Forest Hills Cemetery


Forest Hills Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery, greenspace, arboretum and sculpture garden located in the Forest Hills section of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The cemetery was established in 1848 as a public municipal cemetery of the town of Roxbury, but was privatized when Roxbury was annexed to Boston.

Overview

Forest Hills Cemetery is located in the southern part of Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood. It is roughly bounded on the southwest by Walk Hill Street, the southeast, by the American Legion Highway, and the northeast by the Arborway and Morton Street, where its entrance is located. To the northwest, it is separated from Hyde Park Avenue by a small residential area. It abuts Franklin Park, which lies to the northeast, and is a short distance from the Arnold Arboretum to the northwest, and forms a greenspace that augments the city's Emerald Necklace of parkland.
The cemetery has a number of notable monuments, including some by famous sculptors. Among these are Daniel Chester French's Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor and John Wilson's Firemen's Memorial. Forest Hills Cemetery is an active cemetery where interments take place on most days of the year.

History

On March 28, 1848, Roxbury City Council gave an order for the purchase of the farms of the Seaverns family to establish a rural municipal park cemetery. Inspired by the Mount Auburn Cemetery, Forest Hills Cemetery was designed by Henry A. S. Dearborn to provide a park-like setting to bury and remember family and friends. In the year the cemetery was established, another were purchased from John Parkinson. This made for a little more than at a cost of $27,894. The area was later increased to. In 1893, the first crematorium in Massachusetts was added to the cemetery, along with other features like a scattering garden, an indoor columbarium and an outdoor columbarium. In 1927, anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were cremated here after their execution; their ashes were later returned to Italy

Notable persons interred at Forest Hills