Entrance Gates and Perimeter Wall - Poplar Grove National Cemetery

Entrance Gates to Poplar Grove National Cemetery

NPS

Quick Facts

Location:

5008 Vaughan Road, Petersburg, VA

Significance:

National Cemetery

Amenities

1 listed

Wheelchair Accessible

Step Back in Time: Entrance Gates and Perimeter Wall

Very little has changed since the iron gates and granite posts were installed in 1876. The National Park Service added metal plaques to the post in 1935 when the cemetery’s management switched from the War Department to the National Park Service. The design of the entrance followed a prototype of General Montgomery Meigs, US Army Quartermaster. Before the Civil War, Meigs assisted with building forts and supervised the construction of the dome of the U.S. Capitol. In May 1861, Meigs was named US Army Quartermaster. In addition to coordinating military logistics, U.S. Quartermaster developed plans, constructed, and managed National Cemeteries.

The Quartermaster developed several designs for the national cemeteries. Layouts of the cemeteries ranged from rectangular to semi-circular to concentric circles like what you see here at Poplar Grove. Frederick Law Olmsted, of Central Park fame, advised Meigs about the landscape plan for national cemeteries. His vision for the final resting grounds of the war dead revolved around a simplistic, park-like design: 

“I would recommend that it (the general design) should be studiously simple…The main object should be to establish permanent dignity and tranquility. Looking forward several generations, the greater part of all that is artificial at present in the cemeteries must be expected to have either wholly disappeared or to have become inconspicuous and unimportant in the general landscape…This then is what I would recommend to be aimed at:--A sacred grove, sacredness and (protection) being expressed in the enclosing wall and in the perfect tranquility of the trees within.” Frederick Law Olmsted