Today we think it's somewhat ghastly to picnic in a cemetery.

Really?

up until around 1900, you had to take care of your own plot.

Once a week, once every other week, you'd go out there and trim the grass, trim the flowers.

You were going there regularly.

I mean, it was it was a highly trafficked place.

It wasn't something that you made your once a year visit.

I live three blocks away from the Hollywood Cemetery, and it's a constant stream of people coming and going.

Funerals all the time.

They're people going in to visit and walking and running and walking their dogs and taking their kids and tourists coming to visit.

You know, rural cemeteries were not designed to be just warehouses for the dead.

I mean, there were places for the living.

Well, dead people don't need paths.

Dead people don't need pretty views.

You know, but these are places for the families and there are places to walk and to visit and to go out and get under the trees and, you know, get some shade, see the river, you know, have picnics.

Well, welcome to Richmond and in particular to Hollywood Cemetery.

And this walking tour through Hollywood Cemetery has really become a spiritual venture for me.

I own a plot here in Hollywood Cemetery.

And I read recently that if you walk through a cemetery in a community, it gives you a great feel for a period in history of that particular city.

And Hollywood Cemetery indeed tells you a period in the history of our city.

In the early 1800s, Richmond, Virginia, was springing to life as a new urban center in a largely agricultural state.

For the first time, industry choked the landscape, and people clogged dirty city streets.

The population grew, and eventually the population died.

At the time, churches were the primary burial grounds in the city, and they bore the brunt of the surging demand.

Traditionally, burials occurred in city cemeteries, and they were associated with the Anglican Church.

After the American Revolution, the churches removed themselves from ownership of these cemeteries that the city would acquire, and the church remained there, but the city would then maintain the cemetery.

And in what occurred in Richmond is that by the time Saint Johns started to fill up, they started to look to other areas of town where they could indeed purchase land and start burials.

There were cemeteries for blacks, there were cemeteries for the well-to-do, the poor as well.

Most urban cemeteries up to that point.

So you know, it really church enclosures were Actually fairly dense with death.

What some reformers tried to do in the early 19th century was to create something that was more sanitary.

And this is when there's a lot of talk in the period about air and oxygen.

And the idea before that had been the humors, and the miasma is in the air, were released from decaying bodies, and you were breathing in all this corrupted air.

So all these sorts of scientific advances going on, it hadn't been codified, but there was this growing sense that it was much more sanitary and healthy to sort of move these things away from the city.

And what the idea of the rural cemetery movement comes out of an early 19th century interest in hygiene and beautification.

You remember, this is the exact same time when you have Emerson and Thoreau you know, extolling the virtues of nature.

There was this growing sense that you are really accomplishing two things, that you were not just solving the problem of burials, but also creating a greenspace.

It was a park.

There's really not a strong tradition of urban parks before this.

This is really where the park tradition comes from.

In 1847, two businessmen and philanthropic collaborators from Richmond, Virginia were each visiting Boston, Massachusetts, by chance, their paths crossed.

The two men conversed and soon got the notion to visit nearby Cambridge.

They wanted to experience Mount Auburn, the first rural or garden cemetery in the United States, which itself was fashioned after the original rural cemetery, Père Lachaise in Paris, France.

They strolled among ornate monuments, resting within a setting of trees, shrubs and ponds natural elements that enliven what would normally be a somber backdrop.

The two men recognized that they were looking at a way to help alleviate the problems back home.

William Henry Haxall and Joshua Jefferson Frye introduced the rural, or Garden Cemetery concept to Richmond, the two of them who, when they returned to Richmond, met with some of the other business leaders in the area and had a discussion about could we indeed create a second Mount Auburn in Richmond and really model it along that concept?

They had a wonderful opportunity looking at Harvey Woods.

Harvey's woods was about a quarter of a mile outside of the boundaries of the city of Richmond, and at this point in the early 19th century was used for recreational purposes.

And hunting by Richmonders.

To the south of it is the James River and the canal.

From the bluff you can then look and see downtown to the city of Richmond, and it makes it accessible, but somewhat removed from where most of the residents are indeed living.

Haxall and Frye secured the land, assembled a board of directors, and formed the privately owned cemetery company.

