See the breathtaking landscape layout at Glenwood

The city’s most exciting — and most likely most highly-priced — final resting area is the 150-year-old Glenwood Cemetery, where titans of field can pay out tens of millions of pounds for a large plots of land where by they and other family associates are to be buried.

“I have a standing joke that I invest fifty percent of my time in River Oaks and the other half in Glenwood Cemetery,” reported longtime Houston landscape architect Johnny Steele of Johnny Steele Design, who has made cemetery plots for numerous people, which include the late Texans owner Bob McNair. “I’m normally doing the job on a thing in excess of there. Often we go back to present web sites and modify them, and often we enlarge them.”

In fact, when Steele, a Louisiana indigenous, began his job listed here in 1977, his 1st job was designing a cemetery plot for a consumer, creating a structure with brickwork and greenery. Given that then, his cemetery get the job done has ranged from plots for two people to individuals that are intended to accommodate generations of an extended loved ones in the equal of a modest park.

As Steele produced stunning gardens for clients’ households all through the town, they usually requested him to layout their cemetery house when they attained an age that bought them wondering of the closing chapter of their lives.

The exact same is true for the landscape architects and crews at McDugald Steele, which by means of the many years has made up to 50 cemetery plots for shoppers. (Johnny Steele is a previous husband or wife there.)

Steele and David Samuelson, a landscape architect at McDugald Steele, claimed that although there are other attractive cemeteries in the Houston place, none enables the elaborate, individualized plots that Glenwood does.

Very low brick walls, named “coping,” or walkways in hilly regions mark exactly where one particular plot starts and an additional finishes. Marble and granite markers and statuary are other constants. Greater plots may possibly even have gates manufactured of bronze or iron, with relatives crests or designs modeled just after individuals found at owners’ homes.

You are going to obtain flowering crape myrtles, lush magnolia trees and previous live oaks whose sprawling branches nearly touch the ground in older parts of the cemetery.

“More men and women carrying out additional, that’s genuine,” mentioned Dick Ambrus, govt director at Glenwood Cemetery. “They see their neighbors executing it, and they do it, far too. Persons are anxious to make their area glimpse good, and it tends to make Glenwood look incredibly excellent.”

Filled with background

Glenwood Cemetery, 2525 Washington, was organized in 1871 and opened for small business the pursuing calendar year as a back garden cemetery, a pastoral location seen additional as a park, with people bringing picnic lunches on weekends.

Again then, Glenwood Cemetery was on the outskirts of the city and Houston barely had 10,000 citizens. It followed the new design for parklike cemeteries with curved roads, heaps of trees and shrubs, ponds and even pavilions.

Its rolling slopes and shady trees manufactured it one particular of the prettiest pieces of our swampy metropolis — the River Oaks of cemeteries, so to speak.

Ambrus has been govt director there for 38 many years, looking at some of the much more elaborate plots get shape on his each day walks by means of the cemetery.

One burial areas — a 3-foot-by-10-foot patch of floor that will hold a one casket or 3 cremation urns — start at $8,500 and run as substantial as $50,000. That’s far more than $1,600 for every square foot for the choicest plots. Lots of, although, are a lot bigger and built to be additional elaborate, two or 3 tiers with brick stairs and walkways, columbarium partitions with niches for storing cremation urns, fences, sculptures and plantings.

At this time, the premier plot is 5,300 sq. ft, and there are a handful from 4,000 to 5,000 sq. feet.

Right after the land is purchased, operate to create partitions, fences and landscaping can insert $40,000 to $1 million to the price tag of the filth for people who want a lot more than a plot of ground and headstone, Samuelson claimed.

“Location has benefit. Let’s say you’re sitting on a mountaintop wanting about a lake — that is where the worth is,” Ambrus reported. “Glenwood has the luxury of distinct heights, so we can differentiate pricing primarily based on facilities. Not that the lower elevations aren’t gorgeous some are incredibly stunning and acquire gain of the lake and skyline and town.”

People buried there are a who’s who of city background, from Charlotte Allen to John Wortham. In among, there are properly-recognised surnames Baker, Blaffer, Botts, Brown, Cullinan, Farish, Interest, Rice, Sterling and Wiess. Architect John Staub, coronary heart surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley, actress Gene Tierney Lee, wildcatter Glenn McCarthy and industrialist Howard Hughes — the most visited grave, according to Ambrus — are buried there, also.

