Bellefontaine Cemetery

Hotchkiss, a civil engineer trained in horticulture who was superintendent at Green-Wood Cemetery (1838) in Brooklyn, New York, came to oversee Bellefontaine and stayed for forty-six years. Set high on rolling hills, this cemetery's northeast boundary culminates in a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. The initial purchase of land for Bellefontaine (pronounced here as "Bell-fountain") included farm fields where hay and lavender were cultivated to help fund the cemetery. Its 138 acres offered the perfect site for an outstanding example of the nineteenth-century rural cemetery movement. The plan is characteristically picturesque, with winding paths and roadways named for flowers and trees. Buried here are many local and national luminaries. Notable monuments range from simple obelisks to Gothic and Egyptian Revival. Among these is the red granite mausoleum (1914) designed by Barnett, Haynes and Barnett for brewer Adolphus Busch and the severely classical tomb of the Mallinckrodt family (whose fortune was made from the manufacture of chemicals) designed by Henry Bacon. Set within the stone monument of David Rowland Francis, mayor of St. Louis and governor of Missouri, is a shrouded figure epitomizing grief, executed in bronze by George Julian Zolnay. Best known is the tomb for Charlotte Dickson Wainwright, the young wife of businessman Ellis Wainwright, designed by Louis Sullivan in 1892. The monumental limestone cube superimposed with a sphere is adorned only with bands of limestone carved in elaborate foliate patterns, and a doorway of double bronze grilles. The tomb is the masterpiece one expects.