Arlington Cemetery

Arlington Cemetery

Arlington Cemetery © George E. Thomas
1895; 1921, A. E. Wightman. 2900 State Rd., 2 miles west of Upper Darby

Cemeteries reflect contemporary architectural and cultural themes; for example, Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia (
PH134) is a repository of nineteenth-century historical revivals while also representing the shift from the classical to the picturesque in landscape. Arlington Cemetery, founded in 1895, was surrounded by massive walls by A. E. Wightman in 1921. In the 1980s, as modern media made everything mobile, it was reinvented as a historical theme park with 5/8 re-creations of George Washington's Mount Vernon as an on-site funeral home and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as a columbarium. Will Robert E. Lee's Arlington House in Virginia be miniaturized next?

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