{"nrhp_refnum":"73002216","name":"Old City Cemetery","other_names":[],"category":"site","location":{"address":"4th, Monroe, 1st Sts. and Southern RR. tracks","address_restricted":false,"city":"Lynchburg (Independent City)","county":"Lynchburg","state":"VA","lat":37.41518050600004,"lon":-79.15636476141779,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1973-04-02","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Landscape Architecture","Art","Social History"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Old City Cemetery, also called the Old Methodist Cemetery, is a municipally owned graveyard of about 26 acres on the western end of College Hill in Lynchburg, Virginia. Burials began in 1806 on land donated by John Lynch.","why_significant":"The nomination presents the cemetery as a record of Lynchburg's community, with burials of white and black residents, free and enslaved, native and foreign born. It holds more than two thousand Confederate dead and a range of mid-nineteenth-century memorial art, granite family-plot walls with iron fences, and a landscaped hillside setting.","narrative":"Old City Cemetery occupies the western end of College Hill in the middle of Lynchburg, Virginia. Burials began in 1806 on land given by John Lynch and continued until 1965. The grounds slope away from a Taylor Street entrance, with a granite cobblestone main drive lined by mature arborvitae, plus maples and evergreens. In the older sections, massive local granite walls topped with ornate iron fences enclose family plots, and the markers include table-top stones, carved marble shafts and a white marble angel. A Confederate section holds more than two thousand soldiers from many states, with a stone arch, an obelisk of fourteen blocks, a small temple-form speaker's rostrum and a concrete bench. The cemetery was listed because it records the city's story across generations. Burials include prominent and obscure residents, white and black, free and enslaved, and it reflects both shared community ties and the Southern character of Lynchburg.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":null,"criteria":[],"status_note":"Described as in good condition, unaltered, on its original site, and used as a graveyard. Burials ran from 1806 until 1965.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:51:57.445382-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/25/6818/41681825/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/73002216.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/73002216/18b56dcc8b-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/73002216/18b56dcc8b-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Pubdog (talk)","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_City_Cemetery_Lynchburg_Nov_08-1.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Pubdog (talk)</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_City_Cemetery_Lynchburg_Nov_08-1.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41681825","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_City_Cemetery_(Lynchburg,_Virginia)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7083683"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/lynchburg/old-city-cemetery-73002216/"}