Stoneangels: As far as actually getting to Laurel Hill, you can see it from Roosevelt Boulevard, but you have no idea how to get in!

Ross Mitchell: Yes, thousands drive by every day on Kelly Drive, but the entrance is on Ridge Avenue. The neighborhood was not inviting in years gone by, although there’s definitely a change happening. The part of the cemetery that most people see is the Kelly Drive and Hunting Park intersection, but you can’t enter there-and you can only see a little sliver of the cemetery. You have no idea what’s above on the cliffs [overlooking the Schuylkill River]. The cemetery was built up here for the scenic vistas-the rural garden cemetery movement usually called for a lake-we have a river.
Stoneangels: Is there any plan to change the entrance to make it more accessible?

Ross Mitchell: We plan to improve the signage. The East Falls Economic Development Corporation has a grant for signage so hopefully we will be able to get listed on their signage on Kelly Drive. We are working on making East Falls a more desirable destination in general. We look at ourselves as the “Gateway to East Falls.”

Stoneangels: I see the new condos going up down the street.

Ross Mitchell: Hopefully they will bring a few thousand more people to the community. And with the Sherman Mills project up and running, East Falls will be a vibrant location with Laurel Hill as a cultural and ecological center uniting the community. In addition to increasing our signage on Kelly Drive, we want to reopen our Hunting Park gate and encourage joggers, bikers, and strollers who are going up Kelly Drive to make a little detour into the cemetery.

Stoneangels: I read in the “Stone in America” article that one of your first efforts to make Laurel Hill more accessible was to have it open on weekends. Personally, that was terrific for me! It was so hard for me to get in here; I really appreciated it.

Ross Mitchell: It was so hard to get in! Everybody works during the week and it was only open until noon on Saturday.

Stoneangels: Have you any parting words, Ross?

Ross Mitchell: People really need to come here and see Laurel Hill for themselves. They need to overcome their inhibition of ‘why would I want to visit a cemetery’ and realize that not all cemeteries are very depressing places. In fact I think this one is really a celebration of life. And you talk about, well, isn’t it disrespectful? If you look at the monuments and the sculpture in Laurel Hill you know these people wanted these monuments to be seen. They wouldn’t have spent thousands of dollars, in fact the largest mausoleum we have–the Disston mausoleum-in 1886 it cost $60,000 to build! A small modest mausoleum can easily cost $600,000 to a million dollars to build today.

Stoneangels: Why is it that people don’t build monuments and mausoleums anymore?

Ross Mitchell: People are building mausoleums today…at our sister cemetery, West Laurel Hill in Bala Cynwyd, there were three or four mausoleums built last year. But many people are not as rooted as they once were, with the mobility we have, people move all the time. We have large lots that are owned by families, but the family has spread out over the country. And many people are cremating nowadays, they’re not as rooted to the city, they’re not as rooted to the earth.

Stoneangels: Let me ask you about Sylvester Stallone and shooting the opening scenes of [the upcoming movie] “Rocky VI,” at Laurel Hill. Tell me about that.

Ross Mitchell: I wasn’t here. I was on vacation! (laughs). I did meet him when he came here before the shoot. He lived in Philadelphia for a number of years, and he loves Laurel Hill, so they shot here. He is on our Honorary Committee for our Gravedigger’s Ball.

Stoneangels: Does that mean he might come?

Ross Mitchell: I hope he comes and what I’d like to get him to do is autograph a pair of boxing gloves that we can auction off in our silent auction. How great would that be?! They had a stone made for Adrian, and they donated it to the cemetery. We have it mounted; if you go right around the corner (Adrian.jpg), right around the other side of the [gatehouse] building, it’s there all on its own.

Stoneangels: Where did they do the shooting?

Ross Mitchell: It was over on the south side, right across from Pemberton [John, Lieutenant General in the Confederate Army]; they got some good river views.

Stoneangels: Frank [Rausch, Laurel Hill staff member] told me the stone was engraved incorrectly?

Ross Mitchell: Yeah, Bill [Doran, Laurel Hill's Superintendent] had to get it re-done at the last minute.

Stoneangels: Old Mortality-type work.

