Green Mount Cemetery

Green Mount Cemetery was dedicated in 1839 on the site of the former country estate of Robert Oliver, becoming Baltimore’s first rural cemetery and one of the first in the U.S. as part of the rural cemetery movement. That movement arose both in response to the health hazard of overcrowded church graveyards and from the larger Romantic movement of the mid-1800’s, which glorified nature and appealed to emotions. By uniting natural beauty with sepulchral art, rural cemeteries were intended as places of instruction where nature and art could put death in perspective, teach moral lesson, recall common heritage, and inspire patriotism. Green Mount reflects the romanticism of its age in its existence, buildings, and sculpture, including the Gothic Revival gateway designed by Robert Cary Long, Jr. and the hilltop chapel designed by J. Rudolph Niernsee and J. Crawford Neilson. Nearly 65,000 people are buried here, including the poet Sydney Lanier, philanthropists Johns Hopkins and Enoch Pratt, Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister-in-law Betsy Patterson, John Wilkes Booth, and numerous military, political and business leaders.

Baltimore, Maryland · United States