They hired a local architect to design the landscape, but his proposal proved too elaborate and costly.

Thomas Ellis, the cemetery's founding president, discovered that a talented northern architect had received a landscape commission not far from Richmond.

Ellis approached him about laying out the cemetery.

John Notman, who had developed a strong reputation for his romantic landscape designs, eagerly agreed to survey Harvey's Woods while in the area.

He would prove to be the ideal choice for the job.

Notman was a Philadelphia architect, who also did some significant landscape design.

He had a lot of experience with cemeteries, primarily Greenwood Cemetery outside of Baltimore.

And he was asked to produce some plans, which he did, I believe within 2 or 3 weeks, very quickly done.

And in fact, his original plans do not survive.

There were a couple engraved versions that we think are more or less what Notman was after.

But we do know that he made a point of working with the natural topography, designing paths that follow the existing contours that it was supposed to be very much of its place.

Try to take advantage of the natural landscape, use the trees that are there very different.

If you look at any early cemetery, I mean, they're basically tightly gridded spaces with the economical make the greatest use out of what you've got.

When you go to a place like Shockoe Hill, which is basically a rectilinear grid, you know, you can walk up and you can walk back and you can walk up and turn right.

You can walk and turn left.

But it's a fairly limited experience.

One of the interesting things about the layout of Hollywood is essentially you have short vistas terminated by hills and other trees, so you actually experiencing hundreds of small spaces rather than going into a gridded cemetery like Chapel Hill.

But really, in one view, you can kind of take in the whole cemetery at Hollywood.

You have to move through it in order to experience it.

In fact, there's no point where you can get over the cemetery and look down and see it.

I think that's one of the geniuses of Notman's plan.

Really, what he was trying to do was just adapt the site.

He didn't make the river, you know?

He didn't make the canal.

He didn't make the trees, but sort of found a way to stitch them all together.

Gentlemen.

And arrange in the plan of the cemetery.

I have adopted the position of the entrance, as suggested on the northeast corner, as most convenient to the city.

It is also the most desirable point to get the first glance of the beautiful variety of hill and valley which distinguishes Hollywood above any cemetery I have seen.

There was also a site that was full of lots of trees.

It was a wooded site to begin with.

It's actually the first name proposed for Hollywood was, Mount Vernon Cemetery.

The name Hollywood comes because it was full of native holly.

One of the great things about Hollies is they're an evergreen.

So in all seasons you would be full of greenery, full of dense trees.

And it was Notman that apparently gave the name Hollywood.

Once Notman established this plan.

We believe that was more or less sort of the controlling vision.

I mean, there have been some changes to it, certainly, but more or less that was what was built.

Although Notmans design was welcomed by Ellis in the company, the public reaction was divided.

Initially, the press was among those in favor.

The gentleman by whom this plan was furnished expresses a wish that the cemetery be sui generis, original, and everything, and so it would really seem to be.

The sketch, presenting a very attractive picture of hill and dale, diversified with wood and water and intersected in every direction by serpentine roads and labyrinthian paths.

But the voices of opposition soon intensified.

Residents complained that the cemetery was too close to the city and that it would ruin westward expansion by using up prime riverfront real estate.

In addition, Peter Mayo, the brother of a city councilman, owned adjacent land and claimed that his access would be cut off.

For years, he pestered the cemetery with the accusation, sometimes using his brother's influence to make his voice heard.

Peter Mayo even went so far as to have a sheriff shut down a public auction for cemetery plots, unless he could sell his land to Hollywood.

Another objection was the belief that decaying bodies would infiltrate a water pipe that ran underneath the cemetery, thus polluting the city's water supply.

But perhaps the fiercest opposition arose from a seemingly unrelated event.

Richmond supported multiple newspapers.

Two of them were fierce rivals.

John Hampton Pleasants was editor for the Richmond Whig, and Thomas Richey was editor for the Enquirer.

Both men were harshly divided by politics, and each launched, published, and personal assaults on one another, and their animosity came to a head on the field of honor.

When Richey accused Pleasants of being a coward and an abolitionist facing off on a bank of the James River.

Pleasant advanced on Richey, who fired volley after volley.

When the two men were only a few yards apart.

