One trip to the Homewood Cemetery will likely feel more like a walk in a park rather than a visit with the dead. It’s clear to any visitor that the Homewood Cemetery is not the unsettling, dreary, and seemingly haunted place that graveyards in scary movies usually are. This prompts an important distinction: the Homewood Cemetery is, in fact, a cemetery, rather than being a graveyard or a churchyard. For most, these words may seem synonymous, but there are differences between these terms that are vital to understanding how the Homewood Cemetery works as a space within a community. Unlike the graveyards and burial sites of the past, the designation of the Homewood Cemetery as a cemetery means that the space is corporate-run, coming with a list of rules and regulations that the creepy graveyards and churchyards did not have or could not realistically enforce. In the words of Jennie Benford, the Director of Programming at Homewood Cemetery, as thoughts surrounding death in America shifted during the Beautification of Death Movement in the late 18th and 19th centuries, people began to put their trust in corporate cemeteries based in the belief that “Everyone dies, but the corporation lives forever.”
Death has not always been conceptualized as a peaceful conclusion to life, or something that brought deceased friends and loved ones to a “better place.” Despite the strong religious presence in society, churchyards and graveyards were seen as a gloomy and haunted place of death and decay where the dead had been laid after their tragic parting. Thomas Gray’s poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” written just before the wide adoption of the Beautification of Death in America, exemplifies this dread and discomfort surrounding death in this place and time period. Gray writes,
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
Gray’s choice of solemn tone and dreary outlook on "dull, cold" death is intentionally beautiful, but likely socially engrained based on the time he was living and writing. There was significantly less talk of an afterlife that was appealing and fear of the dead was common in this era. The Beautification of Death Movement evolved from emphasis on the individual brought about by the Enlightenment era’s focus on emotions and the Romantic Movement’s focus on spiritual connections to nature (Davidson 196). With changing social norms, content of funeral elegies gradually focused more on generalized notions of peace, relied more on lighthearted platitudes, and shifted away from morbid descriptions of death and decay, while doves and olive branches began to adorn grave markers where skulls and crossbones once were (Jackson 301).
Before the Beautification of Death era, people had much less concern about the physical location of the dead for purposes of respect—after all, the deceased didn’t care where they were, and many of the living with their “pilgrimage view of life” did not care either (Jackson 302). Beautifully landscaped and thoughtfully laid out cemeteries became common as a response to the somewhat novel belief that the living should visit their loved ones after they had passed on, and the need for a place that could embody that sense of communion. Just as well, the Beautification of Death was deeply rooted in grandiose displays of wealth and profound difference in socioeconomic class, where the rich would spend a great sum to honor their dearly departed (Davidson 194). With this rise in the lucrative value of funeral practices, it only makes sense that the corporation took over this commodity. The culmination of cultural and historical themes surrounding death throughout the Beautification of Death Movement was epitomized with the establishment of Homewood Cemetery in 1878. The corporation established a list of rules and regulations, synthetically shaped their landscape in the rolling landscape lawn park style, and as many of the cemeteries of this era did, shirked the notion that individual burial plots should be privately owned by the families of those that inhabit them. All of these adjustments were made in the Beautification of Death mode of thought in order to create a public burial space that was welcoming to the living and tidy in a way that respected the dead.
The corporate structure of the Homewood Cemetery, whether known to a person or not, has a hand in how people experience the space. Edward Soja’s spatial theory posits that space is “simultaneously perceived, conceived, and lived” (Gunderson 1). The perceived notion of a place refers to that which is objective about the space, something that everyone can get a similar sense of when visiting this place based on what they can observe through their senses. However, how this space is conceived/imagined and lived is subject to the individual, and highly reliant on the structure of the cemetery business. This space is imagined to be the home of the dead by many, rather than just a space where bodies were placed post mortem. The imagined perception of this space is very different for a mourner than for someone working in the cemetery’s main office, or for a local who goes for jogs in on the cemetery grounds. To the mourner, this is the final home of their loved ones. To the cemetery worker, the land is a grid of burial plots, and the cemetery is a business, where administrators set prices and rules for services. In the jogger’s mind, this tranquil lot is likely imagined to be more like a public park than a place for grief or remembrance. The way people conceptualize this space influences and is influenced by how they live the space, how they spend their time in this space and what they feel is appropriate manner and activity. Though the cemetery worker is much more aware of the inner corporate workings of the space, all of the visitors are affected by it—the mourner likely participated in a monetary exchange with the cemetery to bury their loved one, and the jogger knows they can not bring dogs into the park, and that they must leave before the gates close at 5 p.m. None of these people are seeing the space incorrectly, but instead have formulated their own meanings based on their experience and subjectivity, allowing the Homewood Cemetery to be a very different space to different people.
Residents trust the corporate structure of the Homewood Cemetery to care for their deceased loved ones long after they, too, are laid to rest. The professionally designed lawn-park cemetery is tended to by the full-time staff, while office workers take care to document each burial and help visitors find the burial sites of the deceased (The Homewood Cemetery, Grounds). This is all possible within the business model of the Homewood Cemetery; the space has rules, regulations, and costs associated with which grave markers can be used and where, maintaining the land as a well-kept green space. The Environmental Protection Agency of the United States defines green space as “land that is partly or completely covered with grass, trees, shrubs, or other vegetation…and is open to the public” (EPA, Open Space/Green Space). How do we contend with the fact that the three examples the EPA gives as green spaces are parks, community gardens, and cemeteries? It becomes clearer why we as a community move through cemeteries the way we do when we realize they are designed in space in the same way that the most tranquil assets of a community are by corporate powers and regulation.
Undoubtedly, the Homewood Cemetery’s function as a corporate entity is inseparable from the history of burial practice and the anthropology of death. There’s ample reason for the turn to corporate control of deathways, as society has reconsidered what death and burial mean and what we feel is necessary in a space of remembrance. The Homewood Cemetery has taken on the responsibility of tending to the grounds where generations of Pittsburghers have been laid to rest, and it can make the promise to maintain that responsibility because of its status as a corporate structure. Benford described the necessity of the cemetery best when she claimed, “The one thing we can count on in life is death.” As long as we continue to place value in the commodity of burial and the maintenance of cemeteries as community green spaces, the Homewood Cemetery will be taking care of deceased Pittsburgh residents for generations to come.
Works Cited
Benford, Jennie. Personal Interview. 2 November 2018.
Crowley, Patrick. The Official Homewood Cemetery Site. The Homewood Cemetery, 2018, http://thehomewoodcemetery.com/?page=260. Accessed 30 Oct. 2018.
Davidson, James M. “Resurrection Men in Dallas: The Illegal Use of Black Bodies as Medical Cadavers.” Springer. Springer Science and Business, 12 July 2007. Accessed 26 November 2018.
Gray, Thomas. “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Poetry Magazine. Poetry Foundation, 2018. Accessed 26 November 2018.
Gunderson, Jaimie. “Theoretical Models of Space.” UT Austin Literature Reviews. The University of Texas at Austin, 13 December 2014. Accessed 28 November 2018.
Jackson, Charles O. “American Attitudes to Death.” Journal of American Studies. Cambridge University Press, December 1977. Accessed 28 November 2018.
“What is Open Space/Green Space?” United States Environmental Protection Agency Website. 10 April 2017. Environmental Protection Agency, https://www3.epa.gov/region1/eco/uep/openspace.html. Accessed 28 November 2018.