Ross Mitchell: And we’re also going to be involved with the Fringe Festival. We are going to have a program here, have you ever heard of the Spoon River Anthology? You need to read this! By Edgar Lee Masters. It is a series of epitaphs, people speaking from the grave and gossiping about one another. And it’s so interesting; it’s really quite a good read. It’s everybody lamenting their losses and what they didn’t do in life, or bragging. It’s everybody from a made-up Mid-western town speaking from the grave, talking about themselves, and what they accomplished or didn’t accomplish and talking about each other! So we’re going to have group of poets and actors reading from Spoon River in the cemetery at dusk.

Stoneangels: Life after death–hiding behind the tombstones?

Ross Mitchell: We are working out the details – people will be invited to bring their chairs and blankets, and then we’re going to have an art show and reception next door, with some relevant art.

Stoneangels: That’s in September, right?

Ross Mitchell: Right after Labor Day, September 9th.

Next: Visiting Laurel Hill: Why The Cemetery Is A Celebration of Life

Stoneangels: You have an artifact exhibit in the building next door-I remember seeing things when we were over there taking donated items down to the Gravedigger’s Ball auction.

Ross Mitchell: Actually it is a museum, an exhibit. We have incredible archives going all the way back to 1836. We have everything-we have all the obituaries, letters, we have maps, blueprints, glass plates, we have photographs going back as far as… photography goes back! We have the copper plates for all the ads going way back, we have journals. We have a Mitchell’s International Almanac from 1850 with maps of Philadelphia and New York. New York City stops at Houston Street near the [Greenwich] Village.

Stoneangels: So what was below Houston Street?

Ross Mitchell: That was the city! The city was below Houston! There was nothing above it! There was no Midtown Manhattan! I saw another old Philadelphia map. You know why it’s called Robin Hood Dell? This was the old Ridge Road [in front of Laurel Hill], and there was an old tavern called the Robin Hood Tavern right next to the cemetery. They named the Robin Hood Dell for the Robin Hood Tavern. We’d love to display more of our collection, if we had the time and manpower.

Stoneangels: I’d be happy to volunteer to help. I’ve been locked in the safe a couple times and have seen your rooms of artifacts and records. Years ago I needed to open my camera back to un-jam a roll of film, so I asked Leo, the person working at the front desk, if he thought the vault was light tight. He offered to lock me in and it worked great! Sometimes you just have to trust people…

Stoneangels: Let me ask you about Tiffany stained glass in the mausoleums. Do you know if there is any?

Ross Mitchell: There were! There were seven Tiffany stained glass windows and in the 1970s an article came out identifying where all the Tiffany stained glass windows were across the country in cemeteries. Within a number of years, they were all stolen. But apparently Tiffany keeps very detailed records and photos of all of their products. We are in the process of contacting them to get copies of those images that I will post on the Stolen Art Network. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get them back and maybe not.

Stoneangels: In 1999 a Tiffany stained glass window worth $660,000 was stolen from a mausoleum in Brooklyn.

Ross Mitchell: Wow. All of our missing windows have been replaced with glass block. Nothing is less romantic.

Stoneangels: At least you didn’t do what they did in West Philly where they replaced them with cinder block!

Ross Mitchell: That could be less romantic. When you look into a mausoleum and the sun is coming through the stained glass it really is a very special event.

“…not all cemeteries are very depressing places. In fact I think this one is really a celebration of life.”

Stoneangels: I only recently started appreciating the subtler things in cemeteries like the stained glass.

Ross Mitchell: One of the tours we’ve been talking about doing is having our superintendent Bill Doran, who is this great Irish stonemason give a “Behind the Scenes” tour of the cemetery. He’s got all of these great stories about working here. Like the time he was working in one of the mausoleums. One of the crypt covers had fallen off so he was doing some repair work in it and it was totally dark in there and the door closed and he heard this noise behind him! He just ran out of there! Apparently it was a fox or opossum that had gotten into the crypt. He said he was never so scared in his whole life!

Stoneangels: I can’t picture anything scaring Bill!

Ross Mitchell: Neither could I. He has these great stories about the logistics of working in the cemetery. The “Behind the Scenes Tour with the Superintendent” is not on the schedule yet but we’re working on it.

