Since its establishment in the 19th century, Auburn Hills Cemetery has been known for its blend of utility and aesthetics, becoming a model for the American Park Cemetery movement, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003. Today, it still adheres to the concept of its founding, interpreting the relationship between "rest" and "rest" with a beautiful environment and continuously improving services, carrying the dual mission of recalling the ancestors and nourishing future generations.
■Zhao Zheng
In ancient and modern times, life and death are big things. But how do we deal with death? We are often full of contradictions, which are both unavoidable and difficult to discuss lightly. The house I rented as a visiting student in the United States was just across the road from a large cemetery, Mount Auburn Cemetery. This cemetery was on my way to Harvard, and when I first arrived, every time I passed by, I would deliberately speed up my pace and try to minimize my stops. But after a long time, I saw the local residents walking in it in the morning and evening, and many tourists drove here for sightseeing, I also became interested in this cemetery, and visited it many times with my friends, and found many cultural relics and monuments in the elegant garden, and there was no gloomy feeling. At the same time, I checked the information and learned that this place is actually famous. Since its establishment in the 19th century, Auburn Hills Cemetery has been known for its blend of utility and aesthetics, becoming a model for the American Park Cemetery movement, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003. Today, it still adheres to the concept of its founding, interpreting the relationship between "rest" and "rest" with a beautiful environment and continuously improving services, carrying the dual mission of recalling the ancestors and nourishing future generations.
The development of Auburn Hills Cemetery is a process of exploration in which people find a balance between "peace in death" and "endless life". Before the establishment of Auburn Hills Cemetery in 1831, urban cemetery construction in the United States was more utilitarian and crowded, and many graves would be moved or destroyed for various reasons. In this context, the founders of Auburn Hills Cemetery proposed for the first time to create a peaceful and beautiful place where families could commemorate their loved ones with elegant artwork in a warm and natural setting. They believe that the cemetery is a place of comfort and inspiration to the public and encourages a healing connection with nature. The early landscape of Auburn Hills Cemetery preserved the original ecological contours of hills, valleys, and ponds, laying out permanent family graveyard spaces in natural beauty, becoming the first park cemetery in the United States. Subsequently, along with economic and social developments and changes in people's attitudes towards death and remembrance, the Auburn Hills Cemetery also continued to evolve and develop. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, professionals began to develop "landscape lawns" and standardize monuments, emphasizing the simplicity, economy and uniformity of the appearance of cemeteries. The cemetery also established the first crematorium in Massachusetts, built niches for the permanent placement of cremated remains, and pioneered permanent care contracts for cemeteries, and the professional management of the cemetery gradually began. Later, due to the increasing secularization of American society and the shrinking of family size, the demand for cemetery space also became smaller. In response to these social needs, Auburn Hills Cemetery has developed a new memorial park in which there are no longer grand monuments to families or individuals, but to vast lawns and gardens, ground-level grave markers, and works of art commissioned by the cemetery. At the same time, Auburn Hills Cemetery has developed a master plan and implemented actions to highlight the priority of protecting and enhancing the landscape in the development of the cemetery, fulfilling its responsibilities as a non-profit cemetery, museum and sculpture garden, botanical garden, wildlife sanctuary, and historic site.
"Passing Away" remains an important mission of Auburn Hills Cemetery. After nearly two hundred years of development, the construction and development concept of Auburn Hills Cemetery has not changed, that is, to provide a dignified, beautiful and serene environment for the burial and memorial of the deceased, and to provide comfort and inspiration for the living. Of these, more than 100,000 people have been buried or commemorated, and cemetery services around "Death in Peace" remain a top priority. On the one hand, efforts are being made to improve cemetery space services, and to constantly respond to changes in society's attitudes about burial, mourning, and even death. For example, Auburn Hills Cemetery constructs a multi-combination space consisting of traditional coffin graves, natural burial graves, and burial of cremated remains. Depending on the spatial form, there are no additional thresholds for the application and use of these cemeteries, but there are fees of $3,000-25,000, which mainly include the right to burial, the right to permanently care for turf or vegetation around the grave depending on the location of the grave, and the associated right to inscription or memorial. On the other hand, in order to create an environment where "the death is peaceful", Auburn Hills Cemetery has continuously strengthened its management capabilities. The current cemetery management system is made up of a board of directors and the "Friends of Auburn Hills Cemetery," which brings together professionals from the private, public and non-profit sectors. The latter is an independent, non-profit organization with its own executive committee that supports the preservation of the natural and cultural resources of Auburn Hills and promotes public preservation and development of the cemetery through planning and educational efforts. The funds raised are used to support visitor services, education, horticulture, conservation and historical collections, among others. Both can find detailed information about the management team on the Auburn Hills Cemetery portal and publish annual financial reports to the public on a regular basis.
