{"nrhp_refnum":"95000986","name":"Oak Ridge Cemetery","other_names":["See Also:Lincoln Tomb"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"1441 Monument Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Springfield","county":"Sangamon County","state":"IL","lat":39.82487861800007,"lon":-89.6584946623698,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1995-08-04","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Art","Architecture","Landscape Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Oak Ridge Cemetery is Springfield, Illinois' city cemetery, a roughly 137-acre nominated historic district on the city's far north side at the end of Monument Avenue. Opened in the 1850s, its landscape east of the central ravine was designed by William Saunders in 1860-1867.","why_significant":"The cemetery is presented as a representative example of the rural cemetery movement and its later Landscape Lawn Style modification, deliberately modeled on Mount Auburn, Laurel Hill, Green-Wood and Spring Grove. It retains Saunders' curving road plan, rolling wooded terrain, and historic buildings, structures and monuments, and it contains the Lincoln Tomb.","narrative":"Oak Ridge Cemetery is the city cemetery of Springfield, Illinois, set on rolling, oak-covered land about two miles north of the old Capitol. The nominated area covers roughly 137 of its 190 acres and is classed as a historic district. Springfield began buying land in 1855 as older graveyards became surrounded by development. An initial grid layout by the city engineer was soon abandoned in favor of a naturalistic plan by landscape architect William Saunders, with curving roads, burial mounds and scenic vistas, later refined in the Landscape Lawn Style. The founders openly modeled the grounds on celebrated rural cemeteries such as Mount Auburn and Spring Grove. The district includes five contributing buildings, among them the Castellated Tomb Custodian's Residence and the 1911-12 Classical Revival mausoleum known as The Abbey, along with historic mausolea, the Lincoln Receiving Vault, the previously listed Lincoln Tomb, and thirty selected monuments. A mid-twentieth-century southwest section is left out.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":"William Saunders (landscape architect); William Sides (City Engineer, original grid plan, rejected)","architectural_style":"Romanesque Revival; Classical Revival","criteria":[],"status_note":"Still in use as a cemetery; the southwest section of about 53 acres, designed after the historic period, is excluded from the nominated area.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:37.700207-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/88/8940/28894088/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_IL/95000986.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/95000986/e257be0ed9-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/95000986/e257be0ed9-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"User:SenorAnderson","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wwii02.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">User:SenorAnderson</a>, <a href=\"http://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:Wwii02.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/28894088","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge_Cemetery","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q696046"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/illinois/sangamon-county/oak-ridge-cemetery-95000986/"}