Pleasants fired his first shot and then recoiled in pain.

He then managed to strike Richey on the head with a cane, sword, but soon succumbed to three bullet wounds.

Pleasants died two days later.

Flash forward a few years.

Several people who were involved in the planning of Hollywood are on on associated with the Enquirer.

Well, that's all it took.

And the, the wig just turned on it.

There was some thought that the decomposing bodies would enter into the city water supply, while the wig just latched on to this and just ran with it politically, the bare idea of drinking water impregnated with drainings from dead bodies is too disgusting to be endured for a moment.

I would again call upon the people to protect the prosperity of their city from an injury of such magnitude, by at least withholding all aid from this pernicious design.

Volatile gases, very subtle and penetrating, and that if they come aboveground, is they must they will be breathed by those who live round about.

If people every time they take a glass of water, a cup of tea or coffee, imagine that they are swallowing the remains of a defunct friend or enemy, would not that be sufficient reason against the incorporation of this a burial ground?

Over the years, Richmonders was watched the grounds of Hollywood take shape and did what they could to help the cemetery.

By the way, reader, have you enjoyed recently a visit to Hollywood?

We came away impressed with the beauties of Hollywood and desiring no lovelier spot for the repose of our remains, when we shall have passed from time to eternity.

But Hollywood would need more than just occasional praise to solve its troubles.

And the real problem they had was that nobody wanted to be buried there.

So they're trying to get the city, they're trying to work things out with the city and work things out with legislature and get chartered, The legislature is chartering and other cemeteries.

They just weren't chartering Hollywood, and they were only seeking a charter to prove they didn't need a charter, but they were going after charter to prove to people that this was not some sort of private venture to make money.

They just had a terrible time raising money early on, they came up with the idea that, you want to have a successful cemetery, you've got to bury some famous people.

James Monroe was our nation's fifth president and the fourth president from Virginia.

He was part of an almost lifetime friendship between himself, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Monroe had a life and a career, really, of public service, which ended up taking a great toll on him financially.

By the time he left the presidency in 1825, he had estimated his total debt brought on by public service to be at about $75,000.

Monroe retired from the white House to his own White House, Oak Hill.

And so Monroe's last years were spent at Oak Hill trying to resolve his financial difficulties writing his memoirs.

But it was also a time of great sadness and loss for him.

In September of 1830, his wife Elizabeth, who had been an ill health for some time, died at Oak Hill and was buried at Oak Hill.

Monroe went into a deep period of grief.

Monroe closed Oak Hill.

He left Virginia for New York.

His daughter and son in law, Maria and Simon Lawrence.

Gouverneur, were living in New York City, and Monroe spent what turned out to be the last nine months of his life with his daughter and son in law.

Because of the location of his death, Monroe's body was interred in New York City, and in 1858, over 20 years after his death, a movement began in Virginia to bring the remains of the Native Sons to a central place.

There was at one point a movement to bring George Washington's remains from Mount Vernon to the state capital to be entombed, at the seat of government.

And Monroe was the one Virginia president who did get moved, actually.

Monroe's body was, placed in state in New York City Hall on July 3rd.

Then placed on board a boat and brought down the Atlantic seaboard into the Chesapeake Bay and ultimately up the James River to Richmond.

On July 4th.

And then the actual interment took place July 5th.

It was a grand ceremony, a great public occasion.

And in fact, Monroe was buried with full military honors.

There was a review of troops as part of the ceremony.

It was probably one of Richmond's largest spectacles before the actual outbreak of the Civil War.

The governor, Henry Alexander Wise, was one of the visionaries behind bringing Monroe's body back to Virginia.

Governor wise also, led the way for the architect Albert Lybrock to do measured drawings of the Capitol building in the hope of renovating the Capitol.

It's probably because of the existing association with the wise administration, that Lybrock was chosen to design and fabricate a tomb that would be the encasing of Monroe's body, at Hollywood Cemetery.

Lybock designed this incredible confection of cast iron.

It is a great piece of Gothic confection with ogee arched dome and spires It is a wonderful expression of the exuberance and the airiness that the Gothic Revival can have.

But, Richmond didn't universally share that opinion when it was first made public, and in fact, quite a few people referred to it as the birdcage.

