Prospect Hill Cemetery (Washington, D.C.) Informations

Prospect Hill Cemetery, also known as the German Cemetery, is a historic German-American cemetery founded in 1858 and located at 2201 North Capitol Street in Washington, D.C. From 1886 to 1895, the Prospect Hill Cemetery board of directors battled a rival organization which illegally attempted to take title to the grounds and sell a portion of them as building lots. From 1886 to 1898, the cemetery also engaged in a struggle against the District of Columbia and the United States Congress, which wanted construct a major thoroughfare (North Capitol Street) through the center of the cemetery. This led to the passage of an Act of Congress, the declaration of a federal law to be unconstitutional, the passage of a second Act of Congress, a second major court battle, and the declaration by the courts that the city's eminent domain procedures were unconstitutional. North Capitol Street was built, and the cemetery compensated fairly for its property.

In the 20th century, Prospect Hill Cemetery sold unneeded land, demolished its chapel, and reoriented the cemetery's main entrance toward North Capitol Street and away from Lincoln Road NE. Established as a burying ground for members of the Lutheran faith, it gradually became a secular cemetery. Prospect Hill remains an active cemetery, and continues to accept burials.

The German Evangelical Lutheran Church was organized by German immigrants to Washington, D.C., on January 27, 1833. The small Lutheran and Reformed congregation[a] first worshipped at City Hall along with Catholics and Jews. In 1853, the Reformed and Lutheran elements of the congregation erected a church building at 20th and G Streets NW and changed the name of the congregation to Concordia Church. The growth in the church was due to the burgeoning German community in the city as well as the influence of Reverend Samuel D. Finkle (or Finckel), who assumed the pulpit on December 27, 1846. The church had a small burying ground adjacent to it. The congregants soon built a parsonage and parochial school, and established a German Evangelical Church Society in 1847 to assist with administration, fundraising, and other church affairs.

In 1858, the German Evangelical Church Society decided to purchase a cemetery for Concordia Church. The society bought a site, but then discovered that the title to it was not clear. A second site was then sought. Seventeen acres of Moore's Farm, located in the Glenwood neighborhood (now known as Edgewood), were purchased for $7,000 ($202,704 in 2018 dollars) on September 23, 1858. Title in the land was invested in two members of the German Evangelical Church Society, although the deed of transfer specified that the title should be transferred to an appropriate corporate organization once a charter was obtained from Congress (which, at that time, chartered corporations in the District of Columbia).[b] The whites-only cemetery was dedicated on September 26, 1858, with a parade featuring a band and three German membership associations. Reverend Finkle, who led the ceremonies and blessed the grounds, declared the cemetery open to all classes and members of any religious sect.

It is not clear why the cemetery was named Prospect Hill. The name was a common one for cemeteries in the mid-1800s, but the District of Columbia Preservation Review Board suggests that the name was probably inspired by the burying ground's location. Prospect Hill Cemetery is indeed on high ground, and it has excellent views of the United States Capitol and the adjacent neighborhoods of Eckington and Bloomingdale. (It also has a superb view of the Washington Monument, although the monument was not complete at the time the cemetery was founded.)

