Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, the Lowell Cemetery is located at 1020 Lawrence Street. Established in 1841, it is an important, early example of the "rural" cemetery movement of the mid 19th century. Like many communities, the founders of the Lowell Cemetery followed the model of Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. Established in 1831, Mt. Auburn was the first rural, or garden, cemetery in the United States. Its development was inspired by the romantic philosophy of the day and by trends in European cemetery design, inspiring the rural cemetery movement that swept cities across the eastern part of the country. The Lowell Cemetery was the fourth of its kind in the United States following Mt. Auburn (1831), Laurel Hill in Philadelphia (1836), and Green Wood Cemetery in New York (1837).
Rural or garden cemeteries provided oases of rural, naturalistic landscaping in rapidly expanding cities. They combined richly carved and handsomely designed monuments, mausoleums, and other funerary art and architecture with dramatic landscapes of rural vistas, lush vegetation, and varied terrain.
