{"nrhp_refnum":"12000551","name":"Alta Vista Cemetery","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"521 Jones St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Gainesville","county":"Hall County","state":"GA","lat":34.296382279000056,"lon":-83.83711506536591,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2012-08-28","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Art","Community Planning and Development","Social History","Black","Landscape Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Alta Vista Cemetery is the main municipal cemetery for Gainesville and Hall County in northeast Georgia, southwest of downtown. The city established it in 1872 on 9.25 acres, and the listed district covers about 35 of its roughly 80 acres.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the cemetery is locally significant for the range of funerary monuments and mausoleums, including Art Deco examples, and for a park-like municipal cemetery plan with grids of streets and family plots. It also reflects the city's effort to provide a public cemetery and documents a segregated African-American section and potter's fields.","narrative":"Alta Vista Cemetery is the principal municipal burial ground for Gainesville and Hall County, Georgia. Gainesville bought 9.25 acres southwest of downtown in 1872, and the grounds later grew to about 80 acres, with roughly 35 acres in the listed district. Rolling lawns shaded by oak, magnolia and cedar hold blocks divided into family plots, many edged with brick, stone or cast-iron fences. Monuments include obelisks, zinc markers, Woodmen of the World tree stumps and two Art Deco marble mausoleums. The cemetery also received graves moved from church cemeteries and from the area flooded by Lake Lanier in the 1950s. It contains a segregated African-American section and separate potter's fields for white and Black unmarked burials, and segregation ended in the late 1950s. Burials include a Confederate general, two Georgia governors and a Black physician, Emmett E. Butler. The listing covers the period from 1872 to 1965, when adjacent Woodlawn Cemetery was added.","period_of_significance":"1872-1965","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"N/A (Art Deco, Gothic Revival and High Victorian Gothic cited in markers and mausoleums)","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Still in use as a cemetery; no burial sites remain available for sale and it holds about 14,000 marked and unmarked burials.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:44.437594-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_GA/12000551.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/12000551/9a1b3ee223-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/12000551/9a1b3ee223-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Jerrye &amp; Roy Klotz, MD","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ALTA_VISTA_CEMETERY,_HALL_COUNTY.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Jerrye &amp;amp; Roy Klotz, MD</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:ALTA_VISTA_CEMETERY,_HALL_COUNTY.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/93208556","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q113471152"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/georgia/hall-county/alta-vista-cemetery-12000551/"}