Lakewood Cemetary and Chapel Walking Tour

Explore the beauty of Lakewood by taking a free walking tour. Lakewood tour guides will lead you through an informational and fun experience that covers architecture, notable names, historic monuments, and other facets of Lakewood’s past, as well as what is being designed and updated now. The walk is about 3/4 mile at a slow ot moderate pace. Parts of this tour may not be wheelchair or scooter accessible. The tour will be rain or shine. Current weather prediction is 62 degrees and sunny. If any dangerous weather is predicted, I will comment on website the day of the tour.
Please keep your rsvp up to date as I have 15 tickets and there are no last minute cancellations.

Lakewood Cemetery is a large private, non-sectarian, rural cemetery located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It is located at 3600 Hennepin Avenue at the southern end of the Uptown area. It is noted for its chapel which is on the National Register of Historic Places and was modeled after the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey.[2]

## History

About 250 acres in size, Lakewood memorializes the dead with more than 200,000 monuments, markers and memorializations.[3]: 56  Long considered one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the country, it was modeled after the rural cemeteries of 19th-century France, such as Père-Lachaise in Paris. When Lakewood was established in 1871 rural cemeteries were becoming more popular as part of a growing trend away from churchyard burials in the heart of the city,

In July 1871 Colonel William S. King, local businessman and newspaper publisher, proposed to community leaders of the city that they work together to establish a cemetery "on some of the beautiful locations out near the lakes, where the encroachments of the city would never seriously interfere." In August of the same year a meeting was held for establishing the Lyndale Cemetery Association (Changed to Lakewood in Feb of 1872).[4]: 951  According to the minutes of the original meeting recorded by Thomas Lowry, "that after an examination of various localities they had chosen the land owned by William S. King lying between Lakes Calhoun and Harriet." Colonel King agreed to sell his land for the purpose at a cost of $21,000, "to be paid back over a year at 7 percent interest."[5] The first trustees voted to raise $25,000 to purchase the land and make improvements at a time when the cost of a home in Minneapolis was about $500. The money was raised by selling 250 shares of stock at $100 a piece, two-thirds of which was purchased by the trustees themselves. The remaining balance was solicited by a committee and sold to other local investors. In April 1872 Superintendent A.B. Barton and the board of trustees employed C. W. Folsom, Superintendent of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts to develop plans for the new cemetery.[3]: 25  In October 1872 the Association reacquired all stocks that had been sold to the public.[5]
The public dedication of Lakewood was held on September 16, 1872, with "a large number of lots being selected at the close of the exercise by the citizens present."[4]: 952  Many of the earliest lots sold in the 1870s-1880s remained unused until 1972 when they were reclaimed for resale to the public.[3]: 131  The first person buried in Lakewood Cemetery was Maggie Menzel who died on January 24, 1872, at the age of nineteen. [
Since its inception in 1872 Lakewood has continued to operate as a non-profit, non-denominational cemetery providing funeral services to the public.[11][4]: 951  Many Minneapolis streets, parks, and monuments bear the names of the Lakewood's original founders — Thomas Lowry, William D. Washburn, and Charles M. Loring, to name a few. The cemetery itself memorializes many notable persons, including former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, Civil War General Lewis A. Grant, and Senator Paul Wellstone who was killed in a plane crash in 2002.