As Henry A.S. Dearborn said in 1847 “Let us then emulate the enlightened and pious, the good and great, the affectionate and generous, the kind and the magnanimous of all other nations and ages, that were most distinguished for their advancement in civilization, and enable our fellow citizens to pay all possible respect and honor to the remains of those whom they loved and revered when living.” Thus, the rural cemetery was not just a link to nature, landscape design and horticulture, but also a link to architecture that embraced and enhanced the rural ideal, while serving a very necessary function. The buildings, gateways, fences and assorted structures erected at Forest Hills Cemetery were built for intended purposes, but their design and materials were reflective of Dearborn’s vision of integrating the ideal of romantic landscape design with symbolically appropriate architecture. The first thing seen by those arriving via Forest Hills Avenue was the gateway, originally a wood Egyptian Revival gateway that was replaced by a grander one of Roxbury puddingstone in 1865. This was an aesthetic experience and in some ways must have reassured mourners that this was a sacred place that was to embrace and offer a consoling garden sanctuary. Embracing the wooded landscape and the rough outcropping of Roxbury puddingstone rather than eliminating them, the cemetery evolved as a distinctive and unique interpretation of a rural cemetery.

Good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design
Stephen Gardiner

Rock Maple Avenue

Rock Maple Avenue, seen from the junction of Cedar and Tupelo Avenues, leads to White Oak Avenue and has terraced lots on the right with granite curbing and flights of stairs leading to the large family graves. These curbed lots, many replete with granite balusters and curbing, created a distinctively urban feel, almost recreating the urban residential streetscapes of Victorian Boston. The more flat and regular area on the left is a triangular area bounded by Cedar and Lake Avenues and the area were laid out with such names as Peony, Evergreen, Elder, Brook, Arethusa, Pyrola, Mimosa, Camellia and Veronica Paths.

Quincy Adams Shaw (1825-1908) was a major investor in the Calumet & Hecla Copper Mines with his brother-in-law Henry L. Higginson. The copper mining property had been prospected by Louis Agassiz, and his son Alexander Agassiz, who was developing it and which proved to be an immensely important prospect. Quincy Adams Shaw was a major art collector and donated numerous impressionistic paintings by Jean-Francois Millet, Corot’s Dante and Virgil, as well as Donatello’s the Madonna of the Clouds to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He and his wife Pauline Agassiz Shaw lived in a large mansion on Perkins Street in Jamaica Plain, fronting onto Jamaica Pond and summered in Prides Crossing on Boston's North Shore. He was the son of Robert Gould and Elizabeth Willard Parkman Shaw and was named after John Quincy Adams. He was graduated from Harvard in the class of 1845, and over the next few years he and Henry Lee Higginson, his brother in law, shared the tremendous efforts that were made before the Calumet & Hecla mine became a dividend payer; it is said that Mr. Shaw put in nearly all the money he had before this happened. He picked up all he could afford to buy, even when it was selling at $1 a share. However, it was a lucrative if speculative business and when he died the June 13, 1908 edition of the Boston Daily Globe said that "Quincy A. Shaw [was] the heaviest individual taxpayer in Massachusetts, the largest individual owner of Calumet & Hecla stock in the state, and the head of the family whose members in various ways have done much to promote the educational and commercial interests of Boston" and had the cumbersome title as the "Heaviest Individual Taxpayer in the State." In fact he was said to be the wealthiest man in New England upon his death. Shaw was buired in a large lot on Nesutan Avenue on Eliot Hill.

Twentieth Century Vista

This early twentieth century vista, looking south from Elm Avenue, shows the stone Canterbury Street Lodge (sometimes referred to as the Beech Avenue Chapel) in the center distance at the Canterbury Street gate. The open lands on the left were later to become St. Michael’s Cemetery, primarily an Italian Roman Catholic cemetery; to the left of the statue in the center can be seen the Edmund March Wheelwright (1854-1912) designed buildings of Austin Farm, the former property of Arthur Austin who is called the "Father of West Roxbury," and who successfully persuaded his neighbors to become an independent town known as West Roxbury in 1851. The property was later used as the Mattapan State Hospital and more recently as the Boston Nature Center of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. In the center is the statue monument on that grave of George B. Smith (1868-1949) and on the left, that of Nathan Sawyer (1819-1889.)

