Calvary Cemetery, Los Angeles

Old Calvary

When Los Angeles was originally surveyed and mapped under the leadership of Gen. Edward Ord in 1849; its graveyard was at the upper end of Eternity Street. At the lower end of Eternity was the first church in Los Angeles, the Placita. In between lay a part of town flanked by adobe houses, citrus trees, and Coast Live Oaks suitable for traditional funeral processions escorting believers to eternity. The land allotted to the cemetery lay between a creek a half block north of College Street and the toma (withy dam) beyond the northern edge of town. That cemetery was named Calvary.

All the important magnates of the country around Los Angeles were buried at Calvary, such as Gen. Andrés Pico, the hero of the Battle of San Pascual, and Don Abel Stearns, a man of many ranchos. The ravine sloping down from the west took its name; it was called "Cemetery Ravine" (now Chavez Ravine, home of Dodger Stadium). Later, a Protestant cemetery for Los Angeles was laid out atop Fort Hill, where Grand Arts High School and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels are now.

As Los Angeles swelled with settlers, so also did old Calvary Cemetery grow in size and importance, and a chapel was built. Large in scale for the desert Southwest of Southern California, that chapel was dedicated to the memory of a patron, Andrew Briswell, who died in 1885. When conditions led to the founding of a new, even bigger cemetery on the other side of the Los Angeles River in 1896—in East Los Angeles—the property of the historic cemetery was put to other uses. At the time, many Italians began moving into the north side of Los Angeles. They founded a new church on north Spring Street in Upper Town. So many Italians moved in that that part of Upper Town became known as "Little Italy." A new, more permanent church building was sought, and parishioners found and bought the chapel of old Calvary Cemetery. The first child was baptized there in September 1904, and the chapel was formally established as a church, when Fr. A. Bucci dedicated the old chapel of Calvary Cemetery as St. Peter's Church on July 4, 1915.

The legacy of the old Calvary Cemetery is that former Cemetery Ravine survives today as "Chavez Ravine," taken up by Dodger Stadium, that the historic cemetery itself is now a namesake graveyard on the other side of the Los Angeles River, and that old Calvary's historic chapel in Upper Town survives today in the parish and buildings of St. Peter's Italian Catholic Church, 1039 N Broadway. Although historic old Calvary Cemetery was built over, its central campus is today Cathedral High School. (Yet unpublicized are any bodies that might come up from time to time from under the Phantoms' football field.)

Current plots

The current site, measuring 137 acres, was dedicated in 1896. All Souls Chapel was built on the grounds in 1902, and was dedicated on All Souls' Day of that same year. Bishop George Thomas Montgomery offered a Solemn Pontifical Mass on a temporary altar at the site, and afterwards presided at the setting in place of the cornerstone. It was designed as a replica of the parish church of St. Giles in the rural town of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, in England. That church is believed to have been the setting of the famed 18th-century poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. The chapel became one of the most visited places of worship in Southern California after its opening. All Souls Chapel is now used primarily for burial services.

The Main Mausoleum, with a new chapel, was built in 1936. It was designed by architect Ross Montgomery. Two additional mausoleums, Our Lady's Garden and Gethsemane, have since been built. The cemetery has its own chaplain and daily Mass is offered in the chapel of the Main Mausoleum.

Notable burials