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Detroit History Tour: Woodmere Cemetery

July 6, 2010 in Best of THE NIGHT TRAIN, History | 2 comments

Woodmere is part of Detroit’s clutch of historic rural cemeteries. (See also Woodlawn and Elmwood.) It’s on Fort Street in Del Ray. The cemetery was founded in 1867 by a cabal of influential businessmen who wanted to plan a big (bigger than Elmwood), beautiful rural cemetery, far (farther than Elmwood) from the bustle of the city.

They did a pretty swell job, overall. And Woodmere is still in pretty good shape, even though some plots are crowded, with disorienting headstones facing every which way.  It’s hilly and rambling and there’s a lake in the middle ringed by leaning willows.

Woodmere also has a dedicated historian and champion, Gail Hershenzon, who literally wrote the book on Woodmere. She also runs a website with a digital records search (AMAZING!). And gives tours. I wish every historic cemetery had someone so loyal posted at this task. Anyway, we’ll leave the dirty work to her and just show you some of the many, many pictures we took.

Some folks you know might know who stay at Woodmere:

David Buick: founder of the Buick Car Company and (fun fact) inventor of bathtub enamel.

Dungaree hero Hamilton Carhartt.

Lumber baron David Whitney, whose former home is now The Whitney. See also: the Whitney Building.

Some things we noticed: A whole lot of Masons.

I love the Square and Compasses paned into the stained glass.

There are a number of fraternities, lodges and orders with monuments at Woodmere — some even have their own plots.

The Elk’s Rest.

A commemorative plaque in memory of Benjamin Geiger, erected by the Detroit Lodge No. 6 of the Ancient Order of United Workmen.

Woodmen of the World.

Woodmere also has a U.S. Army section, where a number of Civil War soldiers are at rest. Many were originally buried at Fort Wayne.

We met a lonely, pretty cemetery dog. I didn’t get too close and neither did he, but we regarded each other like this for a long time.

I like this unusual in-ground mausoleum. Hershenzon says the whole monument used to be sparkly white.

One imagines that it’s the obelisk that’s been growing, and not the tree:

There’s not as much Egyptophilia at Woodmere as there is at Woodlawn, but the Van Baalen crypt is a gem:

Check out the Pharaoh faces in the doors:

Plenty of headstones and gravemarkers in German.

A lovely barefoot angel watching over the Widman plot.

We took way too many photos. See more on our Facebook page.

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More on cemeteries: Elmwood in the springtime

May 10, 2010 in History, Meditations | 5 comments

A lecture series called Graveyards 101 kicks off this week at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The five-week series is open to the public and features five lecturers discussing graveyards, gravestones, death, dying and images of death around the world.

Since I learned about the series last week, I’ve been giving some thought to exactly what it is about cemeteries that I’ve lately come to love. I think some people (who maybe don’t know me very well) assume it’s some kind of teenage-gothic romance with the mournful and the morbid.

Cemeteries get kind of an unfair reputation for being spooky places. But anyone who has visited the grave of a loved one knows that they can also be peaceful and comforting, even uplifting, and for a lover of history, there is no better place to get to know  some friendly strangers.

Cemeteries are for the living. We all have ideas about where we want our ashes/ashes dust/dust to end up when our lives are over, but ultimately, we bury our dead for us — for closure, for remembrance, for the comfort of just knowing where our loved ones are.

When I visited Elmwood this weekend (you’ll remember that the last time I visited, it was winter, and I had no boots), trees were blooming, fat robins were everywhere, and people were out tending to plots, visiting graves — I even saw one family riding bikes.  Since the mid-nineteenth century, cemeteries like Elmwood have been designed with pastoral ideals in mind: natural landscaping, curving pathways, ponds, streams and old-growth forests embracing graceful sculptural memorials and monuments. Cemeteries like this were meant to be more like public parks than crowded, creepy church yards: places for reflection, relaxation and leisure.

I went to Elmwood this weekend to visit the city elders I’ve been reading about for the blog: the Palmers, George Washington Stark (I went to Grand Lawn to try to sit a while with that scoundrel James Scott, but I was accused of breaking and entering and kicked out — even though I drove right through the gates).

Instead, I got a flat tire in the back sections of the cemetery, near the fence Elmwood shares with Mt. Elliott. It was a big bummer. But while I waited for my knight in a shining Ford Focus to pick me up, I roamed the grounds near my car, reading headstones, watching worked-up birds in the crab apple trees, wandering toward whatever monuments caught my eye.

And it’s not a bad way to run into familiar faces, either.

I’ll be on WDET this morning to talk briefly about what it is, really, that I like about visiting the cemetery. What about you? Is this a weird habit? Do you have a favorite cemetery to visit, or is that just a crazy question?

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