Oak Ridge Cemetery

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.