Cypress Lawn Memorial Park - About Us

<BODY BGCOLOR="White" BACKGROUND="graphics/main_bg.gif" TEXT="Black"> <CENTER> <IMG SRC="graphics/t_history.jpg" WIDTH=386 HEIGHT=61 HSPACE=0 VSPACE=0 BORDER=0 ALT="History"> </CENTER> <P><FONT FACE="helvetica, arial" SIZE="2"> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="5" ALIGN="LEFT"><TR><TD ALIGN="CENTER"><IMG SRC="graphics/photo_historic_entrance.jpg" WIDTH=248 HEIGHT=166 HSPACE=0 VSPACE=0 BORDER=0 ALT=""><FONT FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE="2" COLOR="Navy"><BR>Cypress Lawn's Portal on<BR>the east side of El Camino Real<BR>(Early 1900's)</TD></TR></TABLE>      Cypress Lawn's two great strengths - beauty and reliability - generated a third, most important asset: the interconnection between the memorial park and the people of the San Francisco Bay Area. A dynamic relationship developed. Pioneers and individualists, and groups of immigrants from around the globe, brought their heritage and their energies directly and indirectly to the memorial park. A special community began to take form. The result was that, in addition to being an enormous indoor and outdoor art gallery, the park became a rich repository of Northern California history - and participated in the making of that history as well. Cypress Lawn's staff today, enriched by a variety of cultural backgrounds, is a living demonstration of social changes that took place over the course of time. But Cypress Lawn has always been a group effort. Hamden Noble did not guide the new memorial park through its early years by himself. He was surrounded and supported by a dedicated board of directors and board of trustees. These boards represented a high level of sophistication, accomplishment, and influence. <P> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="5" ALIGN="RIGHT"><TR><TD ALIGN="CENTER"><IMG SRC="graphics/photo_founder.jpg" WIDTH=158 HEIGHT=242 HSPACE=0 VSPACE=0 BORDER=0 ALT=""><FONT FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE="2" COLOR="Navy"><BR>Cypress Lawn's founder;<BR>Hamden Holmes Noble<BR> (1844-1929)</FONT></TD></TR></TABLE>      In addition to Noble, those first boards included Charles Felton, who cofounded the oil company that would eventually become Chevron and also served in the IJ.S. Senate and House of Representatives; Irving Scott, a partner in the Union Iron Works, who designed Comstock Lode mining machinery, built battleships, and was also a regent of the University of California and a trustee for Stanford University (his brother founded Hillsborough); George W. McNear, who owned large-scale wheat interests and whose import-export business increased shipping to and from San Francisco (McNear Beach Park in Marin County is named after his brother); John Taylor, who manufactured mining and mill supplies, chemicals, and chemical supplies: James Scobie, a building contractor; Alanson Phelps, a sales agent for Thomas H. Selby metals import company: Walter Dean, a railroad builder and an officer in several mining concerns: and Timothy Hopkins, adopted son of Mark Hopkins' widow, a director of Wells Fargo, Southern Pacific Railroad, and Pacific Telephone and Telegraph. He designed the layout for the city of Palo Alto at the request of Leland Stanford and held life tenure as a Stanford trustee. Over the course of Cypress Lawn's first century, the board has continued to resound with names significant in California's history - Crocker, Flood, Buck, Newhall. In a very intimate way, these families that became connected to the memorial park invested not only their trust, but their hearts and their labor as well. They powerfully affected the association's direction and shared in the responsibility for its success. <P> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="5" ALIGN="LEFT"><TR><TD ALIGN="CENTER"><IMG SRC="graphics/photo_memorialday.jpg" WIDTH=298 HEIGHT=226 HSPACE=0 VSPACE=0 BORDER=0 ALT=""><FONT FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE="2" COLOR="Navy"><BR>Memorial Day observance at Laurel Hill Cemetery, 1909.<BR>With no endowed care program, upkeep fell upon<BR>family members.