A Century of Jewish History: Lincoln Park Cemetery–Architecture Critic Morgan
Will Morgan, Architecture Critic
A Century of Jewish History: Lincoln Park Cemetery–Architecture Critic Morgan
Twenty-six-year-old Private First Class David B. Cutler died the day after Christmas in 1944. Given the date, we can assume he was killed in the Ardennes Offensive in Belgium. If so, Cutler was one of almost 90,000 American causalities in the savage Battle of the Bulge. SS Panzer troops massacred Allied soldiers who had surrendered; Nazis in American uniforms murdered many more.
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We do not know the actual circumstances of Private Cutler's death (as a Jew he would have most certainly been executed had he been captured). But we do know that his final resting place is in the veterans’ section of Lincoln Park Cemetery in Warwick. Cutler's story is just one of 20,000 that can be told by the gravestones in this 26-acre cemetery situated between I-95 and the airport.
The commemorative wall in the military section at Lincoln Park, defined by its "V" shape and the hundreds of inscribed names of Jewish soldiers, sailors, and airmen, recalls the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. Close by is a small yellow brick funeral chapel in a simple Gothic revival style.
Lincoln Park is definitely not a rural garden cemetery in the English manner of Swan Point or Boston's Mount Auburn. Such 19th-century necropolises were predecessors to the city parks movement. Before the rise of municipal playgrounds like Central Park or Roger Williams Park, such cemeteries served not only memorials to the deceased, but were also pastoral refuges for people to recreate. They would take in the fresh air, picnic, and–in romantic Victorian fashion–contemplate the landscape and the meaning of death.
Those funerary motifs of sighing angels, weeping willows, Roman urns, and Greek temples that adorn Christian cemeteries are not found at Lincoln Park. Stones here tend to be of similar size and shape–the competitive burial ground contest of "my neo-classical mausoleum is bigger than your Gothic chapel" is wholly absent. The largest grave marker is a plain masonry box that holds the remains of Rabbi Abraham Schechter. Rather, there is democratization of death here, a fellowship of survivors of the Diasporas that brought Jews to America.
Yet there is much to be found here amidst the physical reminders of over a century of Jewish life in Rhode Island.
Lincoln Park was named for the surrounding neighborhood, rather than a specific congregation. It is, in fact, an amalgamation of various temples and fraternal organizations, and when it was laid out in 1908 there were initially over 50 sections. No doubt there are those with knowledge of various synagogues and families who might be able identify a hierarchy of religious and community "neighborhoods." But, after 113 years of service, its egalitarian spirit feels seamless.
