Since 1836, Laurel Hill Cemetery has nestled on seventy-four acres overlooking the Schuylkill River and provided a peaceful setting for Philadelphia's dead. Its romantic landscape, commemorative monuments, and eclectic architecture made it a popular 19th Century tourist attraction. A model for our great urban parks, Fairmont Park in Philadelphia and Central Park in New York, Laurel Hill has suffered from indifference, the ravages of time, and risks continued deterioration, The National Park Service is working with Laurel Hill to return this National Historic Landmark to the condition that inspired city parks.

Philadelphia's Laurel Hill Cemetery was one of the nation's first major rural cemeteries. It is also the first cemetery to be named a National Historic Landmark. Established on what had once been several rolling estates outside the city center in 1836, and developed throughout the 19th century, Laurel Hill spreads along 74 acres on the Schuylkill River.

For the city's elite, the arboretum setting of Laurel Hill was the afterlife address of choice. Its monuments range from small marble headstones, to soaring granite obelisks, to the massive mausoleums that entomb the families of Philadelphia's industrial leaders.

In its prime, Laurel Hill was the destination of tens of thousands of visitors who variously came to remember loved ones lost and be restored by strolls through its finely designed parkland. Andrew Jackson Downing, great advocate of urban parks, reported in The Horticulturist that "nearly 30,000 persons .... entered the gates between April and December 1848". Such popularity helped fuel the drive to create natural landscapes in urban areas. In 1859 James C. Sidney designer of South Laurel Hill won the honor of designing Fairmont Park. The 'rural' cemetery vision for burying the dead inspired the great parks that improved urban life for the living.