Atlanta, GA
Atlanta cemeteries to get greater support, recognition
Followers of cemeteries are teaming up with metropolis planners to present Atlanta’s under-appreciated and deeply historic remaining resting locations some help.
Particulars: Metropolis planners are researching methods to protect, assist, and promote Atlanta’s historic and deserted burial grounds — notably the ultimate resting locations for Black Atlantans or Black communities, together with people who now not exist.
- Town is creating the Atlanta Cemetery Community to show folks extra about gravesites close to their neighborhoods and improve their preservation and safety.
What they’re saying: “Cemeteries are extra than simply locations we bury the useless,” stated Elizabeth Clappin, an city planner with town’s planning division, through the first assembly earlier this yr.
- “They are a very very important a part of our panorama, each historic and presently. They’re crucial greenspaces. They’re locations of public artwork.”
Each cemetery is stuffed with tales, starting from the selection of tombstones to the situation of the grounds, Kate Sweeney, the creator of “American Afterlife,” tells Axios Atlanta.
Enjoyable info: Among the many trivia shared by metropolis planners about Atlanta’s 83-and-counting cemeteries, nearly all of that are smaller than 1 acre:
- Devoted in 1965, The Memorial to the Six Million by Atlanta architect Benjamin Hirsch in southwest Atlanta’s Greenwood Cemetery is among the nation’s earliest Holocaust memorials.
- The Burford Holly, a preferred decorative shrub, was cultivated in Westview Cemetery by head gardener Thomas W. Burford.
- Utoy Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery, which predates town’s founding, was used as a subject hospital through the Civil Battle.
What’s subsequent: Tuesday night time, the community is internet hosting its second assembly with a chat from Keith Harper (the Chattanooga-based “Cemetery Detective”) at 6 at 2295 Benjamin E. Mays Drive SW. (Register)
Cool small cemeteries to take a look at: Clay Cemetery in Kirkwood and Sylvester Cemetery in East Atlanta.