Master Plan for Greenlawn Cemetery

Plan now Complete!

To view the plan, please visit the Cemetery Commission webpage here

IN The news!

Greenlawn Cemetery designated a Level I Arboretum!

For more information on this designation click here

The City of Salem recently completed its first Master Plan for the historic Greenlawn Cemetery. Working with a consultant team with expertise in historic cemetery master planning, cultural landscape documentation and preservation, and cemetery and gravestone conservation, the plan includes an assessment of the cemetery’s current conditions and makes recommendations for preservation of the site’s historic burial features and natural resources in conjunction with recommendations for continued cemetery operations and management. The plan also includes a management guide for site maintenance and development of cost estimates and design plans that will enable the City to seek funding for restoration work in the cemetery. Throughout the planning process, the City and the consultant team, led by Martha Lyon Landscape Architecture, worked closely with the Cemetery Commission, the Friends of Greenlawn Cemetery (FOG), neighbors, stakeholders, and others to solicit input for the plan.

History of Greenlawn Cemetery

Early image of Greenlawn CemeteryFrank Cousins, Salem, Greenlawn Cemetery, 1851-1925, Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Plate Negatives. Courtesy of Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. — **Early image of Greenlawn Cemeter**y
*Frank Cousins, Salem, Greenlawn Cemetery, 1851-1925, Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Plate Negatives. Courtesy of Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.*

Greenlawn Cemetery is located at 57 Orne Street in North Salem and is Salem’s largest cemetery. Established in 1807 in what was then the Northfields area of Salem, the cemetery was expanded in 1846 when it was redesigned in the manner of the rural cemetery movement with fountains, paths and decorative plantings. It was enlarged again at the turn of the 19th century to its present 100 acres. The topography of the land is undulating and is dominated by two high points corresponding with the Neo-Gothic style Dickson Chapel (1894) and the Soldiers’ Monument (1886). The low points of the cemetery include Sargent Pond at the north end of the cemetery and Fountain Pond to the west. The layout of the cemetery features a series of paved circuitous avenues overlaid by intersecting, shorter, grass-covered paths. All of the avenues in the cemetery are named for trees, while the paths take their names from shrubs and vines. Each was marked by a cast iron marker, many of which were installed in 1895. Buildings in the Cemetery include the Dickson Chapel which once included an attached glass conservatory (no longer extent) and the Cemetery Office, a Tudor Revival-style brick building constructed in 1933. During the 1930s, WPA workers planted hundreds of trees and shrubs on the grounds and the cemetery now includes one of the most comprehensive collections of arboreal plant material in Massachusetts, featuring between 150 and 200 species of trees and shrubs, including several rare species. Today, the Cemetery contains an impressive collection of historic burial features, including slate, marble and granite head stones, obelisks and pyramidal monuments. Other notable resources in the Cemetery, include:

Dickson Chapel with conservatory. For more information on the Chapel restoration project, please click here — *Dickson Chapel with conservatory. For more information on the Chapel restoration project, please click* *here*

Main Entrance gate (1903) and Orne Street gate (1942)
Dickson Bridge (1928)
Dickson Steps (1929)
Cast iron fence (1887)

Historic image of Soldiers’ MonumentFrank Cousins, “Monuments, Soldiers' Monument erected November 5, 1886, Greenlawn Cemetery, Orne Street Salem”, 1851-1925, Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Plate Negatives. Courtesy of Phillips Library, Peabody E… — **Historic image of Soldiers’ Monument**
Frank Cousins, “Monuments, Soldiers' Monument erected November 5, 1886, Greenlawn Cemetery, Orne Street Salem”, 1851-1925, Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Plate Negatives. Courtesy of Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

Greenlawn Cemetery was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2015. The non-profit Friends of Greenlawn (FOG) actively promotes the cemetery’s historic significance through walking tours, events and interpretive markers and the group raises funds for the cemetery’s preservation. In 2017, the City completed the first phase of a multi-phase project to restore the Dickson Chapel (for more information on this project, click here). Over the past several years, a stone conservator cleaned and repaired marble markers in the cemetery.

Aboretum Designation

In addition to its significance as an historic burial ground, Greenlawn Cemetery also serves as a beautiful community green space with mature shade trees, evergreen and ornamental trees and flowering shrubs. Working with Salem State University students who documented tree species in the cemetery, the Friends Group successfully sought designation of the cemetery as a Level I Arboretum. The F. Carroll Sargent Arboretum, a tree-based botanical garden that occupies the entirety of the 55-acre Greenlawn Cemetery in North Salem, has become the first publicly owned cemetery in the state to land accreditation from ArbNet, a network of more than 2,000 arboreta spread across 32 countries.