"Endless growth" depends on the expansion and improvement of derivative functions. At the inauguration of Auburn Hills Cemetery on September 24, 1831, Joseph Storey, one of the founders of the cemetery and a professor of law at Harvard University, expressed his vision in a touching speech. It roughly means, "With a reverent heart, we value the character and virtue of the deceased." As time passes, we take more care to collect the fragments of our memories and bring them together into our hearts. As we sit at their graves, we seem to hear their loving tones and voices of wisdom in the depths of our souls. We shed tears, but no longer painful tears. The communication with the deceased brings us back to this world, and we feel purer, better, and wiser." At that time, he was still mourning the death of his 10-year-old daughter from scarlet fever. Today, nearly two centuries later, most people's names have been forgotten over the course of history. However, around the concept of its founding, commemorating the deceased and inspiring the living, Auburn Hills Cemetery has been exploring, among which it is very important to expand and improve the multiple functions of the cemetery.
One is tourism. As early as the 1830s and 1880s, a number of book publishers published guides to visit the Auburn Hills Cemetery, with maps of the cemetery and descriptions of different monuments to promote the tranquil beauty of the cemetery. Today, Auburn Hills Cemetery remains a rare tourist attraction, receiving more than 200,000 visitors each year. It currently has four main themed tours: "Famous People", "African American Heritage Tour", "Memorial Day" and "Eternal Green". For example, the "Famous People" route mainly visits the graves of well-known people who have influenced the region, the country, and the world. These notable figures include Edwin Rand, the inventor of Polaroid, John Rawls, the author of A Theory of Justice, Charles Eliot, the founder of the urban park system, the famous poet Henry Longfellow, and William Rogers, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Visitors can learn about the contributions and deeds of these influential scientists, educators, reformers, artists and inventors. The "Forever Green" project, for example, details Auburn Hills Cemetery's sustainable practices in maintaining biodiversity, creating healthy conditions for urban wildlife, recycling and reusing its landscape waste, and reducing vehicle and equipment emissions and noise pollution.
The second is cultural dissemination. One of the purposes of the establishment of the Auburn Hills Cemetery is to solve the shortcomings of the lack of ecological and cultural design of traditional cemeteries. In the process of development of Auburn Hills Cemetery, it has also been conveying its understanding and cultural taste of death and remembrance to people, and attaches great importance to the unity of celebrating life, protecting nature, and inheriting culture. It focuses on the preservation of historical and cultural monuments of Egyptian, neoclassical and Gothic models, and combines the characteristics of the era and the need to innovate the cemetery architecture and landscape design. At the same time, it has further developed its role as a cultural landmark by cooperating with contemporary artists and art organizations to promote the creation of original and targeted cultural works, link culture with the public, and enrich and disseminate its own cultural values. For example, in 2014, Auburn Hills Cemetery became the first cemetery in the United States to establish an artist residency program. This program supports contemporary artists to create new works based on their profound experiences at the cemetery, and to convey new perspectives on understanding and understanding the culture of Auburn Hills Cemetery.
The third is research and education. The rich historical landscape of Auburn Hills Cemetery is rich in its own right. Its cemetery landscape shows the changes in American society's mentality and customs over the past two centuries. Different styles of monuments tell the story of the deceased through their location, size, materials, design, images and inscriptions, and also inspire and educate the living about the meaning of life. For example, many monuments are carved with images of caterpillars transformed into butterflies, symbolizing the transition between death and one life form. At the same time, Auburn Hills Cemetery attaches great importance to excavation and giving full play to its own resource advantages, so as to benefit more people by promoting research and education. Its historical collections are distributed in archives, libraries, photographs, and the gallery of fine and decorative arts, providing consulting services to the community for the improvement of cemetery landscapes, the implementation of conservation plans for monuments and buildings, the development of new cemeteries, and commemorations. For researchers from all over the world and the family members of the deceased, we provide archival materials, books, images and other documentary materials on funeral history, burial customs, landscape architecture, horticultural maintenance and other documents generated and collected by Auburn Hills Cemetery since its establishment. In addition, Auburn Hills Cemetery has created a citizen science naturalist program and designed 11 virtual classroom trainings covering courses such as animal and plant conservation, nature photography, app use, etc., to provide more members of the public with the opportunity to protect nature and participate in the construction and development of the cemetery.
(The author is the director and researcher of the Comprehensive Research Office of the Institute of Public Administration and Human Resources, Development Research Center of the State Council)
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