Cemetery Fence

The Mount Auburn Cemetery board of trustees voted this week to follow the recommendation of historical groups to retain the remaining part of a cast iron fence dating back to 1844.

The cemetery halted the fence's demolition this summer after two days when two groups threatened legal action. Approximately half the fence came down in the two-day period and was replaced with chain link.

The board also decided to remove several of the old fence's best sections for historical study and to consider whether the chain link fence would remain.

Charles M. Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission, said yesterday that his group objects to the chain link fence as "inappropriate" to the cemetery's atmosphere.

Corroded joints, holes from automobile accidents, and missing and loose pickets in the iron fence presented a danger which justified the fence's removal, Alan D. Chesney, president of the cemetery said yesterday.

People called the Cambridge Historical Commission and the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA) in early August and asked them to intervene to prevent the demolishing of the entire fence, Nancy R. Coolidge, administrative director of the SPNEA said.

The Mount Auburn cemetery was the first "rural garden" cemetery in the country. Earlier cemeteries had consisted of "just a piece of pasture with graves in rows," Sullivan said.