo-Grec friezes. The statue vigorous, yet always pleasing and their children who died young. Up pays tribute to the architect who at top is a standard allegorical comfortable organization, gentled the hill to the south is the grave of served as a cemetery Director figure of mourning, (compare with by the varied vegetation. Lucy Truman Aldrich (1869-1955), from 1876 until his death, the last that in the Lippitt plot, 8), a female a major collector of Orientalia, twelve as President. Stone (1834- figure holding a wreath. The now housed in the Museum of Art, 39. Appropriately adjacent to the 1908), among the first generation monument’s orientation toward Rhode Island School of Design; Aldrich lot is that of Marsden of professional architects as we the east, facing the pond down the hill to the north is that of J. Perry (1850-1935), Nelson understand them today, and not the entrance, William T. Aldrich (1880-1966), Aldrich’s political and business took a keen interest from what was then one of the best and most overlooked ally. Perry lived in the John in planning and land the western edge of the early twentieth-century East Coast Brown House (1786-88) from use issues. He played grounds, recalls the architects. The terracing of the 1902 until his death, and his tomb, a key role in guiding cemetery’s expansion lot was executed by Forest Hills with the cemetery’s best view of the cemetery’s late and reorientation. Nursery in Cranston during the the Seekonk River, reproduces nineteenth-century early 1970s, and most of the stones full-scale the principal entrance of expansion continuing the were carved by the John Stevens his house.