ARC History

The Albany Rural Cemetery covers 467 acres of land just north of Albany, New York. The Cemetery is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is an exemplar of the rural cemetery movement, expressed through rolling landscaped terrain with classical monuments that gave visitors a sense of visiting a garden park. Founded in 1841, ARC was one of the earliest rural cemeteries in the United States, following Mount Auburn in 1831, Laurel Hill in Philadelphia in 1836 and Green-Wood in Brooklyn, New York in 1838; Mount Hope in Rochester, NY in 1838 and Green Mount in Baltimore, Maryland in 1838. Albany Rural Cemetery was designed by Major David Bates Douglass, who also designed Green-Wood in Brooklyn, as well other cemeteries in the US and Canada.

Rural Cemeteries (also known as garden or landscape cemeteries) emerged both here in the US and Europe as a result of a number of converging forces of the 19th century. These forces included:

Overcrowded, ill-smelling, and unsanitary church burial grounds. Burial in the church cemetery adjoining most churches was the usual interment practice in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially for those living in cities.
(See for a discussion of early burials in Albany).
Epidemic such as the cholera epidemic in 1832, that resulted, in part from overcrowded and poorly buried bodies in church and other urban graveyards.
More secularized, less religious views of life and death resulting in part from the Enlightenment, as well as the Victorian era emphasis on romanticism and nature, and a move away from churchyard burials.
Victorian era emphasis on death as an event, and funerals as a very important part of that event.

Victorian era emphasis on death as an event, and funerals as a very important part of that event.
Victorian era emphasis on classical revivalist sculpture and secular temples for interment.
Industrialization, and often uncontrolled growth in cities, along with the attendant noise and sooty pollution of the cities that drove a need to escape to more natural and tranquil surroundings.
An increasing wealthy class, particularly the tycoons of the 19th and early 20th century, who had few outlets for their wealth, and built funerary monuments to themselves and their prosperity.
Grown interest in gardening and horticulture, resulting from the progress of scientific work and study, including botany.

Like most rural cemeteries, following its first burials in 1845, ARC became a very popular destination for family members of the deceased, as well as visitors and tourists from around the world. During this time period public parks did not exist, and rural cemeteries (such as Albany Rural) became the place for people in the city to escape to more natural surroundings for a weekend picnic with the family. Postcards and stereoview pictures of the Cemetery highlight the fact that ARC was a destination for travelers in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s as well as a tranquil resting place for the deceased.