Next: Ghost Stories and the Filming of Rocky VI

Stoneangels: You said death was more common in the 1800s?

Ross Mitchell: The life span was much shorter back then. And before there were antibiotics, people lost children all the time. We have one lot here where [a family] lost eight children in ten years, all under the age of ten.

Stoneangel: They weren’t all stillborn babies?

Ross Mitchell: No, colds would come around, infections would happen and there were no antibiotics. So people died [earlier]. People were laid out in the parlor. In fact I believe that’s one of the reasons they started calling it the “living” room instead of the parlor because the parlor waxs associated with where you would lay out the body when you had a death in the family. So “living” room…

Stoneangels: As opposed to the funeral “parlor.” I brought my daughter here when she was about fifteen-we used to come here together to take photographs. She was surprised to see so many tombstones of children who had died before they were 6 months old. She couldn’t understand why so many children had died that young. It was a great history lesson for her. Hanging around here, I think in some way helped me prepare myself for my father’s death. I have a small family and I was not used to grief and death. But I knew it was inevitable. So I appreciate Laurel Hill from that respect.

Ross Mitchell: One of the programs we’re developing here is in conjunction with St. Joseph’s University [Philadelphia], an Urban Mourning Rituals Program-that’s the working title now. It’s an outreach program into the local community. Unfortunately, with all the shootings that we’re having in Philadelphia–a lot of youth-on-youth murder–everybody in the city knows somebody who’s been shot. So we’re working on developing a program that’s based on the spontaneous memorials–spontaneous roadside memorials that happen, and the Rest In Peace memorials at murder sites, the spray-painted memorial on the back windows of cars, Rest In Peace spray-painted memorial t-shirts, sort of graffitied, modern urban rituals. These are a natural outgrowth of loss and of people trying to deal with loss.

So with Professor Berndt, from St. Joseph’s University, we’re developing a program to go out into the community to help children understand what these mourning rituals are, what they’re for and to help children deal with their loss. We’ll come to Laurel Hill as part of the program–we have 170 years of mourning rituals here and can help kids understand and work through their unfortunate losses.

Next: Behind the Scenes: Historical Archives at Laurel Hill

Stoneangels: You mentioned admission tickets–the cemetery charged admission?

Ross Mitchell: Actually it was just the opposite. Laurel Hill was founded in 1836 (before railroads). Because of the Panic of 1837, this big economic downturn, things didn’t start well. It really took another couple of years to get the operation going. They re-interred some notable people here like Charles Thompson, Secretary of the Continental Congress [1774 to 1781], Hugh Mercer [Revolutionary War hero], David Rittenhouse [astronomer and instrument maker]. They wanted to bring some people who gave it a little more oomph.Before Laurel Hill, everyone was buried in their church burial yard and if you were not affiliated with a church-which almost everyone was-then you were buried in a Potter’s Field. And with the rapid expansion of the city all through the 1800s-the population was doubling roughly every 20 years – the churches would sell their property because of it’s increased value. Laurel Hill was intended to be a place far enough outside the city and non-denominational, where you would have family lots in perpetuity.

Stoneangels: Non-denominational…

Ross Mitchell: Right. It was very much intended as that. That’s why we have all these lots with coping around them, the dynasty lots with the stones being the same for the whole family. Laurel Hill began to have such cachet that it was almost too popular! In 1848, 30,000 people visited here within a 9-month period! They would come up on the steam ferry from Fairmount. I saw a sign on the pier in an old photograph that said “Ferry Rides to Laurel Hill.”

Stoneangels: What pier?

Ross Mitchell: Down at the Fairmount Water Works! There were ferry boats that would take people up to Laurel Hill. It was a popular destination. In the [early] 1800s, [Philadelphia] was not a pretty city. People were very afraid of disease, hygiene was not–

Stoneangels: Oh! The yellow fever business…!

Ross Mitchell: The yellow fever business, right. Death was a very common everyday thing. So people would leave the city in the summer and they would also come out to Laurel Hill for picnics–before there was Fairmount Park, before there was the Art Museum, there was Laurel Hill!

Vintage 1800s photo of main entrance to Laurel Hill Cemetery, showing its signature “Old Mortality” monument. Photo courtesy of Laurel Hill Cemetery.

