Lakewood Cemetery’s design is guided by a 19th Century idea that began in France, then spread to the East Coast of the United States, then further west. It calls for a park-like retreat for the living as they remember their loved ones.
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Just blocks from the busy urban intersection at Hennepin Avenue and 36th Street in Minneapolis there’s a refuge for the weary soul.
Lakewood Cemetery is a quiet retreat planned out in the decade after the Civil War.
The layout grew from a new philosophy that started in France earlier in the 19th Century. Civic leaders in Boston first experimented with the idea, then it spread west. The movement was away from cramped church yards in the heart of cities and more toward a country setting with open lawns, mature trees and curved paths. Lakewood president Ron Gjerde ays it’s a philosophy lives on.
Gjerde: "We have a historic landscape report that goes along with Lakewood and it tells us how we should plan the cemetery and we don’t want to deviate from that plan if we can because the landscape here is so rich and so historic."
Gjerde says it’s increasingly important the caretakers adhere to the founders’ original vision that Lakewood be a place of respite and reflection.
The original 130 acres were outside the city in 1871, but the urban environment has since grown up around the grounds.