Prospect Hill was designed as a garden cemetery (also known as a rural cemetery). Until the early 1800s, most burying grounds (the word "cemetery" did not come into use in the United States until the 1840s) were next to churches. They were very overcrowded and unhealthy, with graves stacked upon each other or emptied and reused for new burials. As a reaction to the urban cemetery, the first "garden" cemetery—Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris—opened in 1804. The concept quickly spread across Europe. Garden/rural cemeteries did not have to be outside the city limits. When land within a city could be found, the cemetery was enclosed with a wall to give it a garden-like quality. These cemeteries were often not sectarian, nor co-located with a house of worship. Inspired by the English landscape garden movement, they often looked like attractive parks. The first garden/rural cemetery in the United States was Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston, Massachusetts, founded by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1831. It was followed by Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia in 1836, and Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn in 1838. Prospect Hill was designed as a typical garden cemetery, with winding roads and paths, a high stone wall, and (in time) many trees and bushes. Its main entrance was on Lincoln Road. The cemetery's most prominent feature was an ellipse, bounded on the outer edge by a road and featuring two paths: one an inner, oval path paralleling the road and the other a straight, cruciform path. The ellipse was aligned with Lincoln Road, and most burials here faced east. The District of Columbia Preservation Review Board has described the layout of the cemetery as "characteristic and a relatively early example of the garden cemeteries created in the United States beginning in the 1830s". According to the Historic American Landscapes Survey, Prospect Hill Cemetery, along with Glenwood Cemetery (1854) and Mount Olivet Cemetery (1858), "changed the dynamics of cemeteries in the city" by setting a new standard for cemetery design and layout.

Initially, Prospect Hill Cemetery featured two structures, a small farmhouse (used as the resident superintendent's house) and a barn. Both predated the establishment of the cemetery. In 1873, a gatehouse designed by August Schoenborn, a noted German-American architect who lived in the city, was built near the main gate on Lincoln Road.

Most of the early burials at Prospect Hill were reinterments of remains from the Concordia Church cemetery. A marker inscribed with a death date of 1844 represents the oldest burial at the cemetery, but is a reinterment. Many of the mausolea and markers reflect the styles of adjacent Glenwood Cemetery, established in 1854. The earliest mausolea are the Abner and Baumann structures, which are in the northern part of the cemetery on the slope facing the North Capitol Street gate.

On June 13, 1860, Congress approved a corporate charter for the Prospect Hill Cemetery corporation (PHC). The legislation named eight members of the German Evangelical Church Society as incorporators of "Prospect Hill Cemetery": Christopher Friess, John Guttensohn, Friedrich "Fred" Heider, Augustus E.L. Keese, B. Ostermeyer, George Schultz, John G. Stork, and John Walter. The charter allowed PHC to hold up to 100 acres (400,000 m2) but not less than 17 acres (69,000 m2) of contiguous land as a cemetery in perpetuity. Section 3 of the charter specifically forbade the construction of any new street, alley, or canal through the property. The new corporation was to be led by a president, secretary, and six directors, who were to be elected annually by majority vote of the shareholders. The shareholders included the eight incorporators and each lotholder (who received a single vote, no matter how large their lot). The board of directors had the ability to appoint individuals to vacancies between elections.

Management of Prospect Hill Cemetery was haphazard in its early years. Only seven directors (which included the president and secretary) were elected rather than the required eight, and the real decision maker governing the burial ground was the German Evangelical Church Society (which changed its name numerous times during the next 30 years). Furthermore, title to the cemetery was not immediately conveyed to the new corporation, as required by the deed of transfer. (Transfer did not occur until June 10, 1873.) Fundraisers to benefit the cemetery were held in June 1865 and May 1866.

In 1867, PHC reported that it received income of $1,500 ($26,889 in 2018 dollars) in the past six months, expended $500 in improvements and repairs, and was in excellent financial condition. The board elected that year included August Meiners, president; John Vogt, vice president; Frederick Schweiring, secretary; Michael Langman, treasurer; and Christopher Freiss, F. Haiden, Christopher Just, H. Kaiser, John Killian, and August Lipold. By 1870, however, the cemetery faced a problem: A significant number of individuals had purchased lots but failed to pay. Beginning on February 9, 1870, PHC announced that lotholders in arrears must complete payment by June 30, or the cemetery would seize their lot and sell to it to someone else. Nearly all lot sales in the past had been to members of the German Evangelical Church Society, but now sales to non-members, including many who were neither German nor Lutheran, expanded rapidly. Throughout most of the 1870s, the cemetery's superintendent was Christopher Buechler.

