Willowbrook Cemetery
Westport, Connecticut
Return to the main page.
Willowbrook Cemetery, at 395 Main Street (Route 57), Westport, Connecticut was established in 1847. Willowbrook was originally laid out by landscape artist, David Bates Douglass. Douglass created Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, famous for it's innovative and tranquil park-like setting. Douglass died while Willowbrook was still under construction, and the project was finished by famous landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. (Olmsted designed, among many other projects, New York's Central Park, Boston's Back Bay Fens, Niagara Falls State Park, and both Beardsley and Seaside Parks in Bridgeport, CT. He was also the landscape architect responsible for the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, or World's Fair.) Willowbrook contains some of the most unusual memorials in the area.
Estimated number of interments, as of January 2024: at least 6264.
Photos taken 16 March 2010.
Some notable residents of Willowbrook include:
- Edward Huntington Coley
- (22 August 1861 - 6 June 1949), Bishop of Central New York.
- James Earle Fraser
- (4 November 1876 - 11 October 1953), a sculptor who designed the Indian head buffalo nickel (1913), the Navy Cross and World War I victory medals. In 1919, he received the Saltus Medal art award and in 1952 he was awarded the Century Association Medal of Honor and the National Sculpture Society Medal of Honor. One of his pieces, "The End of the Trail" of a weary Indian slumping on his horse, is one the most reproduced works of art of all time. His statues and monuments include Alexander Hamilton at the Department of Commerce Building, Washington, D.C.; "Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark" at the Missouri State Capitol; the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial in Philadelphia; Robert Todd Lincoln's Sarcophagus and the William Howard Taft Monument, both in Arlington National Cemetery.
- Laura Fraser
- (14 September 1889 - 13 August 1966), sculptor who designed a number of coins (and James Earle Fraser's wife).
- Alexander Kipnis
- (1 February 1891 - 14 May 1978), opera singer (bass) who performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and at other prestigious opera houses throughout the world.
- Josiah Marean
- (30 April 1844 - 8 February 1922), a New York State Supreme Court Justice. (Marean's monument is shown later on the page.)
- Fritz Reiner
- (19 December 1888 - 15 November 1963), orchestra conductor who helmed the Cincinnati Symphony, the Philadelphia Symphony, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestras. Reiner was a student of Bela Bartok and he taught Leonard Bernstein.
- Walter Langer "Baron" von Langendorff
- (died 1983), who created the perfume, "White Shoulders", in 1940, and introduced a cologne for men, "The Baron", in 1965. He also founded Evyan Perfumes, a New York-based fragrance manufacturer. (Von Langendorff's mausoleum is pictured at the bottom of the page.)
- Mort Walker
- (3 September 1923 - 27 January 2018), cartoonist responsible for the comic strips, "Beetle Bailey" and "Hi and Lois".
