Where are
Hamilton County's Cemeteries?
Hamilton County, Ohio has 108 cemeteries spread across the county.
There are several different types of cemeteries: traditional, family burial grounds, religious, historic, green/natural, monumental, memorial park, veterans, mausoleums, and garden. In Hamilton County, the most common cemetery types are traditional, family burial grounds, religious, historic, and memorial parks.
Traditional
Family Burial Ground
Religious
Historic
Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum, in Hamilton County, is one of the premier cemeteries that currently acts as a multi-functional space. It is a beautiful place with walking/running/biking paths, water features, many places to sit, native plant classes, as well as many other regularly scheduled events. This cemetery is a loved place within the community. All cemeteries in Hamilton County cannot hold all of these functions. But they can do more than what they are doing now.
Memorial Park
Currently, the cemeteries in Hamilton County use approximately 2569 acres of land. This is approximately 1% of Hamilton County’s land. The majority of those cemeteries only serve one function.
NLCD Categories
The National Landcover Database (NLCD) divides the land into 16 different categories. In Hamilton County, 14 of the 16 categories are present within the cemeteries. Developed, Open Space is the largest category at 56%. Developed, Open Space land is described as “areas with a mixture of some constructed materials, but mostly vegetation in the form of lawn grasses” by the NLCD. For the whole county, only 19% of the land is categorized as Developed, Open Space. The majority of land being used for cemeteries in Hamilton County is mowed lawn.
Taking a closer look
Shaker Cemetery
Hedges Cemetery
Reading Lockland Cemetery
Westwood Baptist Cemetery
Covedale Cemetery
Potter's Field Cemetery
Pioneer Cemetery
Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum
United Colored American Cemetery
Pleasant Ridge Presbyterian Cemetery
This project chose to look at 10 of the 108 cemeteries more closely. How are they currently functioning? How well do they score as multifunctional spaces? Have they been abandoned?
These 10 cemeteries were chosen by taking a cross section of all the different types of cemeteries that are found across Hamilton County.
Then, each of these cemeteries was examined through the lens of the five dimensions. Within each category, what would make the cemetery multifunctional? Then the individual scores were added together to see which of these 10 cemeteries serves the fewest functions.
Three of the 10 cemeteries have the fewest functions. Potter's Field Cemetery and Westwood Baptist Cemetery are currently very different types of cemeteries in different environments. Their type, existing functions, surrounding location, and location make these two places interested test sites. This project dives deeper into both of these cemeteries to see if the strategies proposed could make them more multifunctional.
Learn more about each of these cemeteries and multifunctional plans for each by clicking the buttons below.