Knollwood Cemetery


Knollwood Cemetery is a cemetery located at 1678 SOM Center Road in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. Established in 1908, it is one of the largest cemeteries in Cuyahoga County. A mausoleum was completed in 1926, and an expansion finished in 1959. The cemetery's mausoleum, the largest in the state, boasts a number of windows by Tiffany & Co.

Creating the cemetery

Knollwood Cemetery was incorporated on September 9, 1908, by C.F. Heinig, Francis P. Newcome, and H.L. Ebbert. A five-member board of directors was established, and Benjamin Ottman elected its first president. A few weeks after its incorporation, the cemetery purchased of land from the Pennington-Quilling Co. for $40,000. The land had previously been the farm of Robert Lowe. In June 1909, the cemetery purchased another of land for $100 from James Watters, and of land from J.W. Thorman for $100. Another were acquired from other sources.
Ground was broken on the new cemetery on June 26, 1909. Paul Heinze, an architect from Detroit, Michigan, who had designed several cemeteries in the Midwestern United States, laid out Knollwood as a "park" cemetery. Twenty work crews began preparing burial vaults, grading roads, and landscaping of the site in preparation for a July 15 dedication. Work included the creation of a man-made lake. The cemetery's roads were paved with macadam, while the county began work on grading and laying asphalt on Mayfield Road to upgrade it in time for the burial ground's opening. Other work at the site included the emplacement of stormwater sewers about belowground, and the construction of a front entrance consisting of wrought iron gates supported by several granite pillars. A.T. Russell sold of land to Knollwood in September 1909.
The first interments at Knollwood were about 300 bodies removed from the old Erie Street Cemetery in downtown Cleveland. Hiram Brott became the first contemporary person to be interred at Knollwood when he was buried there on April 27, 1910. Interments were relatively few in number until 1912. Demand for burial space was strong enough that by 1916 of the cemetery had been cleared, landscaped, and plots laid out. Fully of this acreage was near the entrance of the cemetery, and consisted of a park-like garden cemetery. The remaining were more like a lawn cemetery. Another of the property had been cleared of underbrush and sodded, while remained heavily forested. The cemetery association also sold about of land, and spent $25,000 constructing a caretaker's residence and maintenance buildings.
By the mid 1920s, Knollwood Cemetery was effectively a large land-holding company. In 1925, Knollwood sought to become a nonprofit organization. Under Ohio law, this meant the cemetery had to divest itself of most of its investments, which meant selling off land. This included the sale of of land to the new Acacia Park Cemetery, adjacent to Knollwood.
By the end of 1927, Knollwood Cemetery held more than 2,300 remains.

Mausoleum

In 1923, Knollwood Cemetery announced it had hired noted funerary architect Sidney Lovell to design a large, above-ground mausoleum for the cemetery. Plans called for the structure to be a mixture of Gothic Revival and Egyptian Revival, and for it to include two chapels and about 50 "private rooms" off the main corridor. It was completed about 1926.
To decorate the mausoleum, the cemetery commissioned a number of large stained glass windows from Tiffany & Co., most of which were vaguely secular in nature. Other Tiffany windows were commissioned by individuals who owned crypts in the mausoleum. All of the windows were finished in the late 1920s and early 1930s, toward the end of Louis Comfort Tiffany life, making it unclear how much work Tiffany himself put into their design. As of 2006, there were 17 windows in the mausoleum attributed to Tiffany.
In 1928, Knollwood Cemetery officials determined the mausoleum should be expanded. Hubbell & Benes, a Cleveland architectural firm, designed the addition, which was constructed by the Craig-Curtiss Co. The $175,000 addition was finished in December 1928. Seven more additions were made between 1930 and 1959. A addition was added in 1997.

Operational history

In 1930, the Memorial Construction Company of Lansing, Michigan, purchased Knollwood Cemetery. Knollwood Cemetery was sold to Gibraltar Mausoleum Corp. in 1994, and in June 1995 Gibraltar was purchased by Service Corporation International.
Knollwood was sued over the mishandling of remains in 1983. In 1929, Katherine G. Mallison was buried in a family plot at Knollwood. Her granddaughter, Dorothy Mallison Carney, died in 1982. While digging the Carney grave, cemetery workers discovered that it was already occupied by a wooden burial vault containing Mallison's coffin. Cemetery workers used a backhoe to remove Mallison's burial vault and remains, which they dumped at a refuse site on the cemetery grounds. Carney's burial occurred a few hours later. In March 1983, a Cleveland television station broadcast news about the mishandling of remains at the cemetery. After an investigation revealed the remains were Mallinson's, Carney's children sued the cemetery and were awarded $56,000. Knollwood Cemetery appealed, but the Ohio Eighth District Courts of Appeals upheld the verdict in 1986.
In 1988, Knollwood Cemetery workers buried Ruth Pistillo in the wrong grave. The family discovered the error only when no headstone was placed on the grave Pistillo had purchased. Even after the error was discovered, Knollwood remained unsure as to who was buried in the wrong grave. Pistillo had to be disinterred and one of her family members had to identify the body. Her heirs received $101,000 in damages.
In 2002, Knollwood Cemetery sought permission from the city of Mayfield Heights to permit the drilling and operation of a natural gas well on its property by Bass Energy. Knollwood said the proposed wells would be in an area about from any graves, an area which would not be used for burials for at least 25 to 30 years. Knollwood said the wells would provide it with free natural gas for heating of its mausoleum and other buildings, and would give the cemetery much-needed revenue of about $50,000 a year for 10 years to help meet its $350,000-a-year operating costs. The city denied the permit. The conflict led to the introduction of legislation in the Ohio Legislature to strip localities and counties of their authority to regulate oil and gas wells. This law passed in September 2004. Subsequently, three natural gas wells were drilled and began operation on the Knollwood property. The new law was challenged in court. As the lawsuit progressed, a Court of Common Pleas allowed production to continue at existing wells at the Knollwood Cemetery. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the new state law in February 2015.
In 2008, the Vitale family sued Knollwood cemetery for placing a natural gas well too close to their mausoleum on the cemetery's grounds. The family also accused Knollwood of constructing such a poorly-built structure that family members had to be disinterred and the mausoleum rebuilt. The case was dismissed with prejudice in May 2010.
Knollwood Cemetery had about 47,000 burials in 2007, and between and in 2008. Its mausoleum remained the largest in the state as of 2012.

Notable interments

A number of famous individuals are buried at Knollwood Cemetery. They include:
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