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Riverside Cemetery is a 36-acre urban forest in Waterbury, Connecticut, and is a living museum of art, history and nature set in a beautiful landscape. Designed by landscape architect Howard Daniels as part of the Rural Cemetery Movement of the mid-19th century, Riverside rises on a hillside near the west bank of the Naugatuck River. Riverside is notable for its series of ponds, its winding roads set into the landscape, and its many large and striking monuments cast in granite and bronze. Included on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988, Riverside is the resting place of industrialists and inventors, artists and architects, suffragettes and Civil War heroes, and the men and women who changed a region and the nation.
Riverside has more than 630 mostly mature and healthy trees in the developed part of the landscape, comprising 47 species representing 30 genera. This number includes many native species including Northern Red Oak, quercus rubra; Black Birch, betula lenta; White Oak, quercus alba; Northern White Cedar, thuja occidentalis; and Sassafras, sassafras. Other trees of significance include a mature and healthy American Basswood, tilia americana; a large healthy and beautiful European Beech, fagus sylvatica; at least three mature and healthy American Sycamore, platanus occidentalis; and two mature and beautiful Tulip trees, liriodendron. One of the sassafras trees is possibly as large as any currently living in Connecticut. Riverside has recently added new trees to its landscape to add variety and color as was the original intent of the Rural Cemetery design, including a golden weeping willow, salix alba 'Tristis;' an American beech, fagus grandifolia; a silver linden, tilia tomentosa; Eastern redbud, cercis canadensis; and ornamental cherry trees, prunus x yedoensis.
496 Riverside Drive
Waterbury, New Haven County, Connecticut
Riverside Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located at 496 Riverside Street in Waterbury, Connecticut on the western bank of the Naugatuck River.
Dedicated on September 24, 1853, it is 36.4-acre in size and includes winding tree-lined paths, upper and lower ponds and an array of funerary monuments in the gothic, neo-classical, and romantic style. The property also includes many older burials and headstones dating back to the late 1700s which were relocated from the defunct Grand Street burial ground.
The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.
From the late 1700s to the mid 1800s, burials in Waterbury took place at the old burial grounds now known as Library Park on Grand Street. The first suggestion for a new cemetery in Waterbury was made in 1849 by Dr. Amos S. Blake. An association was formed on March 6, 1850 and money was raised through the sale of burial lots.
The bronze statue, Wisdom, on the Benedict family monument was designed by Truman Howe Bartlett in 1871 and sculpted by Ferdinand von Miller in 1872.
The modern Gothic Hall Memorial Chapel was designed by noted Waterbury architect Robert W. Hill and completed in 1885.
The monument to Civil War Colonel John Lyman Chatfield was designed by George Edwin Bissell and was unveiled at a ceremony on September 13, 1887.
The Elton Memorial Vase sits at the entrance of the cemetery. It was designed by George Edwin Bissell and cast by Fonderia Galli in 1905. The bronze monument depicts four scenes from the Life of Christ. The first side depicts the adoration of the Wise Men; the second side, the Crucifixion; the third side, the entombment; and the fourth side, the Resurrection. Decorative figures carrying wreaths form the handles with the vase supported by cherubs. The large bronze figures on the side of the vase depict Grief and Faith.
Riverside Cemetery Website