Dedicated in 1831 and set with classical monuments in a rolling landscaped terrain,[2] it marked a distinct break with Colonial-era burying grounds and church-affiliated graveyards.

The appearance of this type of landscape coincides with the rising popularity of the term "cemetery," derived from the Greek for "a sleeping place," instead of graveyard.

This language and outlook eclipsed the previous harsh view of death and the afterlife embodied by old graveyards and church burial plots.

[9] The first president of the Mount Auburn Association, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, dedicated the cemetery in 1831.

It can be considered the link between Capability Brown's English landscape gardens and Frederick Law Olmsted's Central Park in New York (1850s).

[citation needed] Mount Auburn was established at a time when Americans had a sentimental interest in rural cemeteries.

Auburn, was published and featured descriptions of some of the more interesting monuments as well as a collection of prose and poetry about death by writers including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Willis Gaylord Clark.

Bigelow Chapel was built in the 1840s and rebuilt in the 1850s, also of Quincy granite, and was renovated in 1899 under the direction of architect Willard Sears to accommodate a crematorium.

[18] In 1870 the cemetery trustees, feeling the need for additional function space, purchased land across Mount Auburn Street and constructed a reception house.

[18] The first reception house was designed by Nathaniel J. Bradlee, and is (like the cemetery) listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Thousands of very well-kept shrubs and herbaceous plants weave through the cemetery's hills, ponds, woodlands, and clearings.