Glenwood: The Westward-Moving Cemetery

Posted On May 21, 2021

By Sam Pickard

“…he has unconsciously destroyed the order which his father had established and made his home in a very different place…”[1]

J. B. Jackson, “The Westward-Moving House”

It’s fair to say most people are aware that during the 20^th century, many residents of American cities moved to the suburbs along with their businesses. What people may not know is that along with stores and families, a cemetery moved from Philadelphia to Broomall. Glenwood Memorial Gardens began its life as a rural cemetery in Philadelphia and after an eventful, if somewhat sad existence, it made it way in pieces to the suburbs during the years before World War II.

The Rural Cemetery Movement

To understand Glenwood’s story, a brief explanation of cemetery development is needed. For the first 150 years after the beginning of European colonization, most cemeteries in Pennsylvania were of two varieties: small family cemeteries on farms, and churchyards or cemeteries associated with a religious denomination.[2] In more rural areas, such as Marple, these remained the primary options well into the 1900s, with Marple Presbyterian Cemetery, Hayti Cemetery, and the various Quaker burying grounds all arising around local houses of worship. While I am unaware of any extant family cemeteries in Marple at the time of posting, in all probability at least some existed.[3]

As towns and cities grew in population and density during the first 50 years after American independence, the disposal of the dead became a more pressing concern. Overcrowded graveyards and fear of disease led to some cities, like New York, outlawing new burials in developed areas. Many graveyards became neglected and rundown, which subjected them to further vandalism and abandonment.[4]

The solution came with the establishment of Boston’s Mount Auburn Cemetery in 1831. Located ten miles from the city center, the new cemetery was an astounding 72 acres. Mount Auburn was the first of what is known as a garden or rural cemetery. As opposed to a cluster of graves around a church, these cemeteries were landscaped parks with winding paths and avenues that sought to embody the picturesque—the balance of nature and man-made art.[5] In an era before grand public parks, rural cemeteries like Mount Auburn proved to be a popular place for city residents to spend their leisure time and for tourists to marvel.[6] In addition to the landscaped grounds, elaborate monuments and statuary served as attractions in their own right, with tourist guidebooks noting some of the most splendid monuments and marble artworks in their city’s cemeteries.[7]

Rural cemeteries rapidly spread across the United States, with Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia opening on the bluffs above the Schuylkill River just five years after Mount Auburn. Soon, well known cemeteries like the Woodlands in West Philadelphia, Monument Cemetery on Broad Street, and Mount Moriah Cemetery in Southwest Philadelphia dotted the landscape around Philadelphia.[8]

“Old” Glenwood Cemetery

One of these new rural cemeteries in Philadelphia, Glenwood Cemetery, was founded in 1850 at the corner of Ridge Avenue and a now obliterated road called Islington Lane in North Philadelphia. Historians J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott briefly mentioned the cemetery in their 1884 History of Philadelphia, noting that it was “largely made up of Odd Fellows,” referring to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal order like the Free Masons.[9] In 1849, William Curtis and Francis Knox Morton, both members of the Odd Fellows, bought two tracts of farmland on Ridge Avenue and the next year the cemetery was established. Curiously, despite being founded by Odd Fellows, it was just yards down the road from the larger Odd Fellows Cemetery on Islington Lane.[10]

The 20-acre cemetery was not the largest or the grandest of the surrounding rural cemeteries, but boosterish accounts praised its beauty and natural setting. The Pennsylvania Inquirer and National Gazette reported that the cemetery managers intended to keep the garden and grape arbors in cultivation for the time being, while converting a mansion “of excellent style and finish” on the grounds into a chapel. The tenant house on the old farm would be used by the superintendent and the stables to accommodate mourners’ carriages.[11] Just three years later, when the Strangers Guide in Philadelphia and Its Environs was published, the book gave a scant paragraph to Glenwood, a trifling compared to pages it spent describing other more prominent cemeteries. The guide seemed to imply that the designed improvements had only partially been completed, but praised the beautiful and convenient access paths within.[12]

The 1852 guide was published just a few years before the completion of what would become Glenwood’s most prominent feature—a small section set aside for veterans of the First and Second regiments of the Pennsylvania Volunteers who fought in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). These veterans, who organized as the Scott Legion in honor of General Winfield Scott, raised funds for the erection of a large marble monument, topped by an eagle, which was dedicated on April 18, 1855—the eighth anniversary of Scott’s victory in the Battle of Cerro Gordo.[13]

During the Civil War, Glenwood, along with other cemeteries in the city, became the resting place for Union soldiers who died in Philadelphia’s military camps and hospitals, with around 700 interred in Glenwood alone. In 1888, more than two decades after the end of the war, these soldiers along with others were moved to the newly formed Philadelphia National Cemetery.[14]

