STL ASLA Tour of Washington Park Cemetery
All STL ASLA members are welcomed to join!
Meeting at 10:00 am for an hour long walking tour of Washington Park Cemetery (4650 James S. McDonnell Blvd, Berkeley, MO 63134).
Look for a light blue storage container. This is located across the street from a Waffle House on Brown Rd,/James S. McDonnell Blvd. (If you go near the airport, you have gone too far.)
No registration required.
Contact Carolyn Gaidis with any questions regarding the event.
Washington Park Cemetery is an historic African American cemetery located in Berkeley, Missouri, in the city’s southern precinct and near the corner of Natural Bridge Road and James S. McDonnell Blvd. just due east of Lambert International Airport. Many news programs have reported that nearly 30 acres of the approximately 42-acre historic cemetery are in a wretched state of neglect and disrepair. We have begun a multi-year effort to turn the cemetery into a beautiful north St. Louis County heritage site for these former St. Louisans, their families and descendants to come!
The cemetery, which is highly visible from cars on Highway 70 and airplanes landing at Lambert Airport, is the final resting place for over 42,000 people, and for many years was one of few cemeteries where the black community could bury their deceased. Revered ministers, respected educators and attorneys, noted civil rights leaders and physicians, and beloved family members are not the only ones buried at the cemetery. It is the final resting place for many U.S. servicemen who chose to be buried by family members and near the homes of their survivors as opposed to the rather far away Jefferson Barracks Cemetery. Veterans buried at the cemetery have served in the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. With military stones found destroyed throughout the cemetery - that once represented their devoted service in five U.S. wars - survivors are lamenting their veterans’ decisions to be buried at the deteriorating Washington Park Cemetery which has no perpetual care funds left. We have a plan to end the laments of these families and turn the cemetery into a landmark St. Louis will be proud of.
Washington Park Cemetery is eligible for the National Historic Registry based on areas of significance relevant to burial places, art and architecture, landscape architecture, community planning and development, archeology, ethnic heritage, exploration and settlement, health/ medicine, military history, religion, and social history. The funerary art, construction or engineering techniques, landscape architecture, and other values are recognized under National Register Criterion C. (Landscape nominations have unique mapping and description requirements.)