Partners in Preservation 

Greater Boston Initiative

Saturday, September 17th

Mount Auburn Cemetery was one of the participants in the greater Boston initiative back in 2009 and is delighted to be presenting an Open House Day on Saturday, September 17th!

Visit the Partners in Preservation website and and download Open House Day 2011 itineraries highlighting some of Greater Boston's most unique historic sites!

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Mount Auburn's 180th Anniversary

Saturday, September 24th

Celebrate the 180th anniversary of Mount Auburn's founding with a day-long series of special events! 

• Free hour-long guided walking tours will be held at 9, 11, 1, & 3 highlighting notable moments from our 180 years. 
• New self-guided materials will also be available for you to explore the Cemetery on your own. 
• Stop in the Visitors Center from 9 - 4:30 for birthday refreshments and to peruse a selection of discounted publications. 
• Bigelow Chapel will be open on Saturday & Sunday 1 - 4 PM where staff photographer, Jennifer Johnston's Seasons of Mount Auburn exhibit will be on display and docents and staff will be on hand to answer questions and point out the chapel's interesting features. 

Visit our website for additional details as we finalize plans for this significant birthday. 

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Additional Friends Programs in September!    

Join us in August for one of our other Friends walks or lectures:            

Preservation History Highlight  

The Nathaniel Bowditch Statue:  

An American Masterpiece Conserved

We are thrilled to announce that conservation work on the Nathaniel Bowditch statue on Central Avenue came to completion this July. The treatment, undertaken by one of the leading art conservation firms in the country, Daedalus, Inc., of Watertown, Mass., has not only preserved the magnificent memorial, but also brought to light the original color and details of the life-size bronze cast.

When Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838) died, the passing of the noted mathematician, astronomer, and navigator was mourned around the world. "As long as ships shall sail, the needle point to the north, and the stars go through their wonted courses in the heavens, the name of DR. BOWDITCH will be revered," the Salem Marine Society wrote (Salem Marine Society Eulogy, On the Death of Nathaniel Bowditch, 1838). A celebrated scientist, Bowditch was the author of The New American Practical Navigator. The Guide, published in 1802 and printed in over 70 editions, made sea travel far safer, and ships, including U.S. commissioned naval vessels, still carry it today.

In 1843 Boston leaders, whose trading ventures to the East Indies and Africa had greatly benefitted from Bowditch's perfection of navigation techniques, formed an association to build a monument in honor of the Salem native. "The public gratitude is raising an appropriate monument to his memory, at Mount Auburn, expressive of the simple grandeur of his genius and fame, which will arrest the attention of every traveler to that sacred and beautiful retreat of the dead," Daniel White said in his eulogy of Bowditch (Daniel Appleton White, An Eulogy on the Life and Character of Nathaniel Bowditch, p. 55).

In 1847 the statue was completed by Robert Ball Hughes (1806-1868), the distinguished English-born sculptor, and cast by the Boston Foundry Gooding and Gavette. The first life-size bronze cast in the United States, the commanding statue depicts Bowditch seated on a granite Egyptian-style pedestal, a globe and a sexton on his left, and Mechanique Celeste, the book he translated, resting on his right knee.

"Nathaniel Bowditch was a self-made man and exemplary New England citizen, just the kind of character that Mount Auburn's founders hoped to celebrate in their new Cemetery," according to Meg L. Winslow, Mount Auburn's Curator of Historical Collections. Nathaniel Bowditch is buried in his family lot at Mount Auburn on Tulip Path. Regarded as one of R. Ball Hughes' best works, the statue is a cenotaph.

Mount Auburn placed the statue on the rise of the first hill just above the Cemetery entrance and surrounded it with an iron fence and plantings that created a protected, ornamental space for the majestic piece. "It was by far the most elaborate form attempted to date for an individual in any American funerary setting," historian Blanche Linden-Ward explains (Silent City on a Hill: Landscapes of Memory and Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery, p. 237).

By the 1880s severe weathering had caused cracks to appear in the bronze and the metal to begin to scaleoff. The Bowditch family sent the statue to be recast at the Gruet Foundry in Paris in 1886. Over time, the surface of the second casting had become streaked with a light green and black copper sulfate and carbonate corrosion. The protective coating was exhibiting an ashy flat brown appearance and the tones and textures of these accretions were beginning to obscure the details of the sculpture.

Conservation treatment this summer included filling in cracks and pits, removing the build-up of coatings and corrosion, and cleaning the bronze, which uncovered a striking green color. Early photographs in the Cemetery's Historical Collections Department provided clues about the statue's original condition and helped to determine the final patination color as did other casts known to the conservators that came out of the Gruet foundry in Paris. Conservators heated the bronze, applied patinating chemicals, covered the statue with an acrylic coating, and then waxed and buffed the bronze, which now exhibits a lovely deep brown color.

The treatment enables future visitors to appreciate the fine details of the cenotaph-from Bowditch's pensive gaze to the soft folds in his robe-and ensure the long-term preservation of the statue and sensitive depiction of the man of science described as "a guide to [his fellow-men] over the pathless ocean, and as one who forwarded the great interests of mankind." (Salem Marine Society, 1838).  

By an exciting coincidence, Daedalus, Inc., is currently working on the life-size plaster cast of Nathaniel Bowditch in the collection of the Boston Athenaeum. (See: Boston Athenaeum E-newsletter: November 2010, Volume 4, Issue 11 "The Conservation of a Historic American Masterpiece.")

The Bowditch statue is just one of a select group of significant monuments that are in need of care. For further information on this preservation project, or any others, please contact Vice President of Preservation and Facilities Bill Barry at wbarry@mountauburn.org.

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Seasons of Mount Auburn Photo Exhibit

Bigelow Chapel, September 24th   

After a year "on the road," Jen Johnston's Seasons photo exhibit is on its way back to the Cemetery - to be displayed at Bigelow Chapel for the 180th anniversary of Mount Auburn on Saturday, September 24th!

In the last 12 months the photos have been exhibited at the following venues:

• Watertown Free Public Library, Watertown, MA (September 2010)  
• First Church in Boston, Unitarian Universalist (December 2010 - February 2011) 
• Boston Biomedical Research Institute, Watertown, MA (February - June 2011) 
• Robbins Library, Arlington, MA (July 2011) 
• Wellesley Free Library, Wellesley, MA (August 2011)

Come and see the photos at home in Bigelow Chapel at Mount Auburn before they are off on the road again to:

• Starbucks in Cushing Square, Belmont, MA (October 2011)  
• the Cambridge Savings Bank, Central & Harvard Squares (November - December 2011) 
• the Morse Institute Library, Natick, MA (January - March 2012)  
• Tufts Health Plan, Watertown, MA (April - May 2012)

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