Methodist Cemetery
This one-acre plot in Tenleytown is one of the only surviving community cemeteries in Washington, DC.
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Established as a community cemetery in 1855 by twelve residents of Tenleytown, this burial ground is a significant landscape that evokes the geography of early Washington, DC. Shaped as a rectangular plot with parallel gravestones and 19th century funerary art, the Methodist Cemetery contributed to the initial nucleus of Tenleytown civic life. Despite its religiously oriented name, the cemetery has been independently run since 1855.
Initially a small, rural village in Washington County, Tenleytown expanded and developed alongside the urbanization of post-Civil War Washington. The first burial in the cemetery took place in 1857, and the last known burial occurred in 1989. The site has been the location of various preservation battles against roadway construction, a failing cemetery association, and broken gravestones.
Today, at over 160 years old, the Methodist Cemetery remains a Tenleytown community symbol and an emblem of an earlier Washington, DC.
DC Inventory: April 24, 2008
National Register: September 5, 2008
