by The Ghosty Gal

Created on: February 09, 2007   Last Updated: June 09, 2009

You're probably thinking who goes to a cemetery as a destination for a day. Well, my husband and I do. Lake View Cemetery and any other cemetery for that matter are filled with history, animals, and great stone statuary and some very beautiful architecture. So many people come to Lake View Cemetery they even have hiking trails, picnic sites and give guided tours.

Some of the more interesting sites are:

The Wade Chapel, which was built in honor of Jepthe Wade, founder of the western Union Telegraph Company and the first president of the Lake View Cemetery Association.
Louis Comfort Tiffany designed the entire chapel interior. On two of the walls are 8x32 foot mosaic tiles representing Old Testament and New Testament virtues. The stained glass window is called the: "Quest for Spiritual Fulfillment." The window is done in the Favrile technique developed by Tiffany, giving the glass an opalescent and iridescent quality by exposing it to chemicals and fumes of molten metals during the glassblowing process.

The Rockefeller Monument, which is made of one piece of Barre granite, the largest piece ever, quarried for memorialization purposes at Barre, Vermont. The monument is 65 feet tall and 357,680 pounds.

The Lake View Cemetery Dam, which was dedicated in 1978. It is the largest concrete-poured dam east of the Mississippi River at the time. It is 500 ft across, 60 ft above grade30 ft below grade and holds 80 million gallons of storm water.

Some of the more important Clevelanders buried in Lake View are:

John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) started as an assistant bookkeeper for a Cleveland commission merchant. In 1863, Rockefeller entered the oil business, and in 1965, he left the commission business to work full-time in oil. He organized the Standard Oil Co. and became its largest stockholder when it was chartered in 1870. The business made him the richest man in the world, worth over $1 billion at the time of his death. He gave away $500 million dollars during his lifetime.

Joseph Carabelli (1850-1911), he was a sculpture, first Italian Ohio Legislator, founder of the Lakeview Granite and Monument Works in 1880, called the "Father of Little Italy", and he co-founded Alta House. In the Ohio House of Representatives, he introduced the bill to make Columbus Day a legal holiday in 1910.

Charles Francis Brush (1849-1929) was one of America's most distinguished inventors. Brush invented the arc light in1878, making him world famous. This one of the 50 patents issued to him during his

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>