Honoring the past. Cherishing today. Enabling the future.
MAKING A HOME FOR ATLANTA'S PEOPLE
WHO WE ARE
The Friends of Historic Westview Cemetery was created to preserve and promote the broad experience of the role of Westview Cemetery to the city of Atlanta. By collaborating with the Atlanta Preservation Center, we seek to expand the vast role this space holds for the history of the city.
We are the support network that understands the importance of maintaining and preserving the Westview Cemetery –– a rare Atlanta historic treasure. The Friends of Historic Westview Cemetery community honors the legacy of the past, cherishes the joy of today, and enables a beautiful future.
WHERE WE’RE GOING
We are a foundational community within Atlanta that maintains and protects some of the city’s oldest treasures.
This influential network has multiple outlined initiatives and restoration projects that each move Historic Westview Cemetery into becoming a more attractive, clear, and inviting place to visit and reflect. We are enabling new stories to be told by raising funds, collecting partners, and building a community that will see this landmark preserved well.
577 ACRES AND 125,000 STORIES THAT DESERVE LOVING CARE
Westview Cemetery was established in 1884 when several prominent Atlantans purchased 577 acres. Since that time, the cemetery’s rolling terrain – part of which was a site in the Civil War battle of Ezra Church – became the final resting place for more than 125,000 people.
As time passes and its history grows, so does the need to preserve it well.
WHAT WE VALUE
A SENSE OF BELONGING
THE BEAUTY IN HISTORY
THE VALUE OF FAMILY
THE CITY OF ATLANTA
A PLACE FULL OF LEGACIES
The Irish Horse Traders (Irish Travelers) and Roma (Romani people) are two ethnic groups who have several large family plots throughout Historic Westview Cemetery.
Daniel Chester French’s Achievement monument marks the grave of Cora and Jesse Williams. French is best known as the creator of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Thomas W. Burford discovered the Ilex Cornuta “Burfodii” plant or Burford Holly, his namesake, which resides at Westview’s greenhouse. Burford had once worked for Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle.
OUR NOTABLE PERMANENT RESIDENTS
Photo Credits: Coca-Cola Company Founder Asa Candler 1900, Photo by John van Hasselt/Sygma via Getty Images
Asa G. Candler
Founder of Coca-Cola
Photo Credits: Henry W. Grady, half-length portrait, facing left, By C.W. Mates(?), Library of Congress, c1889.
Henry W. Grady
Journalist and orator. Grady Memorial Hospital is named after him.
Photo Credits: Lemuel Pratt Grant in the 1880’s or early 1890’s – Grant was born in 1817 and Died in 1893, Georgia State University Library via History Atlanta Website, 07/23/2014.
Lemuel Pratt Grant
Engineer and landowner, donated the land for Grant Park
Photo Credits: George V. Gress portrait, Posted to Facebook by Zoo Atlanta on March 28, 2017
George V. Gress
Lumber baron and donor of the Cyclorama
Photo Credits: Joel Chandler Harris ("Uncle Remus"), NYPL Digital Gallery, before 1920.
Joel Chandler Harris
Newspaperman and author of the famous “Uncle Remus Stories”
Photo Credits: Portrait of William B. Hartsfield, New Georgia Encyclopedia Website, 08/12/2002.
William B. Hartsfield
Atlanta mayor. Atlanta Airport (Hartsfield-Jackson) is his namesake.
Photo Credits: James Joseph Haverty (b.1849 d.1939), Home Furnishings Hall of Fame.
J. J. Haverty
Founder of furniture retailer Haverty’s and the Rhodes-Haverty Building
Photo Credits: Harriet Harwell “Hattie” Wilson High on her wedding day to Joseph Madison High September 6, 1882, Find a Grave Website
Harriet H.W. High
Donated Peachtree Street mansion to build the High Museum of Art
Photo Credits: Donald-Hollowell-1917-2004, Archives Division, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture via New Georgia Encyclopedia Website, 09/12/2007.
Donald L. Hollowell
Civil Rights attorney
Photo Credits: First Black Graduate University Alabama Vivian Malone Jones (1965), Uploaded by Water Opinde to blackthen.com, 2/6/2019.
Vivian M. Jones
First of two African-American students to attend University of Alabama and its first African-American graduate
Photo Credits: The Rev. Joseph Lowery and his wife Evelyn pose in this photo from USA Today
Rev. Joseph and Evelyn G. Lowery
Civil Rights activists
Photo Credits: John Harold Mann, Honor States
John Harold Mann
U.S. Army KIA Vietnam War
Family Photo
Edgar Poe McBurney
West View Cemetery founding member, secretary, and manager
Photo Credits: Aurianna ‘Ria’ Pell in Overalls, Posted to Find a Grave, November 2013.
