National Cemetery Administration

National Cemetery Lodges: Documented for the Historic American Landscapes Survey

The lodges constructed by the Quartermaster's Department are a catalog of American housing types that spans a century. Between 1867 and 1960, the U.S. Army Quartermaster's Department built lodges for cemetery superintendents that provided residential and office space. In the early twentieth-first century, 72 of these buildings exist on NCA-managed cemeteries, including 18 designed in the distinctive Second Empire style that date to the 1870s.

For this reason, national cemetery lodges were the subject of a NCA research and documentation project completed for the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) in 2014. The HALS collection is housed at the Library of Congress. The history reports, drawings, and photographs about the lodges may be found here.

The HALS documentation project included measured drawings of the cemetery lodge at Finn's Point National Cemetery, New Jersey. This Second Empire-style lodge retains many of its historic features and floorplan, and the drawings record it in detail.

Plans issued by the Quartermaster's Department in 1871 (left), NCA; and plans (right) drawn of the lodge at Finn's Point National Cemetery in 2012. HALS, Library of Congress.

The dual purpose of the lodge building, for housing and administrative needs of the superintendent, defined early floorplans and architectural design. The function also determined the placement of the lodges within the larger cemetery setting. They were near the entrance gates for visitor access.

Tool houses were also constructed to meet the superintendent's needs. They stored equipment and materials needed to maintain the cemetery and house bathroom facilities for visiting public. Only a partial exterior of one NCA tool house survives. It was constructed for Alexandria (VA) National Cemetery in 1887. The Quartermaster's drawing (right) is representative of the development of standardized Army plans for buildings of all types. The tool house is reminiscent of shed-like horse barns with an open front partitioned by two posts; for the tool house, it took an arcaded form.

The HALS history reports prepared about the national cemetery lodges also are available here.

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