Having the remains of one of the Founding Father presidents not only in Hollywood Cemetery, but on essentially one of the highest promontories of Hollywood Cemetery, and to be adorned in such a way.

I think all of that in some way played into enhancing both the legitimacy and the attractiveness of Hollywood Cemetery.

Once Monroe's body was placed in Hollywood, all opposition withered and died.

The cemetery had overcome many hurdles and was now free to pursue the original intentions of its design.

But Richmond would soon find that a casual stroll through Hollywood Cemetery was much less important to their daily routine compared to a great looming crisis that eventually would demand their lives.

It's thought that the first Virginian who died in the Civil War was buried in Hollywood Cemetery.

He was a young man, not even 20, when he was cut down on the battlefield.

His body was ceremonially escorted across the countryside and placed in Hollywood during a solemn but reverent occasion.

At first, the war seemed to have little effect on Richmond, but the conflict soon fell over the land, and people lost the luxury of grieving for their countrymen.

In the early phases of the Civil War, Hollywood certainly had grown and developed.

It had been incorporated for a number of years.

Having several hospitals in Richmond really impacted the level of work and the burials that were needed in Richmond.

They were here in Hollywood, they were in Oakwood, they were being interred on the battlefield.

It was an overwhelming number of deaths, and it really became a problem later on in the war, when there was a need for workers to just dig the graves.

Basically, if you could carry a shovel, you could carry a gun.

You were off at war.

The most continuous sort of African-American presence in Hollywood is really during the Civil War digging graves.

The grave detail were contraband slaves and convicts because there wasn't anyone left.

And units just began bringing in casualties and literally stacking them up at the cemetery walls.

And it grew into an enormous problem.

And just with the streams of dead coming in and nowhere to put them, and so quickly they started doing essentially mass burials.

Many of the enlisted men buried in Hollywood were buried in sort of a trench fashion, and many of them are not known.

Which is why to this day, you'll see certain collective markers 17 dead from a certain place.

This was just an attempt to keep up with the casualties coming in.

And it was later in the war that there was not even enough materials to really mark the sites.

There was a blockade and marble and stone and all of those materials that had been available to mark locations early on were no longer available.

And there was a movement just to to wood markers so that they would at least be some evidence of what was going on.

There also was a need for additional property.

The boundaries of Hollywood did move outside of the official grounds, and there was discussions with Confederate government and with the city as to where it should go.

I'm not sure it was always done quite properly, and that they always had permission to move in the directions that they did, but they were trying to inter the dead, Hollywood Cemetery did indeed support the Confederacy and the works of the Confederate government in Richmond.

Their moneys were invested in war bonds and government bonds.

The burial plots did increase in value, and inflation was rampant and was ever increasing.

So what was $3 before the war for a plot became 40 and then became even higher.

They did become successful, but what happens after the war is that they are basically in ruin and collapse, because the market has fallen and their Confederate bonds and their Confederate dollars are worth nothing.

After the war, White Richmond never sought comfort within the confines of reconstruction.

With little or no money at hand, they tried to regain their composure any way they could.

Many citizens turned their attention towards Hollywood.

Following the war, there was a Hollywood Memorial Association that took on refurbishment.

The burial and the honoring of those soldiers that indeed lost their lives.

This organization was similar to those that were around the country, of women who would band together to handle their lost sons and fathers and uncles and brothers.

They raised money through bazaars, through benefits, trying to make sure all the individual graves were marked, and they then took on larger issues of honoring with memorial events and eventually with the commission of the pyramid.

The Pyramid in Hollywood Cemetery is a 90ft pyramid made of James River granite that is one of the most prominent features in the cemetery, and I think it was positioned as such that it would be one of the first things that you would see, and it would be an eye catching monument.

As you are moving around the cemetery, you don't even have to be in it.

You just can be driving by.

It is a massive marker to those who are interred in Hollywood.

And certainly Richmond, as the Confederate capital had a significant role to play in honoring the lost, More and more people stood graveside, remembering family and friends who were victims of the war.

What started as a personal endeavor grew throughout Richmond and across the South, until it blossomed into a national event.

