Location and Conception
In early 1836, Smith and his collaborators cast about for a site befitting their project. Having rejected one possibility as "too near the city" and "too level for picturesque effect," they settled on Laurel Hill, the former estate of merchant Joseph Sims. Less than twenty of the property's thirty-two acres could be used for burial purposes. However, rocky bluffs, spectacular views, and proper distance from the urban core (almost four miles) made up for such deficiencies.
What should the new cemetery look like? Its founders were unsure. They examined proposals from architects William Strickland and Thomas Ustick Walter, and, apparently, from John Notman. They consulted books. And, for both practical and symbolic reasons, they attempted to preserve as many Sims-era features possible. The mansion served temporarily as the cemetery's chapel.
William Russell Birch, artist and engraver. Mendenhall Ferry, Schuylkill, Pennsylvania (1809). Gift of Mrs. S. Marguerite Brenner.
Birch captures Joseph Sims’s villa (center-left) from the southwest and shows the dramatic river views it commanded. To the right is Fairy Hill, the country seat of Dr. Philip Syng Physick. Such retreats represented the height of fashionable ease in Early National Philadelphia.
William Strickland, Robert Brooke, and William Kneass, surveyors. Map of the County Nine Miles West of the City of Philadelphia (1814). The American Philosophical Society.
Prepared for military use during the War of 1812, this giant map, of which only a detail is reproduced, depicts Joseph Sims’s Laurel Hill estate (center-right) and its environs. William Strickland would examine this same geography two decades later when composing his scheme for the cemetery.
Franklin Fire Insurance Policy No. 1967 for Laurel Hill Cemetery, 1839. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Joseph Sims’s late-Georgian mansion (upper left) and outbuildings remained intact in 1839, comingling with structures erected by the company. The latter include the large gatehouse at the bottom and the superintendent’s cottage to the upper right. The chapel may have been remodeled from an older building.
Design for a gate; in Humphry Repton. Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803).
The holdings of the Library Company proved crucial as Laurel Hill’s founders considered the cemetery’s design. Here, someone (John Jay Smith?) has begun to pencil a window and niche onto Repton’s proposed entrance to Harewood, an estate near Leeds, England.
Plan of Laurel Hill Cemetery. Attributed to Thomas Ustick Walter.
Detail from Plan of Laurel Hill Cemetery
This snaking plan for Laurel Hill is traditionally if problematically attributed to Thomas Ustick Walter. Based on the same survey map as William Strickland's proposal, it prefigures the final design more closely. Note, too, that the sketch depicting an unexecuted Gothic scheme for Laurel Hill's entrance suggests the strong possibility that Henry Edward Kendall's Sketches of the Approved Designs (1832) influenced the thinking of Laurel Hill's designers.
Henry Edward Kendall. Sketches of the Approved Designs of a Chapel and Gateway Entrances Intended to Be Erected at Kensall Green for the General Cemetery Company. London: J. Williams, 1832. The Yale Center for British Art.
Sketches of two gates.
Sketch of a chapel.
Historians suggest that this work – and especially these plates – influenced the design of Laurel Hill. Kensal Green was London's preeminent garden cemetery. H. E. Kendall's semi-geometrical ground plan and (unexecuted) Gothic chapel may have inspired their Philadelphia counterparts.
Thomas Ustick Walter, architect. [Proposed] Front Elevation [and] Plan of the Entrance to Laurel Hill Cemetery (1836).
There was no formal competition for Laurel Hill's design. Nonetheless, architects William Strickland (1788-1854) and Thomas Ustick Walter (1804-1887) submitted proposals. Famed for his recent work at Girard College, Walter based his Egyptian Revival gatehouse on Mount Auburn's. Strickland, who attended early meetings of the company, added obelisks for good measure. His ground plan imposes elliptical and semicircular walks on a survey of the site at the time of purchase. Most of the trees and buildings had been part of Joseph Sims's estate.
William Strickland, architect. Plan of the Walks and Avenues of Laurel Hill Cemetery (1836).
William Strickland, architect. Proposed Elevation of the Entrance to Laurel Hill Cemetery (1836).
