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Westview Cemetery
Westview Cemetery, located in Atlanta, Georgia, is the largest civilian cemetery in the Southeastern United States, comprising more than 582 acres (2.36 km2), 50 percent of which is undeveloped. The cemetery includes the graves of more than 125,000 people and was added to the Georgia Register of Historic Places in 2019 and the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.
In May 1884, twenty-seven leading Atlanta citizens, including L.P. Grant, Edward P. McBurney, Jacob Elsas, H.I. Kimball and L. DeGive, petitioned the Superior Court of Fulton County to create the West View Cemetery Association. The association was to be led by secretary and general manager McBurney, who was a capitalist and financier in Atlanta. The petition was granted in June, and during the rest of the year members of the Association gathered approximately 577 acres of farms, homesteads, and undeveloped land, around four miles west of downtown Atlanta, from more than a handful of owners.
The cemetery buried its first resident – Helen Livingston Haskins – on October 9, 1884. By this time, the cemetery had opened three distinct sections: the main burial sections, originally known as Laurel Hill, Terrace Hill, etc.; Rest Haven, an African-American section; and God’s Acre, a pauper section used by the City of Atlanta until 1925. In 1888, West View Cemetery opened a permanent receiving vault that was built into the side of a hill in Section 4. It would serve as a temporary storage space for bodies until families could pick out a suitable burial plot or, in winter, store a body until the cemetery grounds were thawed and traversable by horse-drawn carriages.
In 1889, a Confederate sculpture was erected, and a burial ground was established within West View to commemorate the Confederate dead of the American Civil War. The statue and burial ground completion ended years of failed attempts to memorialize the war, specifically the Battle of Ezra Church, part of which had taken place on the northern boundaries of the cemetery. In the same year, cemetery officials had discussions with a Jewish congregation about opening a dedicated Jewish burial ground within the cemetery: ultimately the congregations purchased new sections from Oakland Cemetery in downtown Atlanta instead. The Romanesque Revival gatehouse opened the following year. It was designed by architect Walter T. Downing and contained a waiting room, toilets, and a secretary’s office.
The Westview Floral Company, incorporated in 1891, grew flowers at greenhouses on the cemetery property for sale to lot holders and to the public. It also carried out contracted landscape gardening for wealthy Atlantans – be it at their homes or businesses. The Company became the largest greenhouse operator in the south until it was closed. All its structures were removed from the cemetery by 1973. The only two items from the greenhouses that still exist are the 110-foot-high water tower, built in 1921, and a plant that was discovered circa 1895 on the property by then head gardener Thomas Burford – the Ilex cornuta “Burfordii,” or Burford holly. It is now sold the world over as a landscape shrub.
In August 1930 the West View Cemetery Association announced to the public that E.P. McBurney would no longer run the cemetery; it would instead be headed by Atlanta real-estate mogul Frank Adair, with his brother, Forrest, acting as vice president. Coca-Cola scion Asa Candler Jr. would serve as the association's board president and help guide the cemetery behind the scenes. However, three years later, the Great Depression was in full swing and affected the Adair brothers’ hold on West View. As such, in June 1933, the Adairs relinquished control of West View, and Candler took full control of the cemetery.
Between 1940 and 1950 Candler constructed his version of Hubert L. Eaton’s memorial park at West View, the Garden of Memories. In 1943, construction started on Westview Abbey. Designed by California-based architect Clarence Lee Jay and mausoleum builder Cecil E. Bryan, the abbey contains 11,444 crypts and is designed in the Spanish Plateresque architectural style. The structure is composed of a mausoleum and an administration building. The mausoleum's lower and main floors are complete, but much of the third floor has yet to be built out.
Lake Palmyra was completed just southwest of the abbey in 1947. Named after Palmyra, the biblical “city of palms” in Syria, Lake Palmyra had at one time a stone pier and, along one of its shores, one of four known versions of Harriet Hosmer's Zenobia in Chains, which had been purchased by Asa Candler in 1943. The lake was drained in the 1970s because of maintenance issues and Zenobia was removed from the grounds.