When the actual origins of Confederate Memorial Day are somewhat hazy, it's it's like anything when you start talking about the first, the best, the fastest, everybody's got an entry.

The sort of broader origins I think, of Confederate Memorial Day comes from just a need to, again, people regularly visiting the cemetery to clean up gravesites, to take care of them.

The more particular origins in Richmond come from the 31st of May, which was, believed to be the first day that cannon fire was heard in Richmond during the Civil War.

And they were huge days.

It was not uncommon to have 10,000 people come on a memorial day to come and do a mass sort of cleanup and decoration and picnicking.

I mean, the city turned out for these enormous events.

Now, there are other cities in the South that claim they had the first Memorial Day.

I mean, lots of people make this claim, and there are different reasons.

Sometimes it was the first engagement, but basically all of these dates cluster around the end of May of.

What's interesting is Memorial Day, as we know it now is federal holiday.

And in many ways, you can read that as an attempt to sort of codify a sort of informal thing.

And so pull this together and assign a general date to it.

It's not that different from Presidents Day, from taking Lincoln, Washington, picking an arbitrary date in the middle and assigning it there.

But it's really an outgrowth of a longer tradition of tending the graves in the spring.

And this is when they start to see the Hollywood that we know today, you know, coming into place.

New curbing, you see some larger mausoleums being built.

And then moving into the early 20th century, actually see a creation of large numbers of water features in the cemetery, a lot of the lower vales being flooded to create ponds.

And it's really at this point when there are enough burials there, there are enough people coming and going that it really is taking on a life of its own and really becoming an icon.

And really starts for the first time to really become a tourist destination.

This beautiful necropolis was first opened for the tenancy of the dead.

About.

The view from this point is unsurpassed Here nature has done her part in the hills, valleys, the landscape embraces every variety.

Forest and placid stream, hills crowned and art has embellished without rendering formal the beauties of nature.

And almost at your feet, the graceful curve of a broad canal.

Hollywood Cemetery also promotes itself as a business, and you are indeed interested in bringing people to your location.

Cameras were not quite as popular.

The Polaroids weren't around so that you could remember where you've been, tell your family where you've been and you can spread the word.

The concept of postcards happened in Richmond.

It happened across the country.

And so there's a number that were developed for Hollywood Cemetery, featuring the Confederate memorial areas.

The rural or garden areas, as well as views from the river.

If you were going to go to Richmond, that was certainly one of the places you were going to stop and see.

That was a highlight of your trip.

You may have had family or friends or someone interred there.

This was, again a memento and a way to remember what you had lost.

Over 75,000 people are buried at Hollywood Cemetery.

Before the middle of the 20th century, the vast majority of private burials were for white and well-to-do citizens.

Most are ordinary people, but national figures also reside there.

John Tyler is the other U.S.

president at rest in Hollywood.

He ran as vice president for William Henry Harrison under the slogan Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.

He ascended to the presidency when Harrison died after only 32 days in office.

Teddy Roosevelt called Tyler a man of monumental littleness.

Jefferson Davis was the only president of the Confederacy.

After the Civil War, he was jailed as a traitor by the North and shunned by the South, who blamed him for losing the war.

Today, his grave is frequently visited.

A Confederate general and cavalryman, Jeb Stuart, was considered the eyes and ears of Robert E Lee.

Although he blinded his commander with a late arrival at the Battle of Gettysburg, he was mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern while defending Richmond from a Union advance.

General George Pickett's name has been attached to the ill fated frontal assault on the Union line at Gettysburg.

His defeat on Cemetery Ridge is considered the high watermark of the Confederacy.

After the war, he returned to his hometown, Richmond, and sold insurance.

Governor Henry Wise found himself embroiled in John Brown's invasion of Harpers Ferry.

Brown was hanged for treason against Virginia after wise refused the pleas of Brown's supporters to stay.

His execution.

During the 1950s, chairman of the Richmond School Board Lewis F Powell barely integrated public schools during Massive Resistance as a U.S.

Supreme Court justice, he sat in the middle of a squarely divided court and was himself often divided on issues like affirmative action.

Many of the residents of Hollywood were well known in their time, but have since faded from the forefront.

Their names now appear on local buildings, schools and foundations.