Marshall Pinckney Wilder (1798-1886) was a distinguished and well respected horticulturist. He had purchased the farm of Governor Increase Sumner and created an estate near Grove Hall in Dorchester, Massachusetts that was known as “Hawthorne Grove.” Throughout the mid nineteenth century he developed an extensive pear orchard that contained at one time 800 cultivars, and his Dorchester Nursery was among the first mail order businesses for plants, seeds and bulbs. Wilder served as the third president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, from 1840-1847, as well as president of the American Pomological Society, which since 1873 awards the "Wilder Medal" which is given to pomologists who have contributed most to the improvement of cultivars of various kinds of fruit in this country. Wilder was probably best known for hybrizing camellias and among them are the award winning Camellias Wilderi, Mrs. Abby Wilder, Mrs. Julia Wilder and the Jenny Wilder. From his estate in 1839 went to the Boston Public Garden the entire collection of greenhouse and garden plants.

Oliver Ditson

Oliver Ditson (1811-1888) was one of this country’s most successful music publishers in the Victorian period. The Oliver Ditson Company in Boston was to publish "a wider variety of music, music journals, and music education books than had ever before been available." "Jingle Bells" was first published by Oliver Ditson in Boston in 1857 and the lively holiday tune became one of the most popular songs ever heard at Christmas time. During the American Civil War, Ditson released a number of popular songs, including the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground." Following Ditson’s death, his music publishing company continued unabated until it was purchased by Theodore Presser in Philadelphia. The Theodore Presser Company acquired the Oliver Ditson Company in 1931. Through this acquisition, Presser can trace its origins to 1783, when Batelle's Book Store (later the Oliver Ditson Company), began a music publishing business in Boston. The monumental and impressive St John the Evangelist was sculpted by Thomas Ball (1819-1911) in 1873 and placed on the Ditson Family Lot on Rhododendron Path. Ball was a well known sculptor and his equestrian statue of General George Washington was erected in 1869 in the Boston Public Garden, facing the Commonwealth Avenue Mall.

Father of Shingle Style Architecture

William Ralph Emerson was a noted architect in Boston a century ago. He extolled the virtue of the "Shingle Style" of architecture, which had a direct reflection on the First Period of American architecture, but also with a touch of the exuberance and pomp of late Victorian architecture. In the period between 1865 and 1917, he made important contributions to architecture. It was said in his profession as an architect, he had won a high place, and that his designs of buildings were of great refinement, especially in country houses which are found throughout the Boston area and in Maine.

William Ralph Emerson (1833-1917) was the son of William and Olive Bourne Emerson, and was raised in Alton, Illinois. As a young man he came to Boston to live with his uncle George Emerson, whose home was on Pemberton Square in Boston, and where he trained as an architect in the office of Jonathan Preston (1801-1888.) In 1857, Emerson and Preston formed an architectural partnership which lasted four years; in 1864 he partnered with Carl Fehmer (1864-1873) and they continued as partners for nine years.

William Ralph Emerson initially designed in the classical revival style, of which his Post Office and Courthouse in Portland, Maine were important early examples. However by 1875 he was designing impressive structures that embraced Victorian elements such as the "Stick Style" and the beginnings of the "Shingle Style," among them the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital (1875) and the Boston Art Club (1881) in the South End and the Back Bay of Boston respectively. In 1871 Emerson, with Carl Fehmer, designed the impressive Receiving Tomb at Forest Hills Cemetery. The Receiving Tomb was said in Boston Illustrated in 1872 to be “the finest receiving-tomb in any cemetery in the country… and is built in the Gothic style of architecture in Concord granite.” The portico is of white Concord granite with an oak ceiling, and its floor paved with French encaustic tiles. However it was said that "country houses were his specialty, and many of the more noteworthy at Bar Harbor and Newport were designed by him." Emerson's first wife was Katherine Mears, who was the mother of the Harvard educated architect Ralph Lincoln Emerson, and his second wife was Sylvia Hathaway Watson, the daughter of Robert Sedgwick Watson of Milton.

Though Emerson was part of the city and its greater metropolis, he designed impressive residences in Milton, among the "The Pines," the home of The Misses Forbes and which was considered the premier "Stick Style" house, the Eustis and Tileston Estates, houses on Adams Street on Milton Hill and his own house on Randolph Avenue in Milton. With over five decades as an independent architect, William Ralph Emerson maintained a well connected Boston base with memberships in the American Institute of Architects, the Boston Society of Architects, the Boston Athenaeum and the Union Club. He was erudite, educated and well informed. He "lived on the gentler side of life, with books and art and the higher interests of his city, and Boston owes him much."

William Ralph Emerson was buried on Brook Path at Forest Hills Cemetery but no monument has yet been erected to mark the resting place of the "Father of Shingle Style Architecture."