Hillside Cemetery (Middletown, New York)
Cemetery in 2007
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| Details | |
|---|---|
| Established | 1861 |
| Location | Middletown, NY |
| Country | USA |
| Coordinates | 41°26′32″N 74°25′52″W / 41.44222°N 74.43111°W |
| Type | Private |
| Owned by | Hillside Cemetery Corporation |
| Size | 52 acres (21 ha) |
| Find a Grave | Hillside Cemetery |
| The Political Graveyard | Hillside Cemetery |
Hillside Cemetery is located on Mulberry Street in Middletown, New York, United States. Opened in 1861, it was designed in the rural cemetery style by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, later noted for their collaboration on Central Park. There are several thousand graves, some with excellent examples of 19th-century funerary art.
Many of Middletown's prominent citizens of the late 19th century were buried there, including three Civil War winners of the Medal of Honor and one former congressman. In 1994 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The cemetery is located in southeastern Middletown, a few blocks from the city's downtown. It is a 52-acre (21 ha) parcel built on the side of a hill. Mulberry Street is on the east, with woods to the north and west and a residential neighborhood on the north.
It is built into a hillside that rises sharply to the north. The slope is cut into a series of undulating bluffs to accommodate the graves and curving roads around the cemetery. There is a pond near the upper end of the property and the remains of a second at the lower end. A tributary of Monhagen Brook runs across the property from the northwest to the east. There are groves of mature shade trees.
At the front gate is a Gothic Revival stone office building. It is a contributing resource to the National Register listing, but is no longer used. Instead most administrative functions are handled at a more modern maintenance garage. Scattered throughout the cemetery are various mausolea and other memorials.
New York provided for the creation of rural cemeteries, which followed the model of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts by setting graves and monuments in a pastoral natural setting, in 1847. Under that act, the Hillside Cemetery Association was formed in 1860. Later that year it purchased 50 acres (200,000 m2) of farmland in Middletown, which had only recently incorporated as a village, for its cemetery.
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