Founded in 1869, Cleveland’s vast Lake View Cemetery, which sits between Cleveland Heights, Cleveland’s Little Italy and University Circle neighborhoods and East Cleveland, is steeped in history, an outdoor museum.
Its most imposing structure is the Garfield Memorial where America’s 20th president, James A. Garfield, born in Moreland Hills, and his wife Lucretia are buried. The Jeptha H. Wade Memorial Chapel was designed by the legendary Louis Comfort Tiffany and features his distinctive art glass windows. (Both buildings are now open post-pandemic, and free). But wander its 285 acres and you’ll find gravesites with tombstones and mausoleums, many of them works of art, of northeast Ohio notables such as John D. Rockefeller, Eliot Ness, Carl B. Stokes, Louis Stokes, Alan Freed and Harvey Pekar.
The cemetery is also a museum of nature, with trees, flowers, shrubs, mineral formations and wildlife worthy of a walk-through at any time of year. It’s open to the public year round; in the summer it even has concerts on the lawn of the Garfield Memorial.
Cleveland, OH 44106