Lewis Ginter helped make Richmond the tobacco capital of the world, and he personally made a fortune by marketing and selling Pre-rolled cigarets before and after his death.

He bestowed millions of dollars back to the community and still had plenty left to build the largest mausoleum at Hollywood, complete with Tiffany stained glass windows.

In 1910, Mary Munford fought to establish a college for women linked to Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia.

She failed, but convinced the College of William and Mary to admit women.

In 1918, UVA opened its doors to women.

Over 50 years later, newspaper editor Virginia Dabney was a southern liberal who fervently called for the advancement of African-Americans throughout the 1930s and 50s, although within the confines of segregation a brave stance for the South at that time that earned him praised by both blacks and whites, but also intense criticism.

Douglass South Hall Freeman wrote the definitive multi-volume biographies of Robert E Lee and George Washington both won a Pulitzer.

Eisenhower once said that it was Freeman who first suggested that he run for president of the United States.

Among the writers in Hollywood, two early 20th century contemporaries, international acclaim for their novels, Pulitzer Prize winner Allan Glasgow was occasionally beleaguered by rivalry from her longtime literary friend James Branch Campbell.

Their unsettled relationship continued even after death.

Well, James Branch Cabell was one of the major writers American writers of the early 20th century.

He was a Richmond native, had a tremendously large reputation in the 20s.

Cabell is a highly symbolic writer, romance writer, primarily.

All the major writers of the early 20th century were his peers.

He was friends with most of them.

He was close friends with Scott Fitzgerald for a while, very close friends with H.L.

Mencken.

One particular person he was not friends with was Hemingway, and Hemingway couldn't stand Cabell, he said he needed a expletive genealogical chart to be able to read Cabell and understand him.

Cabell's most popular work was a novel called Jurgen.

It was published in 1919 and immediately was seized upon by the censors, and one man in particular, a fellow named John Sumner, who was the president of the society for the Suppression of Vice.

He got a court order, went down to Cabell's publisher and seized the plates to the novel, brought it to court, calls it a lewd, lascivious and indecent book.

And it went through the courts.

When Campbell was found innocent of having written a piece of pornography, the judge said, not only was it a beautiful and lyrical book and so on, but he doubted that people could understand it anyway, which was probably the truth.

That made Cabell's reputation really in a negative sort of way, because Cabell is not a pornographer by any stretch of the imagination.

He's a very serious writer, dealing in the tradition of Western mythology, but that stuck to him.

Well, Ellen Glasgow again was another major 20th century novelist.

She and Campbell happened to be the residents of the same city.

She was a writer who worked in the vein of realism, and she was interested in recording the life of the common man.

Then she said in Virginia, from the time of the Civil War on up to the present.

Her novels are quite readable.

The Cabells are not readable.

For the uninitiated going to Cabell, it's a real intellectual journey.

Ellen Glasgow was a shy, reticent person.

She was a brilliant woman and like so many Southern women of the day, was not given a higher education.

And the education she got was at home and reading, philosophy and reading in her father's library.

And of course, Miss Glasgow was an intellectual rebel.

There's no doubt about that.

Her novels were not well-received, at least by a certain large segment of Richmond society, because many people thought that she should have been using her talents to glorify the past and to glorify Virginia and to glorify the American Civil War, or as was always called, the war between the States.

And she didn't do that.

She dealt with realistic people, with, dirt farmers and with women who had been spurned in love.

In case of Dorinda Oakley in the sheltered life.

Here's a young woman who has a fling with a man.

But she's not married.

Of course she gets pregnant.

Well, that's just taboo in early 20th century America and certainly in in Richmond, Virginia, at the time.

When Richmond became sort of a, in a sense, a literary center with capital and Glasgow, here H.L.

Mencken came down and visited Sinclair Lewis came down to Virginia, Gertrude Stein came to Richmond, and occasionally Calvin and Glasgow would get together for literary dinners, and they traded literary information.

Their relationship was off again, on again kind of thing.

Cabell reviewed one of Ellen Glasgows books and had what she considered to be some not necessarily negative but somewhat typical Cabell ironic innuendo about her, and she thought that he was, I suppose, in a sense, taking intellectual liberties with her in print.

They were both, in a sense, genteel Virginians.

