Established in 1848, following more than 20 years of rapid population growth and two cholera epidemics, Lexington Cemetery met a critical need for burial space in the burgeoning city. Built on 40 acres of Boswell’s Woods, it has no recognized designer but was strongly influenced by its first general manager, Charles S. Bell. From his horticultural training in Scotland, Bell was familiar with J. C. Louden’s book On the Laying Out, Planting and Managing of Cemeteries, and also the cemetery design at Mount Auburn in Cambridge, MA. The cemetery’s park-like setting was designed to provide solace and inspiration through the landscape and the art of the grave markers.
At the cemetery’s inception, Bell and founding citizen John Lutz laid out the roads, sections and lots, with Bell responsible for the landscaping and horticultural work. Between the cemetery’s winding roads, rectilinear evergreen hedges enclose gardens and smaller groups of graves. The original stone entrance was replaced in 1891 with a new gateway to match the stone chapel and administrative quarters still in use today. Today the grounds encompass 170 acres, with eight miles of roads, three lakes, and various formal gardens begun in the 1930s. There are over 200 species of ornamental trees, including dogwoods, crab apples, magnolias and weeping cherries.
