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Taking Care of Boston's Cemeteries

The Cemetery Division is responsible for providing burial services for City of Boston residents.

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The division manages burial records for over 250,000 gravesites and maintains approximately 200 acres of cemetery land. Thomas Sullivan is the General Superintendent of Cemeteries.

There are three active cemeteries owned and operated by the City of Boston's Parks and Recreation Department:

Active cemeteries

Active cemeteries

Mount Hope Cemetery

Mattapan

In 1857, the City of Boston purchased Mount Hope Cemetery.

Fairview Cemetery

Hyde Park

Fairview Cemetery began serving Hyde Park as a burial ground in 1893.

Evergreen Cemetery

Brighton

Adjacent to Chestnut Hill Reservoir and Boston College, this 19.66-acre historic cemetery was consecrated in 1850.

Design history

These three cemeteries illustrate the evolution of graveyard design from rural burying grounds to lawn park cemeteries.  Mount Hope and Evergreen Cemeteries were developed during the pre-Civil War period of rapid population growth and deteriorating conditions in older urban burying grounds. Both are strongly influenced by the garden cemetery movement that began in the early 1830s.

Mount Hope Cemetery has close ties to the original Mount Auburn Cemetery design model in terms of its relationship to topography, circulation system layout, and use of vegetation and development of an artificial lake.

Evergreen Cemetery, though influenced by the garden movement, has a less dramatic topography and a more engineered approach that resulted in a formality to its layout.

Fairview Cemetery was developed at the end of the 19th century, and the oldest section of the cemetery exemplifies the garden park cemetery movement.

The design of each site is consistent with the leading edge of cemetery development of that time and has been maintained as such in continual use from their consecration through today.

More information

More information
  • April through September: Gates open from 7:30 a.m. - 7 p.m.
  • October through March: Gates open from 7:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.
  • Monday through Friday: 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. 
  • Saturdays: 8 a.m. - 12 p.m.  

For questions regarding genealogical and burial information at these sites, please contact the appropriate cemetery.

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