{"nrhp_refnum":"04001219","name":"Forest Hills Cemetery","other_names":[],"category":"site","location":{"address":"95 Forest Hills Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Boston","county":"Suffolk County","state":"MA","lat":42.29701221000005,"lon":-71.11156399045313,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2004-11-17","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Art","Architecture","Social History","Community Planning and Development","Landscape Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Forest Hills Cemetery is a roughly 250-acre rural cemetery in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, established in 1848 as a municipal cemetery for Roxbury and later made a private non-denominational cemetery. It includes a separate five-acre parcel holding the crematory and columbarium.","why_significant":"The nomination presents it as one of the first municipally owned rural cemeteries and as an outstanding work of landscape and cemetery design. It was the site of the first crematory in New England. It also has notable Gothic Revival and other buildings and structures, a large collection of 19th and 20th-century sculptural monuments, and the burials of people from many walks of American life.","narrative":"Forest Hills Cemetery occupies about 250 acres in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood. Founded in 1848 as a municipal burial ground for the city of Roxbury, it became a private, non-denominational cemetery after Roxbury joined Boston in 1868. Its design follows the rural cemetery tradition begun at Mount Auburn, with winding roads, a four-acre lake, terraced hills and Roxbury puddingstone retaining walls. Henry A.S. Dearborn laid the political groundwork and prepared the initial design, and superintendent Daniel Brims carried out much of the early landscape work. The grounds hold a Gothic Revival entrance gate completed in 1865, a receiving tomb, a bell tower, a chapel and office building, and a stone bridge. A crematory established in 1893, the first in New England, sits across Walk Hill Street. More than 100,000 people are buried here, and the cemetery is also noted for its sculptural monuments, specimen trees and ornamental plantings. The cemetery is still active, and the period of significance runs from 1848 to 1954.","period_of_significance":"1848-1954","architect_builder":"Henry A.S. Dearborn (original design); Daniel Brims (superintendent); Charles W. Panter (entrance gate); Gridley James Fox Bryant and Louis P. Rogers (gatehouse); Carl Fehmer and William Ralph Emerson (receiving tomb); Van Brunt and Howe (chapel and office); William Preston (stone bridge); L.S. Ipsen (crematory)","architectural_style":"Gothic Revival, Classical Revival, Second Empire, Art Deco, Colonial Revival, Beaux Arts, Colonial (reinterments)","criteria":[],"status_note":"Active cemetery that continues to operate; the crematory has been run by the cemetery since 1925. The form states it retains a high level of integrity.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:13:04.157568-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/40/7970/63797040/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/04001219.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/04001219/25dc0e5024-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/04001219/25dc0e5024-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"MarkinBoston at en.wikipedia","credit_html":"MarkinBoston at en.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Forest_Hills_Cemetery.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63797040","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Hills_Cemetery","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5468959"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/suffolk-county/forest-hills-cemetery-04001219/"}