Bonaventure Cemetery

Bonaventure’s rise as a public cemetery began with a practical problem: Savannah needed more burial space. In 1907 the city bought the property from the Evergreen Cemetery Company, whose grounds had opened to burials in the mid-nineteenth century. Mayor George Tiedeman described the acquisition as a way to provide burial places for generations to come. The city placed its care with the Park and Tree Commission, joining civic infrastructure to the landscape of live oaks and river bluff.

The cemetery is on land that had been a plantation. That earlier history belongs in any account of the site, though the cemetery’s paths and monuments can make the present-day visitor see only an elegant landscape. Savannah’s municipal archive preserves documents about the city’s purchase; cemetery plots and inscriptions record families, trades, and public lives across generations. The grounds are both a place of mourning and a designed civic space.