</TD></TR></TABLE>      Along with winning the trust of individual citizens and families. Cypress Lawn received the approval of San Francisco's Laurel Hill Cemetery Association. When Laurel Hill, along with other cemeteries, was finally forced from San Francisco, its directors chose Cypress Lawn to receive the evicted thirty-five thousand buried at Laurel Hill. This gave Cypress Lawn a role in San Francisco's development: it allowed the city to evolve in new ways and resolved a long-standing public controversy. With that action, San Francisco also relinquished a part of its own history to Cypress Lawn. Those buried at Laurel Hill during the second half of the nineteenth century, beginning in 1854, were true pioneers of the early West: many ordinary men, women, and children, a few scoundrels, many good people, and some whose names are still familiar -- Larkin, de Young, Flood, Broderick. They became part of Cypress Lawn, Although some had been moved individually by their families earlier, most were ultimately buried in vaults under a grass-covered mound that bears a memorial to their achievements. <P> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="5" ALIGN="RIGHT"><TR><TD ALIGN="CENTER"><IMG SRC="graphics/photo_rail_coach.jpg" WIDTH=257 HEIGHT=149 HSPACE=0 VSPACE=0 BORDER=0 ALT=""><FONT FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE="2" COLOR="Navy"><BR>Cypress Lawn's funeral trolley car, on the<BR>San Francisco & San Mateo Electric Railway.</FONT></TD></TR></TABLE>      The Laurel Hill Monument at Cypress Lawn represents the first wave of great movements of people that dramatically changed the United States in the century during which the cemetery developed. The story of America's broadening cultural and religious life, perhaps most apparent on the Pacific Coast, is one that is told in visual terms at Cypress Lawn. It begins with the Laurel Hill mound and continues across the mausoleums of grand families and all the cemeteries-within-cemeteries that surround that mound. One sees group after group of immigrants: Italian, Irish, Latin American, Asian, Armenian, Iranian, Samoan. Their graves are frequently clustered together, because of burial customs or simply the comfort of being near others from their lands of origin. Smaller subgroups tell another chapter, such as the Salvation Army's area, the Iona Churchyard where two Episcopal bishops are buried, or the memorial to members of the Typesetter's Union. <P> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="5" ALIGN="LEFT"><TR><TD ALIGN="CENTER"><IMG SRC="graphics/photo_modern_entrance.jpg" WIDTH=248 HEIGHT=168 HSPACE=0 VSPACE=0 BORDER=0 ALT=""><BR><FONT FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE="2" COLOR="Navy"><BR>Cypress Lawn's Portal on<BR>the east side of El Camino Real<BR>(Modern Day)</TD></TR></TABLE>      From among these people interred at Cypress Lawn, an astonishing number of larger-than-life individuals stand out. They are people who were important not only to their families but to the story of the West. By their actions, they created pieces of our history. That they have come to rest all together in one place gives Cypress Lawn a unique part in that history as well. These individuals lend the memorial park their character and enrich it with their pasts. Their legends produce not only a chronology of Cypress Lawn, but a history of Northern California, <A HREF="notables.html">Here are just some of their stories.</A></FONT> <BR clear="left"> <P><CENTER> <TABLE border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <TR> <td align="center" valign="bottom">E-mail us:<A href="mailto:info@cypresslawn.com"> info@cypresslawn.com</A> <br><br></td> </TR> <tr> <td><font size="-1"><div align=center font class="bottom"> <a href="index.html" target="_top">Main</a> | <a href="index_aboutus.html" target="_top">About Us</a> | <a href="index_gallery.html" target="_top">Gallery</a> | <a href="index_cemetery.html" target="_top">Cemetery</a> | <a href="index_events.html" target="_top">Events</a> | <a href="index_requestinfo.html" target="_top">Request Info</a> <br></td> </tr> </TABLE></CENTER> <P> <HR ALIGN=RIGHT SIZE=3 WIDTH=400> <TABLE WIDTH=100%> <TR> <TD ALIGN="RIGHT" VALIGN="BOTTOM"> <A HREF="http://www.funeralnet.com" TARGET="_blank"></A><BR> <FONT SIZE="-1"> Web Design by <A HREF="http://www.funeralnet.com/index.html" TARGET="_blank">FuneralNet</A><BR> Copyright © 1998, Cypress Lawn Memorial Park and FuneralNet</FONT> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </BODY>