They had public sculpture-”Old Mortality” [Laurel Hill's signature gatehouse monument, designed in the 1830s by Scottish sculptor James Thom]-and it was landscaped, it was a park, a real garden cemetery. As a garden, John Jay Smith planted seven or eight hundred plants and shrub varieties that would thrive in this climate from all around the world. So it was very much intended to be a place that people wanted to come to, but so many people came that they had to limit how many people came! They started issuing lot holder passes.

Stoneangels: Do you think that’s because people were trashing the cemetery?

Ross Mitchell: No. It’s just that it was a little too crowded for the lot holders. It became too successful. One of my goals is to make it that successful again. My goal is to have another 30,000 people here in one year.

Stoneangels: I think the idea of having horse drawn carriage rides through here is phenomenal. You wouldn’t use old funerary carriages, would you?

Ross Mitchell: No I’m thinking more like the carriage rides like they have around Old City.

Next: Mourning Rituals: How Urban Youth Cope With Death and Grief

Stoneangels: I saw you on the PBS documentary, “A Cemetery Special” a few months ago. Is there a documentary on Laurel Hill available?

Ross Mitchell: No, but WHYY’s Arts & Culture Service presents stories about interesting destinations across the Delaware Valley, all the historic attractions and landmarks, like Laurel Hill, the Wharton Eshrick Museum. That short documentary was what you saw. We have a gentleman who has a company that does a lot of corporate promotional pieces and he has gotten the bug for Laurel Hill! He’s already done a promo piece for us and he’s trying to find the funding–we need two or three hundred thousand dollars to do a decent documentary. He wants to get some re-enactors and he’s got a whole grand vision. We’d love to get that done but we have so many funding needs.
Stoneangels: I can see why you want to draw people here for the great cultural benefits, but how does that provide income to keep the cemetery going?

Ross Mitchell: We have the Friends of Laurel Hill, a non-profit 501(c)(3) support group for the cemetery. Laurel Hill is a 501(c)(13) Non-Profit, which is solely for cemeteries–the cemetery does a civic good (takes care of the dead), if this property wasn’t tax exempt it would be taxed out of business. But it’s not a non-profit where you can give a donation and take a tax deduction. So the Friends was formed in 1976 as the non-profit support group that can raise money, that can write grants, and to whom people can give tax deductible contributions. The Friends’ mission is: historic preservation and educational outreach and programming.

Stoneangels: And you’re also the director of the Friends?

Ross Mitchell: Yes. The cemetery has many individual endowments for lots (which only pay for the separate lot care) but the cemetery is not making money. The Friends are trying to get to a place where first of all we’re supporting ourselves and the approach we’re taking to do that is by making the cemetery into a destination location through educational outreach programming. And we write as many grants as we can. We need to make Laurel Hill known-we’re one of the best-known secrets in the city (laughs)!

Stoneangels: Here’s a naive question: Since Laurel Hill’s a National Historic Landmark; doesn’t that entitle you to some government funding?

Ross Mitchell: No one’s entitled to anything! You have to earn it through your programming, your grants, through your needs, and it depends on who you’re competing against! If there are twenty National Historic Landmarks competing for the same grant, some have to win, some have to lose. You have to make sure your needs are projected in the best light and you never know who you’re competing against! It’s a competition, like anything.

Sidewalk replacement along Laurel Hill’s main Ridge Avenue gatehouse entrance.

Stoneangels: I knew they didn’t just hand you a check, because if you had all the money you needed, you’d right the tipped monuments, do some painting–

Ross Mitchell: Right, well there’s a fund-raising pyramid: at the bottom of the pyramid is your membership and in the middle are your grants; the top of the pyramid are your private donors, and they make up a huge percentage–more than 50%–of what the pyramid should be composed of. So even if you get all the grants in the world and all the membership in the world, that’s not enough to sustain organizations. So they really need a three-tiered approach. We’re trying to build up individual funding, public funding, our foundational funding, and expanding our membership and our educational outreach program.

We also have two strategic plans-we have a Historic Preservation strategic plan and an Interpretive Programming strategic plan. The plans outline how we want to move ahead. The Interpretive Programming plan gives us a structure for our tours and our outreach into the community.

