Riverview Cemetery

Photographed By Bill Pfingsten, January 9, 2016

1. Riverview Cemetery Marker

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Photographed By Bill Pfingsten, January 9, 2016

2. Riverview Cemetery Marker

Wilmington Delaware’s Riverview Cemetery was founded in 1872 by a coalition of 18 fraternal lodges of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights of Pythias and is still in current use. Riverview Cemetery’s significant areas of importance include social history, community planning and development, landscape architecture and art. Following the late 19th century necessity for cities to remove cemeteries to rural locations outside the dense and polluted cities, Riverview Cemetery was established along Philadelphia Pike. It was the first cemetery located outside of Wilmington’s city limits which was not affiliated with any church or religion. As the city’s population grew and responded to development pressure, it expanded north so that the cemetery is now amid residential, commercial and industrial development. The cemetery was developed in two sections, each with a distinct landscape design. Hermann J. Schwarzman, a prominent 19th century landscape architect, designed the southeast side in a formal grid plan. Much of this landscape is subdivided into family plots with stone coping. Riverview Cemetery is the only known

Photographed By Bill Pfingsten, January 9, 2016

3. Riverview Cemetery

example of Schwarzmann’s work in the state of Delaware. Thirty years later, the northwest side was designed by the cemetery’s then superintendent. Goldsmith C. Nailor, in a picturesque serpentine pattern. A wide range of funerary monuments populate the landscape with art in ornamental and tablet forms with symbolic details. Sculptures of classical figures, obelisks and draped urns represent traditional icons of mourning and memorial. Classical Revival architecture is exemplified by the family mausoleum in the cemetery. In 1917, a community mausoleum was built in the Classical Revival style by the Wilmington Mausoleum Company using the patent design of William E. Hughes’ American Mausoleum Company of Clyde, Ohio. This is not only the first mausoleum erected in the state of Delaware but it is also the only known example of Mr. Hughes’s patented mausoleum design in Delaware. In 1921, Riverview Cemetery received its own patent on a cement vault and began manufacturing them exclusively in this area. The benevolent mission of the fraternal lodges to open Riverview Cemetery to people of all socioeconomic classes and religious faiths provided a direct social link back to the people who lived, worked and participated in the growth of the city of Wilmington. The historic landscape adds beauty and serenity to the final resting place of over 36,000 souls.

Photographed By Devry Becker Jones (CC0), February 10, 2024

4. National Register of Historic Places plaque for Riverview Cemetery

Riverview
Cemetery
Established 1872
has been placed on the
National Register
of Historic Places
by the United States
Department of the Interior