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Westview Cemetery
Westview Cemetery, located in Atlanta, Georgia, is the largest civilian cemetery in the Southeastern United States, comprising more than 582 acres (2.36 km2), 50 percent of which is undeveloped. The cemetery includes the graves of more than 125,000 people and was added to the Georgia Register of Historic Places in 2019 and the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.
In May 1884, twenty-seven leading Atlanta citizens, including L.P. Grant, Edward P. McBurney, Jacob Elsas, H.I. Kimball and L. DeGive, petitioned the Superior Court of Fulton County to create the West View Cemetery Association. The association was to be led by secretary and general manager McBurney, who was a capitalist and financier in Atlanta. The petition was granted in June, and during the rest of the year members of the Association gathered approximately 577 acres of farms, homesteads, and undeveloped land, around four miles west of downtown Atlanta, from more than a handful of owners.
The cemetery buried its first resident – Helen Livingston Haskins – on October 9, 1884. By this time, the cemetery had opened three distinct sections: the main burial sections, originally known as Laurel Hill, Terrace Hill, etc.; Rest Haven, an African-American section; and God’s Acre, a pauper section used by the City of Atlanta until 1925. In 1888, West View Cemetery opened a permanent receiving vault that was built into the side of a hill in Section 4. It would serve as a temporary storage space for bodies until families could pick out a suitable burial plot or, in winter, store a body until the cemetery grounds were thawed and traversable by horse-drawn carriages.
In 1889, a Confederate sculpture was erected, and a burial ground was established within West View to commemorate the Confederate dead of the American Civil War. The statue and burial ground completion ended years of failed attempts to memorialize the war, specifically the Battle of Ezra Church, part of which had taken place on the northern boundaries of the cemetery. In the same year, cemetery officials had discussions with a Jewish congregation about opening a dedicated Jewish burial ground within the cemetery: ultimately the congregations purchased new sections from Oakland Cemetery in downtown Atlanta instead. The Romanesque Revival gatehouse opened the following year. It was designed by architect Walter T. Downing and contained a waiting room, toilets, and a secretary’s office.
The Westview Floral Company, incorporated in 1891, grew flowers at greenhouses on the cemetery property for sale to lot holders and to the public. It also carried out contracted landscape gardening for wealthy Atlantans – be it at their homes or businesses. The Company became the largest greenhouse operator in the south until it was closed. All its structures were removed from the cemetery by 1973. The only two items from the greenhouses that still exist are the 110-foot-high water tower, built in 1921, and a plant that was discovered circa 1895 on the property by then head gardener Thomas Burford – the Ilex cornuta “Burfordii,” or Burford holly. It is now sold the world over as a landscape shrub.
In August 1930 the West View Cemetery Association announced to the public that E.P. McBurney would no longer run the cemetery; it would instead be headed by Atlanta real-estate mogul Frank Adair, with his brother, Forrest, acting as vice president. Coca-Cola scion Asa Candler Jr. would serve as the association's board president and help guide the cemetery behind the scenes. However, three years later, the Great Depression was in full swing and affected the Adair brothers’ hold on West View. As such, in June 1933, the Adairs relinquished control of West View, and Candler took full control of the cemetery.
Between 1940 and 1950 Candler constructed his version of Hubert L. Eaton’s memorial park at West View, the Garden of Memories. In 1943, construction started on Westview Abbey. Designed by California-based architect Clarence Lee Jay and mausoleum builder Cecil E. Bryan, the abbey contains 11,444 crypts and is designed in the Spanish Plateresque architectural style. The structure is composed of a mausoleum and an administration building. The mausoleum's lower and main floors are complete, but much of the third floor has yet to be built out.
Lake Palmyra was completed just southwest of the abbey in 1947. Named after Palmyra, the biblical “city of palms” in Syria, Lake Palmyra had at one time a stone pier and, along one of its shores, one of four known versions of Harriet Hosmer's Zenobia in Chains, which had been purchased by Asa Candler in 1943. The lake was drained in the 1970s because of maintenance issues and Zenobia was removed from the grounds.
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