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 in the Twentieth Century.

Older cemetery design, with its emphasis on upright monuments, was seen as old-fashioned from the Victorian Period.

We lucked out and happened upon the cemetery when there were flowers on the vast majority of graves.

We then transition backwards in cemetery design to Elmwood Cemetery, which was originally named Elm Leaf Cemetery when it opened in 1900.

The cemetery was whites-only until 1970 when a court case desegregated the property.

There are a fair number of mausolea, with typical designs, such as the one below.

It’s a huge cemetery, at 412 acres, and large spreads out over flat land except for some slight changes in elevation in the back part of the grounds.

Mexican sculptor Dionicio Rodriguez sculpted concrete elements for the cemetery, which can be seen below, in the 1930s.