Landscape Information
Established by the city in 1852 on four acres, this cemetery served as the only public burial ground available to the local African American community until the mid-twentieth century. Located approximately one mile north of downtown and now measuring nine-and-a-half acres, the irregular-shaped, relatively level site is framed by Florence Street, Hampton Avenue, Abbeville Avenue, and residential lots to the west. It serves as the resting place for local community members, including enslaved and emancipated people, Reconstruction era leaders, and veterans.
In 1892 the city transferred ownership to the Aiken Cemetery and Burial Association, a coalition of local African American churches, under the condition that they continue to maintain the property as a cemetery. Throughout the early to mid-twentieth century, the burial ground suffered from neglect and deferred maintenance until 1988, when the cemetery was reincorporated as Pine Lawn Memorial Gardens, expanding to its current acreage.
Today, managed by a board of trustees, the burial ground is framed by a brick and cast-iron fence and accessed via a gate along Florence Street. Traversed by linear and curvilinear earthen drives, it is characterized by an irregular plan with freestanding grave markers and square and rectangular plots, which are often defined by low walls of marble, brick, and concrete, and also metal chains. Organized into north-south rows, the eastward-facing grave markers and monuments, some toppled or broken, are shaded by irregularly planted pine, cedar, and oak trees. Flowering bulbs that include daffodils and daylilies, mark several gravesites.
Pine Lawn Memorial Gardens was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
