Mount Auburn Cemetery covers 175 landscaped acres of meadows, hills, ponds, gardens and woods across the Charles River from Boston. It is a National Historic Landmark and a Massachusetts Audubon Society Important Bird Area. It is also an active cemetery—with space still available—and a place where people come to express their deepest and most personal emotions.
Founded in 1831, the Cemetery made landscape design history and inspired America’s rural cemetery movement, and, eventually, the creation of the nation’s public parks, including the Mall in Washington, D.C., and New York’s Central Park. It is the final resting place for many men and women who have shaped history, including Charles Bulfinch, Mary Baker Eddy, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Winslow Homer, Curt Gowdy, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to name a few. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet and author of “Paul Revere’s Ride,” is buried at Mount Auburn.
Visiting
Mount Auburn Cemetery remains a place of comfort and inspiration for the 200,000 people who visit annually. The grounds are open to the public every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours during the spring, summer and fall.
The Cemetery’s Visitor Center, located in Story Chapel, is open 9 a.m to 4 p.m., Monday to Saturday (and Sundays in April to October), includes the exhibit “Mount Auburn Cemetery: A New American Landscape.” Walking or driving audio tours as well as other printed interpretive materials may be purchased from the Visitors Center during its hours of operation.
The entrance to the Cemetery is located on the Watertown-Cambridge border on Mt. Auburn Street, about six miles from downtown Boston and one mile west of Harvard Square. The Cemetery is accessible by MBTA and offers plenty of free parking.
Mount Auburn Cemetery will host a celebration of Henry W. Longfellow’s birthday on Saturday, February 27, 2010, at 10:00 am in the Story Chapel. This event is co-sponsored by the Longfellow National Historic Site and the Friends of the Longfellow House. This year highlights “Paul Revere’s Ride” with a multimedia presentation about the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s narration of Longfellow’s poem to the music of the Boston Landmarks Orchestra. After the program there will be a wreath-laying ceremony at the Longfellow family plot. Appropriate for children and families.
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In 2010, H. W. Longfellow’s famous poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” turned 150. This website was created to collect information about that poem, the history behind it, and how it came to be written.
