Civil engineer James Lewis Glenn laid out Forest Hill Cemetery, 65 acres at 415 Observatory Street in Ann Arbor, and it opened in 1857. Designed by civil engineer James Lewis Glenn and opened in 1857, this is a classic example of the rural, or garden, cemetery style popular in the second half of the 19th century. Before it became a burial ground, this hill hosted the nation’s first fraternity building: a hunting lodge built by the Chi Psi fraternity in 1849.
As you walk in you’ll notice the cemetery’s main gate, designed by James Morwick in the Gothic Revival style, and the gatehouse and sexton’s residence, designed by Detroit architect Gordon W. Lloyd, also in Gothic Revival. In 1859 Dr. Benajah Ticknor, a surgeon in the U.S. Navy and later owner of the property now known as Cobblestone Farm, became the first person buried here. Many figures important to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan rest among these trees, including John Allen, co-founder of Ann Arbor; James Burrill Angell, the university’s longest-serving president; musician Scott Asheton; and physician Albert Moore Barrett, a psychiatry professor at the University of Michigan.
Notice the Gothic Revival gate and gatehouse, and picture the hunting lodge that once stood on this hill.