Glenwood continued to see burials throughout the second half of the 19th century. In 1894 alone, there were 871 burials, the second highest of any cemetery in the city for the year. By this time, the cemetery featured plots belonging to the Actors’ Order of Friendship and the Drew/Barrymore family of actors (descents of whom include actors Lionel Barrymore and Drew Barrymore).[15]

Unfortunately, though, by the 1910s, Glenwood was beginning to fall on hard times. The cemetery was largely full by this point and as the surrounding area developed, the City of Philadelphia began to cut streets through parts of it. The cemetery sold a 0.60-acre plot to the adjoining Pennsylvania Railroad in 1917 for $25,900—far above the assessed value of the land and a testament to how valuable it was becoming in a built-up city.[16]

By the early 1920s, the cemetery was being regularly vandalized and nearby business and church groups were pushing for Glenwood to be closed and moved.[17] The deathnell came in 1921 when the Health Department banned further burials.[18] To survive, the cemetery needed a new location.

“New” Glenwood Cemetery

The solution to Glenwood Cemetery’s problems lay in a 60.3-acre farm in Marple Township. During the 19^th century, the farm was part of lands that belonged to the Moore family. In 1869-1870, H. Jones Moore had a three-story stone mansion built on the farm in the then-popular Second Empire-style. The house, which the Delaware County American called “one of the finest dwellings in the township,” faced southwest toward West Chester Pike and overlooked a steep ravine with a small creek at the bottom. Moore died in 1896 and after his wife’s death, their daughter Hannah B. Moore sold 51 acres of the property to James Latta and John S. Latta in 1911. The Lattas sold this land to Eleanor F. Baker in 1921, who in turn sold it to Glenwood Cemetery Company for $35,000 in March 1923.[19]

The property, now known as New Glenwood Cemetery, received its first interments soon after the purchase. These burials were likely reburials, as more than 1,400 sets of remains were removed from “old” Glenwood Cemetery in 1923 for the opening of Glenwood Avenue through the cemetery grounds.[20] Four years later, as the city was offering to buy the portions of the old cemetery it did not intend to run streets through, the remains of the Scott Legion were disinterred and moved along with their eagle-topped monument to Philadelphia National Cemetery, joining the Civil War dead moved there in 1888.[21]

Increasingly bisected by streets and with no new burials, “old” Glenwood perhaps reached a nadir in July 1928 when a small carnival set up shop in the cemetery. Unmolested by police, it was reported that several thousand adults and children visited the carnival, which consisted mostly of scam games and a few small amusements set up among the grave stones.[22]

Some families began to remove their relatives’ remains from the derelict cemetery and in 1931, the body of Captain John Gwinn, who had commanded the USS Constitution until his death in 1850, were exhumed and taken with great pomp to Arlington National Cemetery.[23] Photographs from this time show a cemetery overgrown with weeds, littered with trash and abandoned cars, and pockmarked with open graves from disinterments. The old cemetery languished until March 1938 when the removal of bodies began. Between March and September 1938 an estimated 20,000 bodies were removed and transported to the new Glenwood Cemetery. The now vacated cemetery was sold to the Philadelphia Housing Authority in October 1938 for $215,000. I, when the Philadelphia Housing Authority purchased the ground for $215,000. In May 1939, the PHA broke ground on the 535-unit James Weldon Johnson Homes, which still occupy the site.[24]

Without the need to differentiate it from the old cemetery, the Broomall cemetery soon became known as Glenwood Cemetery. After World War II, the cemetery expanded and was rebranded Glenwood Memorial Gardens.[25] This new name and Glenwood’s subsequent design reflected the increasing popularity of the memorial park model of cemetery. Originating in the 1910s with Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, the memorial park was a reaction to older Victorian cemeteries. In brief, memorial parks sought to emphasize a pastoral, park-like vision of the land, banishing features which might focus on anything except a joyous (generally Christian) vision of death. In general, flush markers of bronze or stone were mandated, giving these cemeteries broad, rolling lawns. Approved statuary would be placed around the grounds, with various sections given names relating to the artwork in that section.[26] This can be seen in the Garden of the Gospel, Garden of the Last Supper, and Garden of the Prayer sections at Glenwood.

While Glenwood Memorial Gardens remains an operating, memorial park-style cemetery, one can stroll amongst the graves and find traces of its past, with some markers dating to the 1800s or early 1900s. Taken along with the H. Jones Moore House, the cemetery is a blend of new and old—standing as a monument to past and a testament to inevitable change.

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[1] John Brinckerhoff Jackson, “The Westward Moving House,” in Landscape in Sight: Looking at America, ed. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1997), 105.

[2] David Charles Sloane, The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 4, 13-20.

