| Additional Information: | A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, State Historic Preservation Office.
The cemetery was established in 1850 and the chapel was built in 1890-92. The chapel was designed by Ferry and Clas. One of the city's earliest large cemeteries, it contains the graves of many prominent Milwaukeans-among them south side founder George Walker. The cemetery began with a 72.58 acre tract acquired in June, 1850 by the vestry of St. Paul's Episcopal Church from the widow of former church rector Lemuel B. Hull and included five acres donated by Mrs. Hull for the burial of the poor, a section consecrated as Faith Hill in 1868. Chapel Gardens was started in 1955 and was planned by Greuttner and Ziroli.
St. Paul's Episcopal parish founded this cemetery, which comprises nearly two hundred acres of winding roads, rolling hills, and mature trees. The major architectural feature is a chapel, built in 1892 with a crematory added to the east end in 1896. Highlighting the chapel exterior are an elegant porte-cochère, a stocky tower, and two conservatory wings. The chapel walls are red sandstone with ashlar trim, except for the wood-framed and glass-walled conservatories. Visitors pay their respects in an austere nave with a Gothic-inspired timber truss ceiling. The wood paneling and altar are original to the 1892 construction, as are the carved ends of the rebuilt pews.
After 1830, a "park cemetery" movement advocated picturesque cemetery settings with meandering roads and naturalistic plantings. Only Detroit’s Elmwood Cemetery, started in 1846, predates Forest Home—consecrated in 1850—as the oldest "park cemetery" in the Midwest. Milwaukee cartographer Increase Allen Lapham created the original landscape design. In planning Forest Home, the renowned engineer, surveyor, and zoologist drew on his botanical knowledge, and the influence of Eastern romantic landscape architects. Later features, including an artificial pond with a double-arch stone bridge, were added to complement Lapham's romantic design.
Before Milwaukee's public park system began in the 1890s, Forest Home Cemetery was popular for picnics and recreation. Wanderers around Forest Home's expanse will find the graves of Milwaukee’s beer barons Joseph Schlitz (1875), Valentine Blatz (1894), and Captain George Pabst (1901), typewriter inventor Christopher Latham Sholes (1890), industrialist Edward Allis (1889), suffragist Mathilde Anneke (1884), Progressive Governor Francis McGovern (1946), Socialist Congressman Victor Berger (1929), and Alfred Lunt with his wife Lynn Fontanne, famous twentieth-century stage actors (1977 and 1983). |
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