Columbia Gardens Cemetery

The Columbia Gardens Cemetery is a cemetery located in the Ashton Heights Historic District of Arlington, Virginia

The Cemetery
The Columbia Gardens Cemetery is located at the southern boundary of the Ashton Heights Historic District and is one of its most prominent features.

The cemetery was created by the Alexandria Park Association, incorporated in 1914 in Huntington, West Virginia. The president of the association was Colonel Robert Dye, former superintendent of the Arlington National Cemetery and its principal founder was principal founder Julius Broh.

In the proposal to the Arlington County Board, the Association indicated the intent to “make a place that will be attractive as a park and a credit to the county.”

Having won approval from the County, in November 1917, the Association’s board of directors employed a landscape architect from Cleveland, Ohio, a Mr. Jenney, to prepare the design, specifications, and methods of procedure for operating a cemetery.

The Columbia Gardens Cemetery is an example of merging landscape design and city planning based on the principles set down in the late 19th by designers such as Frederick Law Olmsted and subsequently developed by the City Beautiful movement. However as opposed to the linear plans advocated by City Beautiful for urban design, Jenney preferred a more rural cemetery design, with winding roads and natural landscape features.

The “park” initially encompassed nearly thirty-eight adjoining acres, with an option to purchase an additional thirty acres.

The Columbia Gardens Cemetery has been  family operated  for four generations. At present it is one of the few cemeteries in the Northern Virginia area offering available burial sites with the option of an upright monument. Other options range from columbarium niches to family mausoleums.

Upon entering the main gates on Arlington Boulevard, a main alley crosses a rose garden beyond which  lie the winding alleys of the cemetery, s a natural setting of dignity and grace for reflection on loved ones who have gone before.

The mausoleum in honor of Admiral of the Navy George Dewey, in which his body lay until its removal to the crypt of the Bethlehem Chapel  of the Washington National Cathedral, was removed in 1933 and is at present  located near the entrance of the cemetery where it is used as a public receiving vault

Notable burials

 * Roy Buchanan (1939 – 1988) guitarist and blues musician - Plot: Section C (second to last row) on Azalea Avenue
 * Robert Carlyle Byrd (1917-2010) US Senator from West Virginia
 * Charles Noel Crosby (1876-1951) US Congressman from Pen nsylvania
 * Marian Dobson Duffel (1918-2010) Foreign Service medical officer for the United States State Department
 * Ernest Krikor Emurian (1912-2004) pastor of the Cherrydale United Methodist Church, composer of hymns, anthems and popular songs
 * Edward Cunningham 'Eddie' Foster (1887-1937) Major League Baseball
 * Francis Eugene Worley (1908-1974) US Congressman from Texas
 * George N. Saegmuller ' (1847 - 1934) - inventor of astronomical instruments

The Columbia Gardens Memorials
The territory of the cemetery also hosts the ‘’’Columbia Gardens Memorials’’’ a workshop established in 1964. It specializes in crafting monument and is run by Ned R. Thomas and Robert Thomas, graduates of the Elberton Granite Institute in Georgia

Columbia Gardens is the only memorial company to employ a craftsman skilled in the almost lost art of hand-cut, V-tooled lettering. It also was the first to use on-premises diamond etching for highly detailed duplication of artwork and stencil press machines for more even and consistent lettering.

Columbia Gardens Memorials has crafted memorials for Joe Louis, Matthew Henson, Charles Bater “Tex” Thornton and Michael J. Smith. The workshop has also cut the lettering for the United States Navy Memorial.

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