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The Oakwood Cemetery Association is pleased has announced the results of its recent annual meeting, confirming their leadership team and outlining a transformative vision for the historic grounds funded by significant state and philanthropic grants.
During the meeting, the Association officially appointed its Board of Directors for the upcoming term. The Board unanimously re-elected Douglas Mooradian to another term as President, where he will continue to lead the Association's strategic efforts. Additionally, Connie Brown continues her vital role as Director, overseeing the day-to-day operations and community outreach of the historic site along with Cynthia Trowman, Director of Operations and Michael Baxter, Supervisor of Grounds and Crematorium.
Additional officers who were elected include: Audrey M. Zygand - Vice President; Patrick Bradley - Treasurer; and Christopher Brown Esq. - Recording Secretary
Board members include: Dennis R. Collins, Dana DeFazio, Robert J. Kazeangin, John Mantell, Dr. Joy Meness and Nelson Thomas.
The Association is working in close collaboration with the Oakwood Heritage Foundation board members, which includes the newly elected president, Laura Fitzgerald, Vice-president Emily Jerrod, Treasurer Patricia Gagliardo and Secretary Katrina Kuhn.
The Association is also thrilled to highlight the start of a significant restoration project which is being supported by a $2.25 million Regional Economic Community Assistance Program grant from Empire State Development with additional funding provided by the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation.
Work will include new roofs, structural repairs, stonework and painting for the Chapel built in 1877, the magnificent Green & Wicks marble mausoleum built in 1913, and the Stone Office built in 1922. All of the buildings will be used for future heritage tourism and programming in conjunction with the Niagara Falls National Heritage Area.
"This grant allows us to restore and protect our architectural treasures that tell the story of Niagara Falls," said President Douglas Mooradian. "These projects will ensure that Oakwood Cemetery remains a beautiful, safe, and historically intact landmark that visitors can enjoy for generations to come."
About Oakwood Cemetery:
Oakwood Cemetery in Niagara Falls, New York serves as the final resting place for many of the city's founding families and notable figures, and is dedicated to preserving the history, art, and nature of the Niagara region.
Established in 1852, on land donated by Lavinia Porter, daughter of Judge Augustus Porter who is recognized as a founder of Niagara Falls, and one of its largest landowners. The Oakwood landscape we know today dates from an original design drawn in 1852 by noted civil engineer T.D. Judah. Drake Whitney, (nephew to the three Whitney sisters for which Three Sisters' Islands" are named) refined the map in 1882.
In 1913, Oakwood built a magnificent marble mausoleum, designed by the Buffalo architectural firm Green and Wicks. The Oakwood Mausoleum was built to the very highest standards with foot-thick walls of concrete covered by hand cut gray Vermont marble. The exterior features soaring stone columns supporting a centered entrance portico. Within were crypts for over 350 interred individuals, and the interior was faced and floored in white Vermont marble, lit by clerestory windows and two stained glass windows (one by Louis Comfort Tiffany). Huge bronze doors enter into a chapel space centered in the mausoleum.
Oakwood would become the final resting place for families whose names are associated with the growth and development of Niagara Falls as a great industrial city and a world-renowned tourist attraction. Along with the Whitneys, these families include the Schoelkopfs of hydroelectric power fame, the Oppenheims, the Siberbergs, the Pfohls, the Haeberles, the Tattersalls, the Holleys, and both Porter brothers.
Among those buried at Oakwood, one finds Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to travel over the falls in a barrel, Homan Walsh, the young kite flyer whose kite and progressively larger ropes sent the cable across the gorge for the suspension bridge, and the famed "Hermit of Goat Island". The cemetery also includes a memorial to "Comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic", veterans of the Civil War.
Oakwood today contains many outstanding examples of funerary art including obelisks, sarcophagi, and beautiful statuary. Additionally, the landscape is lush with mature plantings and trees, many dating from the earliest time of the cemetery.
It continues to service the community with the crematory, columbarium, and gravesites, including newly available family plots formed by the expansion of previously smaller burial sites.
