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Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott
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Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott
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OAK RIDGE CEMETERY
Its History and Improvements
H. W. Rokker, Printer & Binder
Springfield, ILL. - 1879

                                 THE PLAN
                                 
              CHAS. H. LANPHIER, Esq., who was at that time, 1855,
            a member of the City Council, representing the Second
            Ward, is entitled to the credit of inagurating the
            enterprise which has resulted so successfully in what
            Oak Ridge is today.
              From the small beginning, and the limited area of the
            first purchase, at a cost of $350, it has now come to
            rank among the most noted and best improved of American
            cemeteries.
              The original plans and plats of the grounds were made
            by Mr. William Sides, City Engineer. Under his plans the
            lots were laid out in squares, regardless of natural
            slopes and ravines, or of the general character of the
            ground, wholly unadapted to the purpose of a rural ceme-
            tery, and they were therefore very soon abandoned.
              The second survey and plat was made by Mr. Wm. Saunders,
            of Washington, D. C. His plan, in its general features,
            was more practicable, and in keeping with the natural
            features of the grounds.
              As perfected and thus far carried out, it has been
            the work of successive Boards of Managers, whose study
            and observation of older cemeteries, to-wit, those of
            Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, have
            enabled them to profit by what has elsewhere been accom-
            plished, in adapting a system of landscape gardening to
            the purposes of cemetery improvement.
              To every source from which they have derived suggestions
            and instruction in the successful prosecution of this
            enterprise, the Board of Managers of Oak Ridge Cemetery
            would give due credit, but first among these and chiefest,
            they acknowledge their indebtedness to him who first de-
            vised, and executed in this country, what has been
            appropriately called the landscape lawn method, - Mr.
            Adolph Strauch, the Superintendent of Spring Grove ceme-
            tery, at Cincinnati. This method applies to the cemetery
            grounds the principles of the art of landscape gardening,
            modified no further than is necessary for the purposes
            of burial. It secures to the grounds a combination of
            all the natural and artificial beauties of which they are
            capable, by uniting in one general plan all the effects
            of scientific landscape gardening, enhanced by whatever
            can be added by the sculptor's art.
              As early as 1856, Mr. Strauch presented his carefully
            matured plans, and design of a landscape lawn cemetery,
            to the Directors of Spring Grove Cemetery, which they
            unanimously approved, and published as it now exists.
              America is yet unaware how much she owes to this
            large-hearted, and accomplished Prussian, who has devo-
            ted his talents for many years, to the achievement of
            results unequalled in this country, and scarcely sur-
            passed in the old world.
            
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