So there was not so much it would do.

It was a very subtle kind of thing between the two of them, and they would have a little tiff, and they would communicate both in few months or a year or something like that, and then they'd get back in their good graces.

And that's the way it went back and forth.

I don't think they really, totally ever reconciled their differences.

Well, Glasgow died in 1945.

After her death, she published A Woman Within, which is autobiography, of course, and Cabell reviewed that and said she wrote some of the finest fiction there.

Well, that's a pretty smart kind of slap.

And I think that was an attitude that he had had about her for some time.

By that time, Cabell was somewhat embittered himself because he had an enormous literary reputation.

In the 20s, this began to disappear after the 30s or to wane in, at least I should say.

And by the time of his death in 1958, he was not being read.

Allen Glasgow was buried on one of the hills over in Hollywood Cemetery.

And Cabell is buried down lower in the cemetery within line of vision.

I've often wondered what Miss Glasgow would have thought of that for posterity, with her being on the top of the hill, looking down on James Branch Cabell, as it would be for all eternity.

The problem irked the hell out of him.

If he'd known.

The people buried in Hollywood each have provided insight to who they were and what they did in life.

They employed artisans to build iron or stone reminders that cleverly tell small stories about the dead, and sometimes about the grieving.

In its own way, each monument also contributes toward an overall effect on the landscape.

A walk through Hollywood is really a walk through a nature center.

It is a walk through an art museum.

You'll find many, many very sentimental things here.

But see, these markers were put up at a time of great romanticism.

And some of the tomb markers will have an open Bible.

You will find many different types of crosses.

You'll also find many of the natural things, like the roses.

And that would be love, innocence.

You'll find hands that are still clasp on the marker.

You were gone, but we will be together once again.

We're still joined together.

You'll also find torches.

If the torch is turned down, that means the flame, the life was extinguished.

And a wreath is a circle.

There is no beginning and there's no end.

And that's life.

It's a circle.

Usually the wreath will have perennial flowers in it.

Plenty of flowers die in the fall, but they come back in the spring.

You'll see a lot of obelisks in the cemetery, and the obelisk is reaching to the sun.

An obelisk also means the person has reached great heights.

But then sometimes you'll find an obelisk that short.

That's probably at the grave of a child.

That wasn't given the opportunity to reach their full potential.

As you walk through, you'll see symbols that tell you something about the person, maybe their profession.

Charters was the fire captain because you see his hat.

You see all of the symbols of the firemen, the hoses.

But you'll also see maybe organizations that they were a part of, especially the Masonic symbol.

You'll see the compass.

One that always fascinates people.

Is the dog.

The dog stood outside a store in Petersburg for many years, and there was a little boy named Charlie who loved the dog, probably Charlie would walk with his mother, and he always wanted to pet the dog.

And I can envision he probably even wanted to get on and ride the dog because it's a Newfoundland.

It's a big dog.

Charlie loved the dog so much his father bought the dog for him.

And then Charlie's little sister died.

Her name was Bernadine Reese, and the dog was moved out here to the cemetery where little Bernadine is buried.

And it's been standing guard for a long time now.

At the time of the Civil War, the South needed iron.

So if you had a church bell, if you had a cast iron gate, then that was given to be melted down for armaments.

But when they moved the dog to Hollywood Cemetery, the dog was saved.

Visitors find artistic statues placed throughout the cemetery near the grave of James Monroe.

People are often drawn to a stone figure of a kneeling woman.

Her body is cloaked from head to toe and her face is buried in her arms.

She mourns the dead beneath her.

This monument, titled grief, is easily recognized as much more than a typical gravestone.

It is also the only gravestone designed by Richmond sculptor Edward Valentine.

Most of the folks who were having headstones, carved, or markers made for the cemetery would not have commissioned them from an artist like Edward Valentine, and they would have been much, much simpler.

Valentine's work in general, included a lot more of these types of figures.

Edward Valentine was born in 1838 to a middle class family here in Richmond, and Edward was the youngest of seven children.

As the youngest child, he had the luxury of exploring his interests, perhaps more than his siblings, and in the late 1850s traveled to Europe to study art and spent quite a bit of time in Germany to study with a fairly well-known sculptor at the time, name Auguste Kiss.

