Landscape and Site design
by Ed Shull
Although the current entrance to Old St. Paul's Cemetery is from West Redwood Street, visitors originally entered from the south on Lombard Street. Many of the oldest tombs are found in the southeast corner. These sites are oriented toward Lombard Street and indicate that the stone retaining walls were not in place in 1800. There was, however, a cedar and chestnut rail fence which was extended as more plots were sold and used.
In 1810, a newspaper reported that the Vestry offered a reward for those vandals who destroyed some of the paling fences around the graves, vandalized a nearly completed vault, and took up several tombstones.
In the 1820s, records describe locked gates, probably still at the Lombard Street side, and five English elms donated by Judge Brice. The Brice plot is in the northwest corner of the site so perhaps the elms extended into that area. A beautiful mental picture forms of the burying ground--vaults and headstones surrounded by a paling fence and shaded by elms. The church had created a secure and tranquil setting for its dead.
Access to the cemetery generally would have been from the south for a funeral procession , with horses, hearse and mourners turning into the grid of pathways through the graves and perhaps leaving through Cider Alley on the east side. Turning the horses would not have been possible, and it would have been unthinkable to walk on the graves of those already buried. The lawns were probably bumpy, unevenly scythe-cut and generally difficult to maneuver.
By the middle third of the 1800s, more development occurred around the cemetery. Lombard Street had been extended, the Chatsworth Run near the site had been channeled, and walls enclosed all sides of the cemetery.
The 1862 Sacshe view of Baltimore shows a treed site with walls, including some plots with individual fences and gates. Two main paths, one east-west and one north-south, intersected the site. Smaller pathways intersected the main paths at right angles. Although direct access to each pathway has been blocked over the years by burials and plantings, the original grid design may still be discerned.
For more
information about our Cemetery, or to schedule an appointment to visit the
cemetery,
please contact Maizie Heil, our parish secretary, at the parish office:
410-685-3404 or
maizie@osp1692.org.