This past weekend, Toni and I revisited one of the more interesting places in Cincinnati that doesn’t cost anything to visit, albeit it costs a fortune to get into the place —

Spring Grove Cemetery. It’s a 733 acre plot of land, more-or-less in the geographic center of the city of Cincinnati in a neighborhood newly called Spring Grove village, but until recently known as Winton Place after its railroad station.

The cemetery is located between Crawford Avenue on the West, Spring Grove Avenue on the South, Gray Road on the North and Winton Road on the East. This foot gate is off Crawford Avenue on the west side of the cemetery. There’s a vehicle gate right next to it.

Oh! And here it is.

A trip through Spring Grove is a geography lesson on Cincinnati street names. I’ve Shot this monument before. Burkhardt’s is a local store.

Following an afternoon of driving around shooting pix of the neat-and-odd-looking monuments, you get to where you’re seeing scenes in … groves of graves.

No particular reason. I don’t even think there’s a Meier Street in town — or maybe there is. I just liked the way the light hit the statue.

But, at the same time, it’s pretty amazing to me that as you roam the cemetery, all these elaborate and … monumental … monuments are all in pretty fair condition. Any other cemetery, you see toppled gravestones and broken monuments all over the patch. But in Spring Grove, it’s like their vast and competent staff takes care of that. Or the monuments are just better made.

Another famous name from Cincinnati history — Burnet. It’s pronounced “burnit” NOT “Bur-Nette”.

Something about the detailing of this sculpture made me want to shoot it.

This was one of my favorite shots from that earlier trip to SGC. I chose it as the desktop background on my Kindle Fire tablet. I like the Egyptian funerary motif. Before, I thought it was unique in that, but this time, I spotted a whole bunch more examples of the style around the place.

Around the corner, all I could see was the “William H.” and I thought, “Surely not ‘Taft?'” But, it’s Spring Grove. And a lot of the city’s major families and figures are buried here, even Alonzo Taft, William Howard’s father, so I went around the corner and shot it. Only to find it was a different major historical name of the area — Alms. As in Alms Hotel, Alms Park, and the Alms and Doepke building. There’s also a William H. Harrison, but I know it’s not the president, ’cause he’s buried over in North Bend.

Not really a big fan of the architectural detail or the color of the stone, here. But the red buds (NB: NOT a redbud; there are lots of THOSE around, though.) across the door was an attractant to my camera.

Swans on a lake. They wouldn’t pose — or come closer — so I had to take the shot that was given. Sort of like shots with wires and utility poles in the way. That’s part of the shot, so you take it — good or bad. In this case, it turned out alright.

Sorry to say, I can’t offer any of these shots for sale as prints, because they’re of artistic works to which I can’t get copyright — or even license it. So enjoy here (or go see them for yourself in stone, so to speak).