Forest Lawn Memorial Park

Forest Lawn Memorial Park. “Where the memory of beautiful lives will be kept beautiful — Always”. Established in 1930 by Dennis T. Peters, Earl McBride, Raymond Book, and Paul Ludt, Forest Lawn Memorial Park is an example of the work of Cleveland architect Munroe Copper, Jr. and landscape architects William Pitkin, Jr. and Seward Mott. As one of the earliest cemeteries that exclusively used flush markers for grave sites in Ohio, it is significant in landscape architecture as an excellent national representative of the trend toward memorial parks that developed out of lawn-park cemeteries in the early twentieth century. It has large trees, a peaceful sprawling landscape, and features that add to the beauty of the cemetery’s park-like atmosphere. The memorial park cemetery of the early twentieth century also changed how we buried the dead for decades. Hubert Eaton, Los Angeles, California, wrote in the The Builder’s Creed “I shall endeavor to build Forest Lawn as different... a great park. Devoid of misshapen monuments and other customary signs of earthly death, but filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, singing birds, beautiful statuary, cheerful flowers, [etc].” L.A.’s Forest Lawn was the benchmark for the new memorial park, inspiring countless cemetery developers around the United States, including the new Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Boardman Township, Ohio. , National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior, SG100003244, listed 12/18/2018.