Oakwood Cemetery, Syracuse

Oakwood Cemetery was founded in 1859 and is known as a tranquil and beautiful resting place for the deceased. It is a picturesque landscape filled with art and architecture, carefully planned for the enjoyment and enrichment of the living. The original sections, located on the west side of today’s 160-acre cemetery, are historically significant as examples of a 19th-century landscaping style, the rural cemetery. Of considerable interest as well, is the grand array of monuments and mausoleums, which form a virtual outdoor museum of funerary sculpture and architecture, while mirroring the lives of Syracuse’s Victorian families. Oakwood’s founders chose a large section of land that included a hill, springs, valleys, steep slopes, and sturdy oaks. This rural cemetery was to be a place of spiritual fulfillment for the living, as well as a resting place for the dead. Oakwood Cemetery originally was designed to be a place of natural and human-made beauty, where individuals and families could escape their everyday lives and enjoy the surroundings, as they still do today.