GRACE CHURCH CEMETERY
In 1834, the Grace Episcopal Church purchased more than four acres of land on the South side of Providence for use as a burial ground. By 1843, the site encompassed nine acres within the triangular-shaped, 8500+ plot cemetery at the intersection of Broad Street and Elmwood Avenue, the gateway to the south side of Providence.
From its original inception, the cemetery was designed with great care and attention to detail. All of the burial plots were arranged symmetrically, in diamond-shaped sections separated by avenues named after trees. “Cemetery Square” occupies the center of the cemetery and is marked by a small, diamond-shaped area. Between 1859 and 1860, a house in the Gothic Carpenter style was built on the property to serve as a caretaker’s lodge.
This cemetery has great historical significance, as the backgrounds of many interred in the Grace Church Cemetery represent the growth and development of this section of the City of Providence. Various groups are represented, including mill workers, veterans of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, as well as World Wars I and II, political and church leaders, and representation from the Armenian community. An independent archivist has estimated that there are 256 veteran burials in Grace Church Cemetery.
The cemetery, itself, reflects both the city’s physical developments
from the early 1800s and the ongoing immigration
into and around the city of Providence.
GRACE EPISCOPAL CHURCH
RUSSELL WARREN
Russell Warren, architect (1783-1860) is buried in lot 167 in Grace Church Cemetery with Sarah R., William and Benjamin. He was a member of Grace Church and its first architect.
Warren established a career during the early Industrial period along the Eastern Seaboard of the young United States. A Tiverton-born Rhode Islander, he emerged into the field of architecture with other carpenter builders following in the influential footsteps of Asher Benjamin’s through his influential manuals such as his 1811, The American Builder's Companion. These pattern books brought Neoclassical and Greek Revival architectural language to the young republic’s builders and aspiring designers such as Warren.
By 1834 when the charter for this cemetery was signed, Warren had designed the homes of several prominent Rhode Island and Massachusetts families as well as various churches and public buildings. In 1829 he was commissioned with redesigning a theater for Grace Episcopal Church. The year before, he designed the Providence Arcade with James T. Bucklin of Tallman and Bucklin. It is likely that he completed the design for this cemetery as well as the buildings serving it: an earlier storage crypt to the back of the cemetery in granite, and the later the Carpenter-Gothic gatekeeper’s house influenced from his years working with Andrew Jackson Davis.