Hollywood Cemetery
National Historic Landmark District; An 1847 Rural Cemetery Holding US Presidents James Monroe And John Tyler, Jefferson Davis And Roughly 18,000 Confederate Dead · Richmond, Virginia
A hundred and thirty-five acres of hill, ravine and holly wood above the James in Richmond, laid out in 1847 in the rural cemetery style that treated a burial ground as a public landscape rather than a churchyard, and opened in 1849. The names in it are the reason people come. Two presidents of the United States are buried here - James Monroe, under an extraordinary cast-iron Gothic canopy that Richmond calls the birdcage, and John Tyler - along with Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, and six Virginia governors. On a ridge above them stands a ninety-foot pyramid of dry-laid James River granite, built in 1869 as a memorial over roughly eighteen thousand Confederate dead moved here from the Gettysburg battlefield and elsewhere; it was raised without mortar by a workforce that included convict labour, and the capstone was set by a man who volunteered for the job. The other thing people come for is the view: the western ridge looks straight down onto the Hollywood Rapids, which take their name from the same bluff.
412 South Cherry Street, Richmond, Virginia, 23220, United States
Open daily, generally 8 AM to 5 PM with slightly longer hours in summer, and FREE to enter on foot or by car. The office keeps shorter weekday hours. Guided walking tours run to a published schedule, mainly in the warmer months, and are charged. THIS IS A WORKING CEMETERY with burials in progress - visitors are welcome but services take precedence. Closes at dusk.
Hollywood Cemetery on Spottos · Explore more places on Spottos