Designing for the Dead: Art & Architecture of Laurel Hill East

Noted architects like John Notman, William Strickland, Frank Furness, John J. McArthur, C.C. Zantzinger, Horace Trumbauer, and Napoleon LeBrun competed fiercely for the chance to design for the dead. Join us on a walking tour of Laurel Hill East, where we will see monuments created by these early architects, as well as artists such as Alexander Milne Calder, his son Alexander Stirling Calder, and sculptress Harriet Frishmuth, whose works grace many of Laurel Hill’s memorials. The tour will examine changing tastes and fashions in grave markers over the past two centuries, from the classical obelisks and urns of the Federal period to the richly decorated crosses of the Gothic Revival, and the massive mausoleums of the Gilded Age.