Hillside Cemetery (Middletown, New York)
The Hillside Cemetery is a 1861 Opened cemetery at the Mulberry Street in Middletown in Orange County in New York . It was designed by Calvert Vaux in the style of a rural cemetery. Vaux was known for his collaboration with Frederick Law Olmsted on Central Park . The cemetery contains several thousand graves, some of which are excellent examples of 19th century cemetery art.
Many of Middletown's prominent residents from the second half of the 19th century are buried here, including three Medal of Honor winners from the Civil War and a former member of the United States House of Representatives . The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 .
description
The cemetery is in the southeast part of Middletown, just a few blocks from the center of the city. This is a 21 hectare property on the side of a hill. To the east of the site is Mulberry Street, forests connect to the north and west, and a residential area is south of the cemetery.
The slope of the hill rises sharply to the north. The slope is cut into a series of undulating slopes to accommodate the graves and the winding paths across the cemetery. A pond is at the upper end of the site, at the lower end only the remains of a pond have been preserved. A tributary to Monhagen Brook flows northwest to east through the cemetery. Groves of tall trees provide shade.
A neo-Gothic office building stands at the front gate of the cemetery . This is considered a contributing component , but is no longer used. Most of the administrative tasks are carried out in a modern garage. Various mausoleums and other memorial stones are scattered over the entire cemetery area .
history
In 1847, New York State required landscape cemeteries to be modeled on Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts , with graves and headstones laid out in natural rural surroundings. Because of this law, the Hillside Cemetery Association was established in 1860. In the same year they bought 50 acres of farmland in Middletown in order to lay out the cemetery in the recently incorporated town.
Calvert Vaux was commissioned to lay out the landscape for the cemetery. Vaux was an immigrant from England and had previously worked for Andrew Jackson Downing of Newburgh, whose ideas for more natural architecture had guided much of home architecture in mid-19th century America. Two years earlier, Vaux and another former Downing employee, Frederick Law Olmsted, had won the architectural competition to design Central Park in New York City . That fame follows Vaux to Middletown when he began work on the cemetery in 1861.
The cemetery was inaugurated on August 8, 1861. Vaux's design was precisely executed, but a planned observation tower was never built. A representative selection of contemporary cemetery art quickly accumulated in the new cemetery. Monuments and tombstones show the influence of the Egyptian Revival and the sarcophagus of Scipio Barbatus . Many of the tombstones have carved female figures, two monuments have granite statues that symbolize hope.
The stone office building next to the front entrance was built in 1930. It was no longer used after three decades and a modern garage was built in 1992. The lower pond that Vaux had planned was later largely drained.
Buried people
Among the people buried in the cemetery are:
- John Bright , 1884-1948. Federal judge from 1941 to 1948.
- Thomas D. Collins , 1847-1935. As a sergeant in Company H of the 143rd New York Infantry, he captured a regimental flag of the Confederate States Army on May 15, 1864 during the Battle of Resaca . Collins received the Medal of Honor .
- David Porter Dewitt , 1817-1889. Brigadier General in the Union Army .
- Nathan Mullock Hallock , 1844-1903. Hallock was a corporal with Company K of the 124th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment . At the Battle of Bristoe Station on October 14, 1863, he rescued an immobilized officer from death or preserved him from captivity by carrying him to safety under musket fire, which is why he was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1897.
- Moses D. Stivers , 1828–1895. Member of the United States House of Representatives from 1889 to 1891 .
- Lewis Wisner , 1841-1906. First Lieutenant in Company K, who voluntarily exposed himself to enemy fire at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House on May 12, 1864, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d John Bonafide: Hillside Cemetery ( English ) In: National Register of Historic Places nomination . New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . May 19, 1994. Archived from the original on September 27, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 1, 2010.
- ↑ a b c d e Hillside Cemetery ( English ) findagrave.com . Retrieved January 1, 2010.
Web links
- List of burials @ interment.net
Coordinates: 41 ° 26 ′ 32 " N , 74 ° 25 ′ 52" W.