We looked at two cemeteries in the Birmingham, the first of which was Highland Memorial Gardens, founded in 1954. This is an example of a memorial park; while there are a few headstones, the vast majority of gravestones are flush with the lawn, giving a more clean and modern look that took over cemetery design…
Tag: Mausolea
Bellefontaine Cemetery, Snow in January 2025
I usually try and make it up to Bellefontaine Cemetery after it snows, and the roads were in great condition inside its gates, so I drove around and took a few photos.
Mausolea and Tumuli, Bellefontaine Cemetery, Late December 2025
The Busch Mausoleum was looking beautiful with a cloudless sky framing it as we looked at some mausolea. The Farrar “mausoleum” actually holds a crypt below the floor of the colonnade. If you move the stone back, it slides on these tracks. Very nice. This is one of the oldest large-scale monuments in the cemetery….
Oak Grove Cemetery, St. Charles
Oak Grove Cemetery in St. Charles, not to be confused with the one in North County, has a history that goes back to at least 1860. Interestingly, for whatever reason, the City of St. Charles took over ownership in 1860, which is the same date that I could find for the cemetery in the historical…
Bellefontaine Cemetery, August 2025
I hadn’t been by Bellefontaine Cemetery in a while so I thought I would swing by. The flowers by the gate house were looking wonderful. I tried to find monuments and mausolea that I hadn’t seen before.
Mount Carmel Cemetery, Belleville
Heading back towards St. Louis on Main Street in Belleville, we then visited Mount Carmel Cemetery, which is the diocesan cemetery. It is quite large. And while there is a fair amount of forest that has grown up at Mount Hope down the street, there are wide open lawns that show off the rolling terrain…
Mount Hope Cemetery, Belleville
Now owned by the City of Belleville, Mount Hope Cemetery is a perfect example of how Protestant burial grounds owned by Lutheran or Evangelical congregations were not part of a larger entity such as a Roman Catholic diocese, so when the church associated with the cemetery folded, the accompanying graveyard suffered as well. In this…
Daffodils Blooming, Bellefontaine Cemetery
The daffodils were blooming in Bellefontaine Cemetery, and it was beautiful.
Bellefontaine Cemetery in the Snow, January 2025
It’s always fun to go to Bellefontaine Cemetery after it’s snowed and I wasn’t disappointed this time, either. I’ve visited in the snow in January of 2013, in February of 2015, in March of 2021 and in February of 2022.
Missouri Crematory
The Missouri Crematory was completed in 1888 according to designs by Otto Wilhelmi, and supposedly is the first one west of the Mississippi River, but I could not verify that. To be honest, much of the information out there on the crematory is not great, contradicts itself, and is also demonstrably wrong. I was able…