Internal struggles at PHC began in the late 1870s, and culminated in 1885. The issue was that Concordia Church and the German Evangelical Church Society controlled the cemetery association, even though few members owned lots. Other lotholders were denied the right to vote at annual meetings, and many suspected that cemetery income was being diverted to church use. These "independent" lotholders marshaled sufficient votes in 1884 to force the appointment of a committee to study the issue and make recommendations to the lotholders the following year.[c] The committee failed to report in February 1885, and a resolution was adopted by the lotholders to force it to make a report and recommendations in 1886. In March 1885, an agreement was reached in which Concordia Church and the German Evangelical Church Society conceded that the independent lotholders had the right to vote.

Implementing the agreement required a change to the charter, however. Independent lotholder Simon Wolf successfully petitioned Senator John James Ingalls (R-Kansas) to introduce legislation in the 49th United States Congress to amend the PHC charter to reaffirm the rights of lotholders. The bill was favorably reported out of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia on March 30, and passed the full Senate on June 17. The legislation (S. 1187) amended the cemetery's charter so that the cemetery corporation was not permitted to hold more than 18 acres (73,000 m2) and not less than 15 acres (61,000 m2), and affirmed that the core 15 acres (61,000 m2) of the cemetery could never be sold or used for any purpose other than a burial ground. The bill also affirmed the right of all lotholders (not just those associated with Concordia Church or the German Evangelical Church Society) to vote at annual meetings and hold office, provided new rules for managing the annual meeting and casting votes, directed the cemetery to use its income solely for the benefit of the burying ground, and expanded the board of directors to nine directors (each of which had to be elected annually by a majority of lotholders). Although the Commissioners of the District of Columbia[d] initially did not oppose the bill, on June 26 they asked the Senate to table the bill and decline to send it to the United States House of Representatives for action. The city was contemplating extending North Capitol Street past Boundary Avenue (now Florida Avenue) to the United States Soldiers' Home (about double its existing length), and the provision of the bill which prevented use of the Prospect Hill Cemetery grounds for any purpose other than a cemetery interfered with the street's proposed route. The Senate, however, did not table the bill and the House approved it unaltered.

In elections held after the charter amendment, five of the board members belonged to the German Evangelical Church Society and three to independent lotholders.

The City Commissioners, however, were undeterred in their desire to extend North Capitol Street. Although they knew federal law prohibited the use of cemetery land, on November 5, 1886, the commissioners claimed to have contacted the lotholders, a large majority of whom were said to favor the donation of cemetery land for the road. The commissioners had city legal counsel study whether they could condemn the land and accept it as a donation (as Congress had appropriated no money for the city to pay for the property). The city's chief attorney, Albert G. Riddle, reported that federal law barred the city from condemning the property. The only alternatives were for every single lotholder to give their approval for a donation of land or for the city to ask Congress to revise the corporation's charter. With neither option likely to happen, Commissioners William B. Webb and Samuel E. Wheatley agreed to cancel the extension of North Capitol Street.

Control over Prospect Hill Cemetery began to be contested in December 1886. Dissatisfaction with the 1885 agreement grew among members of the German Evangelical Church Society (now known as the German Evangelical Society), many of whom supported the extension of North Capitol Street. This group subsequently decided to seize control of the cemetery. They incorporated a "German Evangelical Society of Prospect Hill Cemetery" (GESPHC) on December 16, 1986,[e] and the following day met with trustees John Walter and Frederick Heider of Prospect Hill Cemetery. Walker and Heider conveyed title to the cemetery to the GESPHC that same day. On March 17, 1887, the GESPHC filed a plan with the city to subdivide the cemetery. The 7 acres (28,000 m2) west of the proposed North Capitol Street route was severed from the cemetery, and the GESPHC further subdivided this section into building lots. This not only subjected these 7 acres (28,000 m2) to taxation, but allegedly made it legal for the city to condemn the route through it needed to extend North Capitol Street. With no burials having been made in plots which could be condemned by the city, the GESPHC trustees believed that the subdivision cleared the way for the city to build the street. (More than 4,000 burials had occurred east of the planned street.)

