VALUING HISTORIC CEMETERIES By MATTHEW WAYLAND ARMSTRONG A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2012 1 ©2012 Matthew Wayland Armstrong 2 Para conservar las cenizas 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank my thesis committee, Kay Williams and Marty Hylton, for their patience and faith in my abilities throughout the thesis process. Additionally, I thank Kay, as well as Pete Prugh, for believing in me and standing up for me when problems arose along the way. I thank my parents, Doug and Terry, and my sister Megan for offering their love, encouragement, and homes to me, even when the process wore on longer than expected. I thank my amazing girlfriend Amy for her love and quiet words of encouragement. I also thank Leslee Keys, for her unwavering support, encouragement, and friendship. I thank Sarah Miller for her constant support, positive attitude, and for instilling in me my initial interest in historic cemeteries. I thank Roy Graham for his unfailing encouragement and optimism. I thank Steve Voguit for his supreme joy and enthusiasm not only in revealing the insights that history can provide, but also in helping and caring for those around him. I thank Carl Halbirt for believing in me, even when I didn‟t follow his good advice. I thank Fred Oettel for his constant faith, help, and friendship over the course of my life. I also thank the Tolomato Historic Preservation Association, and in particular, Elizabeth Gessner, for her vast knowledge, her cheerful enthusiasm, and for her constant efforts, most of which go unsung, toward the preservation of the Tolomato Cemetery and St. Augustine‟s Catholic heritage. I also thank the other cemeteries involved for their invaluable help and insight in this study: Angie Green at Save Our Cemeteries, David Moore at Oakland Cemetery, and Stephanie Messina at Mount Auburn Cemetery. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... 4 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 8 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 11 2 BACKGROUND: A HISTORY OF CEMETERIES IN THE U.S. .............................. 17 The Early Cemeteries ............................................................................................. 17 Catholic Churchyards ....................................................................................... 17 Graveyards of New England ............................................................................. 18 Family Burial Grounds ...................................................................................... 19 Slave Burials .................................................................................................... 20 Changing Customs ................................................................................................. 21 Undesirables .................................................................................................... 21 Health Concerns ............................................................................................... 22 Municipal Cemeteries ............................................................................................. 23 The New Burying Ground Society .................................................................... 23 Urbanization ..................................................................................................... 24 The Rural Cemetery ......................................................................................... 25 The Lawn Park ................................................................................................. 27 The Memorial Park ........................................................................................... 28 3 VALUE .................................................................................................................... 30 Heritage .................................................................................................................. 30 What is Value? ........................................................................................................ 32 Market Values .................................................................................................. 33 Non-Market Values ........................................................................................... 34 Determining Value .................................................................................................. 36 Contingent Valuation ........................................................................................ 36 Choice Modeling ............................................................................................... 37 The Usual Suspects: The Large Scale Typologies ................................................. 38 The National Register of Historic Places .......................................................... 38 English Heritage ............................................................................................... 40 The Burra Charter ............................................................................................ 41 Deriving relevant values for cemeteries from abstraction .......................... 43 Value in unexpected places ....................................................................... 44 Why Interpretation? ................................................................................................ 45 Funding ............................................................................................................ 45 5 Relevance ........................................................................................................ 46 Interpretation as Marketing ..................................................................................... 48 Interpreting Our Heritage .................................................................................. 48 Made to Stick .................................................................................................... 49 Summary ................................................................................................................ 51 4 CASE STUDIES ..................................................................................................... 52 Criteria .................................................................................................................... 52 Tolomato Cemetery ................................................................................................ 58 Location ............................................................................................................ 58 History .............................................................................................................. 58 Operation .......................................................................................................... 60 Stewardship Group ........................................................................................... 60 Tours ................................................................................................................ 61 Identified Values and Programming Considerations ......................................... 62 St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 ........................................................................................ 65 Location ............................................................................................................ 65 History .............................................................................................................. 65 Operation .......................................................................................................... 66 Stewardship Group ........................................................................................... 67 Tours ................................................................................................................ 67 Identified Values And Programming Considerations ........................................ 69 Mount Auburn Cemetery ......................................................................................... 73 Location ............................................................................................................ 73 History .............................................................................................................. 73 Operation .......................................................................................................... 74 Stewardship Group ........................................................................................... 74 Tours ................................................................................................................ 75 Identified Values and Programming Considerations ......................................... 76 Oakland Cemetery .................................................................................................. 87 Location ............................................................................................................ 87 History .............................................................................................................