Next: Yellow Fever Business: Why Laurel Hill’s Popularity Soared in the 1800

Stoneangels: Prior to coming to Laurel Hill, you worked for seven years as gallery director at the Barnes Foundation. You were hired as director here with no cemetery experience. I was curious about that.

Ross Mitchell: Well I come from an Art Management background–and art background-I started off as a painter. I quickly discovered that I’d really like to have money, though! (laughs). So I’d gotten into Arts Management and also was doing historic preservation work, and I’d always loved cemeteries. They [Laurel Hill] weren’t looking for a cemetery person-they were looking for somebody who could help them make the transition from being a cemetery to being a destination-a National Historic Landmark. So what I bring to the position is the background of appreciation of the artwork that is here and the historic preservation experience.
Stoneangels: What kinds of things are going on at Laurel Hill these days?

Ross Mitchell: Well, we’ve re-branded ourselves through a consulting agency as “TheUndergroundMuseum.org.” We found that when you ask people about visiting cemeteries, they say, “Why would I want to visit a cemetery?” Our goal is to get people to visit. When I first started at Laurel Hill, we had all these different images and logos and letterheads – not one consistent image, so before we went too far, we needed a consistent branded identity, where we could tie everything together-our website, our letterhead, our newsletter. We received a $10,000 [Samuel S.] Fels Fund Grant to do a branding project. TheUndergroundMuseum repositions us. -As an example: one of the ads that was developed states “Dead men tell no tales… that’s why we have tour guides.”

Stoneangels: In the article “Resurrecting Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery” (Jan-Feb 2006 issue of Stone in America, the Business and Design Magazine of Memorialists) you are quoted as saying that critics of your work here think your “less-than-heavily-deep-and-serious approach [to generating interest and revenue] is disrespectful.”

Ross Mitchell: Well, one of the ideas I had was to start horse and carriage rides through the cemetery. I received a letter from someone who thought the “clopping sound of horses through the cemetery would break the peace.” Well, first of all, we have admission tickets from the 1800s which state, “This ticket admits the carriage of the lot holder.” Back then there were only carriages that came in here! Somehow we need to market the cemetery, to get more people here, to make it into a destination, which is something that John Jay Smith [Laurel Hill's founder] had as his initial concept of Laurel Hill– that it should be rewarding and entertaining. If we do nothing, and the cemetery falls into disrepair, is that respectful? So we need to find ways to make people want to come to Laurel Hill-through educational programming, outreach to the community, and by having it be fun! Whether it’s our Halloween tours or whatever. It no longer solely functions as a cemetery as it is 99% full; we have to find ways to generate interest and support.

Stoneangels: So there are no more burials?

Ross Mitchell: We still have roughly 1% of 78 acres available, and some families have had lots for a hundred, a hundred and fifty years [so their descendants continue to be buried in the family plot or mausoleum]. We have between 25 and 50 burials a year. Not enough to support our operations. So that’s what I’m trying to do, find other ways of getting funding to support [the cemetery]. We are also trying to make the lots we do have more appealing.

Next: From Red to Black: Laurel Hill’s Fundraising Plan

1. Ross Mitchell (Part 2): The Underground Museum: Philly’s New Must-See Tourist Attraction
2. Ross Mitchell (Part 3): From Red to Black: Laurel Hill’s Fundraising Plan
3. Ross Mitchell (Part 4): Yellow Fever Business: Why Laurel Hill’s Popularity Soared in the 1800s
4. Ross Mitchell (Part 5): Mourning Rituals: How Urban Youth Cope With Death and Grief
5. Ross Mitchell (Part 6): Behind the Scenes: Historical Archives at Laurel Hill
6. Ross Mitchell (Part 7): Ghost Stories and the Filming of Rocky VI
7. Ross Mitchell (Part 8): Visiting Laurel Hill: Why The Cemetery Is A Celebration of Life

To make a tax-deductible contribution towards the preservation of Laurel Hill, please send donation to the Friends of Laurel Hill Cemetery, or call 215-228-8200 for information on specific programs or projects.

The Friends of Laurel Hill
Laurel Hill Cemetery
3822 Ridge Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19132-1840