Despite these actions, the city did not act on the North Capitol Street extension until the end of the year. In the fall of 1887, the city proposed taking a 130-foot (40 m) wide strip of land through the cemetery to extend North Capitol Street.[f] The city's hearing on the extension occurred on November 11, 1887, and PHC directors Fred Heider, H. Lereker, William Scherzer, Sebastian Toepfer, and George C. Walker attended the hearing. There were no objections raised to the route or extension. There were, however, local landowners who did not approve of the street extension. On December 14, Mrs. Annie E. Barbour, whose 2.9 acres (12,000 m2) of property lay adjacent to the south side of the cemetery, filed suit against the city—arguing that the city commissioners did not have the funds to pay for her land, and that the city intended to take her property without due process or compensation. Alarmed that the city was ignoring federal law barring the construction of roads through their property, PHC also filed for an injunction to stop the city from taking action. PHC claimed it had not voiced opposition to the road extension because it assumed the commissioners knew an act of Congress prevented the road from going through cemetery land. It also pointed out that three burial plots had already been sold on the west side of the planned route.

The superior court granted the PHC's injunction on December 17.

On December 14, City Engineer Commissioner Colonel William Ludlow issued verbal orders to George M. Beale, D.C. superintendent of roads, to begin work on extending North Capitol Street. Three days later, the D.C. Superior Court issued an injunction stopping all work on the road. Although subsequent events are unclear, later congressional testimony suggested that the injunction was served only on Commissioner Webb, not all three commissioners. Webb may have referred the injunction to the District's assistant counsel, H.E. Davis, but neither individual informed Ludlow. On December 23, seven workmen entered the cemetery and tore down fences, chopped down 12 trees, and uprooted shrubs. The cemetery superintendent, Henry Winckelman, attempted to stop them but was unable to do so. Davis allegedly told Ludlow of the injunction late in the afternoon on December 23, and Ludlow verbally told Beale to stop work a few hours later. Officers of the PHC complained to city officials, and on December 29 Commissioner Wheatley issued a written order to Beale to stop work.

After the city's desecration of the cemetery, independent directors on the PHC board learned of the formation of the GESPHC and the transfer of the cemetery's title by the other board members. They were outraged. Independent board member John Vogt asserted that the trustees had no authority to file for a subdivision, and that lotholders were almost unanimous in opposing the transfer of title. At a special meeting of the Prospect Hill Cemetery lotholders held on January 5, 1888, the 400 lotholders present elected a new president (Charles A. Bickwedde) and a new secretary (Leonhardt Eckert). With title to the cemetery in question, lots could not be sold and income plummeted. A financial committee, consisting of members Jacob J. Appich, W. Grisbauer,[g] Charles Groff, Frederick Reh, and Charles Schneider, was established to support the cemetery. It immediately raised $500.50 ($13,957 in 2018 dollars) in donations. A second committee, consisting of members William Dietz, Jacob Rupid, Charles Schneider, L.H. Schneider, August Schmedtie, and George Wagner, was appointed to provide support and advice to the board of directors. A committee on resolutions was also formed, consisting of members Frederick Imhoff, L.H. Schneider, and George Wagner. At the end of the special meeting, the committee on resolutions reported out a series of resolutions denouncing the city's desecration of the cemetery; declaring the city's action illegal and taken in support of a real estate syndicate which sought to profit from the street extension; asking the PHC board of directors to sue the city commissioners civilly and criminally; and establishing a committee to meet with House and Senate District Committees, the President of the United States, and the city commissioners to inform them of the events of the past two years. L.H. Schneider successfully amended one resolution to denounce the six men who filed incorporated the GESPHC and subdivided the cemetery. Each resolution passed overwhelmingly.

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