[3] I have not seen documentation of any family cemeteries in Marple and in autumn 2020 the late Rich Paul related to me that he had never known of any in the township. It seems likely that at least some existed, though they were probably obliterated long ago by animal pastures, agricultural fields, or suburban development.

[4] Sloane, Last Great Necessity, 45.

[5] Sloane, Last Great Necessity, 49, 76-77.

[6] Sloane, Last Great Necessity, 53-56.

[7] Sloane, Last Great Necessity, 78-79.

[8] Sloane, Last Great Necessity, 56, 63-67; J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Vol. III (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co., 1884), 2359-2361.

[9] Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 2360.

[10] Philadelphia County Deed Book GWC13, 520; Philadelphia County Deed Book GWC17, 22; Philadelphia County Deed Book GWC81, 170; “Officers of the I. O. O. F. of the City and County of Philadelphia,” Public Ledger [Philadelphia], 16 July 1851, 4; “I. O. of O. F. Statistics,” Public Ledger, 1 August 1853, 2.

[11] “Glenwood Cemetery,” Pennsylvania Inquirer and National Gazette [Philadelphia], 14 June 1849, 1.

[12] The Strangers Guide in Philadelphia and Its Environs (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1852), 229.

[13] “Scott Legion Monument,” Public Ledger [Philadelphia], 22 July 1851, 2; “Anniversary of the Battle of Cerro Gordo,” Pennsylvania Inquirer [Philadelphia], 18 April 1855, 1; Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 2360.

[14] “Removal of Dead Heroes,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 8 November 1888, 3; “Removing the Bodies of Soldiers,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 16 November 1888, 2; U. S. Secretary of War, Report of the Secretary of War, Part I, Message of the President of the United States and Accompanying Documents, to the Two Houses of Congress at the Commencement of the Third Session of the Fortieth Congress, 40^th Cong., 3d sess., 1868. House of Representatives, Ex. Doc. No. 1, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Message_of_the_President_of_the_United_S/xkVfU4VjtD0C?hl=en&gbpv=1.

[15] Board of Health, “Annual Report of the Board of Health for the Year Ending December 31, 1894,” in Fourth Annual Message of Edwin S. Stuart, Mayor of the Ciy [sic] of Philadelphia, with Annual Reports of Abraham M. Beitler, Director of the Department of Public Safety, and of the Board of Health for the Year Ending December 31, 1894 (Philadelphia: City of Philadelphia, 1895), 105; “People Who Live in Graveyards,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 September 1894, 15.

[16] George W. Bromley and Walter S. Bromley, Atlas of the City of Philadelphia, Complete in One Volume (Philadelphia: G. W. Bromley & Co., 1901), plate 18; George W. Bromley and Walter S. Bromley, Atlas of the City of Philadelphia, Complete in One Volume (Philadelphia: G. W. Bromley & Co., 1910), plate 18; “Cemetery Sells Land,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 April 1917, 21; “Boys Find Human Skull,” Evening Public Ledger [Philadelphia], 6 September 1919, 4.

[17] “Want Cemetery Moved,” Evening Public Ledger, 4 November 1919, 3; “Want Action on Cemetery,” Evening Public Ledger, 18 November 1919, 4; “Steal Monuments and Adornments on Graves,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 October 1920, 4.

[18] “Acts to Restrain Board,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 February 1921, 3; “Cemetery Hearing Postponed,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 25 February 1921, 12.

[19] S. F. Hotchkin, Rural Pennsylvania in the Vicinity of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1897), 361-362; “H. Jones Moore,” Delaware County American, 8 December 1869; “Moore,” death notice, Philadelphia Inquirer, 12n September 1896, 11; Delaware County Deed Book R14, 285; Delaware County Deed Book 516, 370; Delaware County Deed Book 608, 232.

[20] “$109,719 To Cemetery,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 January 1924, 31.

[21] “Cemetery in Dispute,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 8 April 1927, 2; Thomas H. Keels, Images of America: Philadelphia Graveyards and Cemeteries (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 117.

[22] “New Gambling Carnival Runs Among Graves,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 July 1928, 1, 4.

[23] “Naval Hero’s Body Going to Arlington,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 August, 1931, 9; “Hero’s Body Removed,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 23 August 1931, 3.

[24] “Cemetery Yields Last Body Today,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 3 September 1938, 13; “2d Housing Unit Pushed In S. Phila.,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 23 March 1939, 17; “Work Begun On Housing Project,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 16 May 1939, 19.

[25] “Nenstiel Rites Today,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 November 1939, 11; “Community Easter Sunrise Service At Glenwood Park,” Chester Times [Chester, Pennsylvania], 9 April 1949, 5; Delaware County Deed Book 1506, 196; Delaware County Deed Book 1758, 37; Delaware County Deed Book 2609, 700.

[26] Sloane, Last Great Necessity, 159-160, 164-173, 180-184.