historical walking tour of - Toronto Public Library

Mount Pleasant Cemetery, c. 1902
MOUNT PLEASANT CEMETERY
1643 YONGE STREET
Henry A. Engelhardt, 1874.
ount Pleasant Cemetery dates back to
MOctober 20, 1873 when the Toronto
General Burying Ground Trust paid
$20,000 for Lot 19, Concession 3 from the
Bay, a 200-acre property stretching between
Yonge Street and today's Bayview Avenue,
north of the present Glen Elm and Moore
avenues to south of Merton Street. (It is the
only original 200-acre lot still intact in the
area.) Toronto needed a new cemetary. The
city's first non-sectarian cemetery, York
Burying Ground (also known as Potter's
54
Field Cemetery or Strangers Burial Ground ),
located at the northwest corner of Yonge
and Bloor streets, had closed in 1855. Its
replacement, the Toronto Necropolis, had
been established by the Trust in 1850, but it
was only 18.25 acres and was quickly filling
up_
In 1874, Henry A. Engelhardt was hired
tp layout and design 53 acres of the new
cemetery, at the Yonge Street side of the
property_ Engelhardt, originally from
Germany, had trained as a civil engineer
and was a keen horticulturalist. In 1872, he
wrote a book on ornamental gardening, The
beauties of nature combined with art,
which included a chapter on cemetery
beautification. Under Engelhardt's supervi-