{"nrhp_refnum":"08000889","name":"City Cemetery","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"17 S. E. St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Raleigh","county":"Wake County","state":"NC","lat":35.78074779000008,"lon":-78.63212703699998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2008-09-12","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Social History","Art"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"City Cemetery is the oldest public cemetery in Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina, a 7.46-acre district at 17 South East Street established in 1798 and enlarged by annexations in 1819, about 1849 and 1856.","why_significant":"The nomination argues statewide significance under Criterion A for social history as one of the first and finest municipal cemeteries in North Carolina, and under Criterion C for one of the state's finest collections of nineteenth-century funerary sculpture. It holds the graves of early Raleigh settlers, governors, editors, Confederate figures and the British stonecutters who built the State Capitol.","narrative":"Raleigh's oldest public cemetery, City Cemetery occupies 7.46 acres east of downtown. It began in 1798 as a four-acre burying ground divided into four squares, with separate sections for city residents, strangers and African Americans. Later annexations brought it to its present size. About 2,100 burials are recorded, with death dates from 1795 to 2006. Graves are laid out east-west within family plots, many bordered by granite walls or cast-iron fences. A cast-iron fence originally made for Capitol Square was re-erected around three sides in 1898, and two granite mausolea date from the 1840s and about 1850. Monuments include headstones, box-tombs and obelisks, some carved by the Scottish stonecutter William Stronach, who came to build the State Capitol. The cemetery was listed for its social history and for one of North Carolina's finest collections of nineteenth-century funerary sculpture. Burials include governors, newspaper editors, ministers and early Raleigh families.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":null,"criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Still in use as a cemetery; burials date from 1795 to 2006, and many older monuments are weathered or fragmentary.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:57:54.701881-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/87/7226/47722687/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/08000889.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/08000889/8efa11b838-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/08000889/8efa11b838-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Cgb628","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:City_Cemetery_of_Raleigh,_North_Carolina_(April_5_2013).jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Cgb628</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:City_Cemetery_of_Raleigh,_North_Carolina_(April_5_2013).jpg"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"87002235","name":"Oakwood Historic District (Boundary Increase II)","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/north-carolina/oakwood-historic-district-boundary-increase-ii-87002235/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47722687","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Cemetery_(Raleigh,_North_Carolina)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5123056"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/wake-county/city-cemetery-08000889/"}