Aurianna ‘Ria’ Pell
Chef and owner of Ria’s Bluebird, LGBTQ mentor and activist
Photo Credits: Family Photo of Cleo Clayton Powell, ajc.com, 11/2/20.
C. Clayton Powell
Civil Rights advocate and optometrist pioneer
Photo Credits: Robert Shaw (April 30, 1916 – January 25, 1999), American conductor
Robert Shaw
Conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Photo Credits: Tommy Nobis (left) and Rankin Smith (right), Dec. 14, 1965, Review Journal
Rankin Smith
Owner of the Atlanta Falcons
Photo Credits: Dorothy Rogers Tilly (1883-1970), Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.
Dorothy Rogers Tilly
Early twentieth-century civil and human rights advocate, organizer and mentor
Photo credits: Vivian at home in Atlanta in 2016, Kevin D. Liles—The New York Times/Redux
Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian
American minister, author, and close friend and lieutenant of Martin Luther King Jr.
Photo Credits: George Waldo Woodruff 1917, Georgia Tech Archives
Robert Woodruff
President of Coca-Cola. Many Atlanta landmarks bear his name
A VARIETY OF SITES TO ENJOY AT WESTVIEW CEMETERY
Photo credit: Tom Keel
1884 Lawn-Park Cemetery
Westview Cemetery opened in October of 1884. The cemetery was designed in the lawn-park cemetery style, a style made popular in the latter part of the 19th century with central family monuments and streamlined landscapes.
Photo credit: Bonnie Heath
1940 Memorial Park Cemetery
In the 1940s, then-owner Asa Candler Jr. brought the memorial park cemetery style to Westview. Its most noted characteristic is bronze grave markers flush to the ground that are grouped into “garden” sections, such as the “Garden of the Last Supper” and “Garden of Gethsemane.”
THE WESTVIEW ABBEY
Westview Abbey – started in 1943 and still unfinished – is approximately five hundred by three hundred feet in size – equivalent to a football-field- and-a-half long by a football field across.
Inside Westview Abbey’s Spanish Gothic-styled, fan-vaulted-ceiling Florence Candler chapel are four 6.0- by 4.5-foot-wide, silver plate and gold bronze thirteen-light chandeliers, and twenty-one paintings by Hungarian-born artist Bartholomew (Bart) Mako.
More than seventy stained-glass windows adorn the mausoleum at Westview Abbey. Across the abbey’s stone-lined walls are numerous carved lines of poetry from writers such as William Cullen Bryant; Robert Lewis Stevenson; Alfred Lord Tennyson; and John Greenleaf Whittier.
Spread across three floors, 11,444 crypts, and several columbaria, the abbey serves as final resting place for Atlanta’s famous and ordinary citizens.
1864 The Battle of Ezra Church
The last of three battles in the Atlanta campaign of the American Civil War - partially occurred on the northend of Historic Westview Cemetery.
1888-1945 The Vault Opening
Historic Westview Cemetery opened up its granite and marble receiving vault in the side of the hill in 1888. It was used until 1945 to temporarily store bodies until weather conditions allowed for proper burials.
1890 The Westview Gatehouse
Designed in 1890 by Walter T. Downing, Westview Cemetery’s Romanesque Revival Gatehouse is one of Atlanta’s oldest standing buildings and is one of the most notable landmarks in the Westview Cemetery.
1934-1951 Asa Candler Jr. Involvement Begins
Coca-Cola scion and heir Asa Candler Jr. first became involved with Historic Westview Cemetery in 1930, becoming the director of the cemetery's association in 1934 and staying in that role until 1951. Over 21 years, he greatly enhanced th physical attributes of the cemetery - creating the massive Westview Abbey and introducing memorial park sections to the cemetery.
1943 The Start of The Westview Abbey
An approximately 500 x 300 ft sized abbey started construction and remains unfinished to this day.
1950 The Last Supper Exhibit Debuted
German-born Fritz Paul Zimmer's 26-foot long bas-relief Last Supper was unveiled on Palm Sunday. It was originally part of a larger Fountain of Life Memorial, that foundation was later removed in 1970.
1951 The Landmark of Westview Cemetery Renamed
Beginning in 1951, the "West View Cemetery" in West End Atlanta, was officially renamed to "Westview Cemetery."
MORE THAN A CEMETERY
ONCE A HOME FOR FLOWERS
For decades, Historic Westview Cemetery was home to Westview Floral Company, which sold flowers not only to lot owners but also to local businesses and eventually led to a frequent advice column in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
OFFERING AN AMBULANCE SERVICE
Throughout its history, Historic Westview Cemetery ventured into other types of businesses, including an ambulance service.
WESTVIEW ON THE BIG SCREENS
Many Hollywood productions film at Historic Westview Cemetery – including one of the Fast and the Furious film installments, the film Triple 9, and the television shows Constantine, Sleepy Hollow, and Ozark.
