Remembering Grand View

Glendale News: January 31, 2008 - by Katherine Yamada
Verdugo Views - Remembering Grand View

"When Grand View Cemetery was established in the mid-1880s, it was one of the few burial grounds in the area. (Forest Lawn opened in 1906.) However, there aren’t too many tombstones dating back to those early years. Its heyday began in the 1920s, when Len C. Davis purchased it and set the tiny country graveyard on an expansion course.

Davis renamed it Grand View Memorial Park and added a 40-foot entrance arch, complete with electric lights, which spanned the entrance on what is now Glenwood Road. Made of stucco, the arch was painted in the same rose colors that decorated the interior of the new office building. Davis also took out plans for a residence and a chapel.

But his most impressive accomplishment was the landscaping. Most of the evergreen cypress trees that had originally been planted were taken out, and the bare land was formed into an amphitheater where 1,000-plus plots were laid out. More than 800 camphor and 200 bottle trees were planted to shade the graves.

Shortly before Memorial Day 1921, a Glendale Evening News article predicted that the holiday would bring many visitors to the cemetery. The expected visitors included relatives and friends of victims of World War I and those who still remembered the many Grand Army men buried there. (The Grand Army of the Republic, founded in 1866, was an organization of veterans of the United States Army, Navy and Marine Corps who served in the Civil War.)

In 1922, A. Budwig, former pilot for L.C. Brand and by then with the Rogers Airport at the La Brea oil fields, took several photos of the maturing plantings from the company airplane. One was published in the Glendale Daily Press in September 1922.

Davis took out permits in 1924 to build a huge mausoleum, said to be the largest in the world at the time, and estimated to cost $400,000." - Glendale News

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