He had been there throughout all of the years of the Civil War.

Ultimately, though, his father died in 1865, and that's what brought him back to Richmond.

He returned to a city that had just recently suffered a long and terrible period of time, which concluded with a major fire in the city, and so conditions were very hard and would not have been an easy place for an artist to try to find work when people were certainly more concerned with where they would find food, water, shelter, and more important things.

The bread and butter of his career really was portraits in general, within the body of work that he completed in his life, Edward Valentine sculpted portraits of many Confederate figures, but he also sculpted portraits of many other people as well.

They come in fairly steadily, and while they're not exceedingly large commissions, it's sort of what keeps you in work.

On the other hand, projects that were perhaps more meaningful to him, the more artistic works, if you will, would have been the ones that would have maybe been more near and dear to his heart.

But were not the works that sold.

He received the commission to do the recumbent Lee, the lifesize figure that the chapel at Washington and Lee University.

That was really in many respects his big break.

Little references appeared in Richmond newspapers quite frequently about the projects that Valentine was beginning work on, or had just recently completed work on, and so the public was invited routinely to come by the studio and take a look at the work.

Valentine's studio became such a popular destination, visitors to the studio came from all over the world, and many famous names today are listed on the guest register.

Oscar Wilde, Woodrow Wilson, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

There was a steady stream of people coming to see him as he worked.

Edward Valentine and his work are not terribly well known today.

It's quite possible that his decision to stay here in Richmond and to work in the South may have had something to do with that.

By 1910, Edward Valentine set aside his career as a sculptor and spent the last 20 years of his life researching the stories and history of Richmond.

He had even become president of the Valentine Museum, which his brother started from a personal collection of historical artifacts relating to the city.

Today.

His name is perhaps better known locally for his work with the museum, then a lifetime of work in sculpture, After his death, Edward Valentine was put to rest in the family plot at Hollywood Cemetery.

There is no elaborate statue at his grave to signify his life as an artist.

It is a simple site adorned with only a small bronze plaque.

Hollywood's landscaped mature flora and decorative monuments harken back to the 19th century, but they have also become a modern backdrop for art.

College professors often send their students to Hollywood to fulfill assignments for photography class.

Rock bands pose among the stonework for CD cover artwork, and musical artists and performers have used the cemetery as a setting for music video production.

Hollywood has also become a destination and a subject for landscape artists.

Painting is my primary absorbing occupation.

I've done some of the buildings in Richmond here, but my overall preferences for more pastoral subjects.

Ive painted near the entrance, looking back up the hill and on the far side, looking down and avenue are very large trees and the one I'm working on is the fourth in the cemetery, pictures.

I'm going to be working over the southern bank of Hollywood, which overlooks the river, canal and railroad tracks.

The hills make it that much more interesting.

So you can get these looking down and have such wonderful views of the river.

The curving roads and beautiful curves of the railroad tracks, as well as the canal making a curve all lined with trees and very lively.

A sort of a nature reserve or something, because you get red tailed hawks living in Hollywood.

I've seen muskrats in the canal, I've seen deer.

So it's sort of like the country in the middle of the city.

It's not a typical cemetery.

I think more of it as a park where people happen to be buried than a cemetery.

There is sort of a soul or a feeling that you get from a cemetery.

And much of the soul of Richmond is in Hollywood.

You still have that feel of that graceful landscape, of that lush landscape as you walk through.

While there's certainly been change and maturity to it and has not retained every element, it still captures that feel and that lushness of what the original designers were trying to create.

But this is sort of a regular life about the place, especially as we move into spring.

You know, as everything starts popping in there, it's lovely.

And I think that's one of the loveliest things about Hollywood is that it is just so alive.

I realize it's strange to talk about a cemetery and say it's full of life, but it is, you know, when you visit there, there's this sort of great, comforting quality about the place.

Yes, it's about death.

But more than that, it's about the lives of the people who continue on and visit and take their friends.

It is a very lively place.

Hollywood Cemetery is the story of a city.

It is the story of a people.

It's an open cemetery.

People of every color or creed may come here and be buried, or you may come and walk and think.

It's not a place of doom and sadness.

It's a place of life, eternal.