Steele tells a story about Hughes’ grave. It would seem that Hughes hired Staub — who mainly built properties — to style and design his plot. Staub came back again with a staid, standard prepare that Hughes rejected. His upcoming strategy, incorporating the biblical trumpets of Jericho alongside a curved wall, caught. Hughes and his moms and dads are all buried there.

In all, some 24,000 people have been buried in Glenwood’s 88 acres, and Ambrus claimed there now are enough plots for the cemetery to very last a further 60 yrs. By means of the a long time, Glenwood has acquired adjacent land to increase, and much more than 20 years ago incorporated an additional cemetery to the west, established by the German Society of Houston.

In a lot more the latest several years, Glenwood dug a lake, fed by Buffalo Bayou and Mom Nature, as a resource of drinking water for the cemetery’s irrigation process. Architects and designers also sometimes consider sustainability in supplies, employing extra Cedar Bayou brick reclaimed from aged structures in South Houston and Galveston.

Statuary and sculpture, each new and old, can be found through, from marble angels perched on graves of beloved daughters and wives to bronze figures moved from backyards to the cemetery. The plots are much more individualized and additional like gardens their entrepreneurs had in their have backyards, and with arranging that from time to time normally takes people today all above the earth to select marble or granite long just before they die.

No a single goes to Glenwood Cemetery for picnics any additional, but it’s not abnormal to see walkers and cyclists enjoying the safety of its shady streets. Now and then you are going to come across site visitors sitting down on benches in the vicinity of the graves of their beloved kinds.

Ambrus purchased his have plot at Glenwood Cemetery 30 a long time in the past. “It’s an space tucked absent in the again, variety of obscure. I haven’t concluded it out yet. I’d superior get going on that,” he said.

Particular person options

Sue and Monthly bill Whitfield envisioned their last resting location as a attractive garden. With the aid of close friend Jeff Bradley, who has served them with event setting up for many a long time, and Samuelson at McDugald Steele, they evaluated their alternatives.

They bought a tiered plot in the aspect of a hill, oversaw the fabrication of a Greco-Roman-style granite sarcophagus and hand-chosen Japanese blueberry trees that would be planted symmetrically on each and every side.

Bill Whitfield died in 2008 at the age of 80, and his coffin was put into the crypt on their plot at Glenwood. When Sue died in early 2020, she was placed there, way too. In the grounds all-around the sarcophagus, there’s room for Bradley and the couple’s four young children, Bradley claimed.

“It was really important to Sue that if somebody arrived to take a look at, they could sit on the bench driving the crypt, study the Scriptures and then look all around down the hill and feel like they ended up in a park in mother nature somewhat than a cemetery,” Bradley reported. “After Bill passed absent, I would acquire Sue out there with regularity. We would have a sandwich from Nielsen’s (Deli) and sit on the bench and view the location.”

Bradley visits the plot by himself now and reported that sometime his stays will very likely be buried with his expensive friends’.

An elaborate cemetery plot may seem like an extravagance, but the Whitfields had been effectively-recognized philanthropists, as well, serving on a assortment of boards and donating to numerous nonprofits in the metropolis. Sue Whitfield was element of the Fondren family — co-founders of what is now ExxonMobil — and her grandmother lived in the Montrose Boulevard mansion that now is the La Colombe d’Or Lodge.

When Cherie Lindley’s mom turned ill, Cherie and her spouse, John, started out pondering about finish-of-existence concerns. They drove by Glenwood and knew it would be a spot wherever they could personalize their cemetery plot.

“I adore a great deal of factors about Glenwood it’s historical and it is called the cemetery of angels,” Cherie Lindley claimed. “Our plot is rather smaller, but it is heading to be lovely. We’ll have all white marble and an absent space with a cross.”

“I preferred a bigger back garden with benches and a different great deal, but my partner mentioned, ‘No, we could buy a household with the funds we’re expending. Let’s stay with the 1 we have and give our dollars to persons who will need it,’” Cherie Lindley mentioned of the value of the land and improvements. “I adore my smaller region.”