The most common material we use at Oakland Cemetery is… Concrete?! In the world of cemetery preservation, the use of Portland cement, the main component in concrete mixes, is considered taboo, and with good reason. Many historic headstones have been…
Historic Oakland Foundation’s Preservation, Restoration, and Operations (PRO) Team is an integral part of realizing the Foundation’s mission to preserve, restore, enhance, and share historic Oakland Cemetery. The goal of critical restoration is to identify fragile, dangerous, or visually intrusive monuments and walls…
Happy Preservation Month! I wanted to use this as an opportunity to talk about one of the exciting projects we have teed up in the near future. The Women’s Comfort Station is a small, single-room structure located near the Jewish…
After many months of hard work, the Preservation, Restoration, and Operations (PRO) Team has completed Phase 1 of hardscape restoration in the African American Grounds. Phase 1 encompasses the southernmost portion of the section, roughly one acre of land. The…
In January the Preservation, Restoration, and Operations (PRO) Team completed the first wave of 2018’s critical restoration. Critical restoration’s goal is to identify fragile, dangerous, or visually intrusive monuments and walls and mitigate the problem before they cause harm or…
One of the past year’s landscape restoration projects at Oakland has been the southern portion of the African American Grounds. As with all restoration projects, garden history research on the area and its families was conducted to guide the design.…
by DL Henderson The headstone belonging to Jacob McKinley is located in Phase 1 of the African American Grounds restoration project. It is a pedestal-style monument, composed of multiple units of marble “freely” stacked, one on top of another, without…
by DL Henderson The first phase of the African American Grounds restoration has presented the Preservation, Restoration, and Operations (PRO) Team with many unique challenges and opportunities to hone our conservation skills. When we began working in Block 68, we…
Since its creation in 1891, Atlanta Town Committee Chapter of the Colonial Dames has worked on and sponsored preservation projects across the country. Thanks to a generous grant from Atlanta Town Committee Chapter of the Colonial Dames, the PRO Team…
We have talked about our phased restoration and described what activities we do as we continue with our master plan. Situations arise when damage to a plot, or a marker, or a wall is in critical condition. Critical restoration is outside…