| Picture Albany in the year 1840. The city had existed for over two centuries, yet the pace of development had picked up on the steep slopes overlooking the Hudson River. "Beautifully situated on ground rising steeply from the banks of the Hudson... and is one of the most attractive, cleanly, well-ordered, and elegant cities of America" (Munsell 1871, vi). Upon the hill where State Street runs, the landscape reflected the industrializing and urbanizing of New York's state capital. Like burgeoning cities up and down the East Coast, Albany was expanding and industrializing at an unprecedented rate. Similarly, the capital city faced a daunting challenge. Growth was impeded, not by what was above the ground, but rather by what lay beneath it.;The main objective of this thesis is to discuss social inclusion in the nineteenth century rural cemetery, focusing on the universalizing factor of a new and short-lived societal trend, which reflected the elite's reaction to the industrialization and urbanization of American cities, and the rise of the middle class. The anxieties brought about by the changes in society are exhibited in the rural cemetery, Albany Rural Cemetery in Albany, NY, specifically. Through historical guidebooks one is able to determine the choice of styles and motifs on monuments, demonstrating the importance of social class and the presence of an elite discourse within the cemetery landscape. My reading of the cemetery is centered in the cultural geography of the symbolic landscape school, and argues that landscape is not only expressive—revealing what society is concerned about—but it is also coercive and tries to recreate society and causes it to behave in certain ways (Cosgrove 1984; Mitchell 2000). The ideological shaping of behavior, and the cultural signals of what is right and proper, are embedded in the landscape of the cemetery. If landscape can speak volumes about the people who created it, what does the Albany Rural Cemetery say to us?;The Albany Rural Cemetery, first accepting interments in 1845, sought to establish a more peaceful repose for the city's former residents, including today many Senators, businessmen, and Chester A. Arthur, the twenty-first President. Journalists sought to celebrate the Rural Cemetery by creating guides, documenting the ideal path to wander along, passing notable graves and beautiful streams, lakes and pastures. Edward Fitzgerald's comprehensive 1871 A Handbook For The Albany Rural Cemetery, with an Appendix on Emblems aimed to set the standard for guides in what was once one of Albany's most visited attractions.;Through studying the guide, one is able to glean a sense of the socioeconomic audience that the author targeted with his work. However, upon closer examination, the surprising "inside" invitation to judge the higher classes alongside its members affords Albanians a unique position in the mid-nineteenth century as the middle class grew and societal stratification begins to shift. The cemetery and its guide allow a timely look into this trend, present both within the city of Albany and its city of the dead. |
