Two famous DC cemeteries will be featured on this tour. Please wear comfortable shoes for this walking tour. The
Congressional Cemetery was the premier burial ground for prominent 19th Century Washingtonians, and includes such highlights as Benjamin Latrobe’s cenotaphs, the tombstone of John Philip Sousa, the giant catalog card tombstone of current Library of Congress reference specialist Thomas Mann, and the Lummi 9/11 memorial totem poles. The Cemetery has recently instituted a book club with a taste for the macabre called “Tombs and Tomes!”
The
Oak Hill Cemetery, which is hilly with narrow paths was built in 1848 under the direction of William Wilson Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Many other prominent Washingtonians from the late 19th century are also interred here. They include James Renwick, Jr, one of the pre-eminent architects of the 19th century who designed the Cemetery’s chapel and iron gates, St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, and the original Smithsonian Institution building. Also buried here is Adolph Cluss, the architect of Eastern Market, Paul J. Pelz, architect of the 1897 Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, and many Senators and Representatives. From the Rock Creek Parkway below Oak Hill Cemetery several Gothic-style mausoleums can be seen tucked into the Georgetown hillside.
Maximum Participants: 20
Fee: $50
Accessibility: Hilly with narrow paths throughout, not wheelchair or walker device accessible.
Transportation: Transportation will be by bus. Loading and unloading takes place at the hotel’s 10th Street NW entrance, on 10th Street NW between H Street NW and G Street NW. The bus for this tour will leave at 8:30am. Please meet the tour shepherd near the 10th street hotel entrance 15 minutes prior to departure.
