A Mid-Century Chronicle of Mount Auburn: The Photography of Arthur Cushman Haskell

Born in 1890 in Salem, MA, Haskell made the transition from high-school student to draftsman, working for several Boston architectural firms over a ten-year period. As he became familiar with the practices of various architectural photographers, he experimented with the camera on his own. In the late 1920s, Haskell started to take photographs for many of the leading architectural firms of the day including Ralph Adams Cram; Perry, Shaw & Hepburn; and Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott.¹ In the 1930s, he photographed sites in New England for the Works Progress Administration’s Historic American Buildings Survey and later took pictures for historical and preservation societies.  

In the late 1930s, Mount Auburn Cemetery President Oakes I. Ames commissioned Haskell to photograph the Cemetery’s grounds, monuments, and buildings. Haskell took hundreds of shots of the Cemetery’s well-known sites as well as extensive views of Mount Auburn in all seasons. Starting in 1937, the photographer’s images were used to illustrate Mount Auburn’s annual reports as well as other Cemetery publications. His relationship with Mount Auburn proved a productive and happy one. Near the end of his tenure, Haskell wrote to Ames, “I have always greatly enjoyed working at the Cemetery and also the very cordial relations with your office. I can not imagine a nicer set of working conditions.”² 

Haskell used an 8x10-inch view camera and printed black-and-white gelatin silver prints in a darkroom he constructed himself. Mount Auburn’s Historical Collections & Archives houses a collection of Haskell’s original negatives, prints, and elegant presentation albums. The pictures, which exhibit a stunning range of tones and textures, reveal the photographer's masterful printing techniques. In the 1990s, Mount Auburn received a grant to stabilize and preserve the collection of approximately 500 images. Duplicates were made of the negatives, and copy prints were created from the original negatives. The entire collection is stored in climate-controlled conditions. 

Haskell conveyed the richness of Mount Auburn’s cultural landscape with thoughtful depictions of the Cemetery’s monuments juxtaposed within the natural setting. People, cars, or objects that might date the scenes are noticeably absent from his timeless images. His views of the Cemetery's varied terrain include exquisite depictions of flowers and trees, lakes and ponds, and striking cloud formations. An excellent architectural photographer who experimented with light and shadow, Haskell captured with breathtaking detail the features of the Cemetery’s architectural landmarks and memorials. He preferred the clarity of the morning light. “I have always found that the best pictures [at Mount Auburn] were obtained in the early morning, from seven to nine,” he explained. ³

Renowned architectural historian Abbott Lowell Cummings noted that Haskell was “continually praised for a particular talent in the manipulation of light and shadow in which he never used flash or flood lighting, his work possessed the rare quality of combining in thoroughly satisfying proportions a straightforward artistry, technical perfection, and documentary scholarship.”⁴ These characteristics are clearly evident in Haskell’s crystal clear, beautifully composed images—an exceptionally sensitive portrait of the Cemetery that survives as the only existing comprehensive photographic record of Mount Auburn in the mid-twentieth century. 

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[1] Other firms Haskell worked for included Frohman, Robb & Little; McGinnis & Walsh; Nelson W. Aldrich; David J. Abrahams & Associates; and Royal Barry Wills.

[2] Arthur C. Haskell to Oakes I. Ames, September 12, 1962. Historical Collections & Archives Department, Mount Auburn Cemetery.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Abbott Lowell Cummings, “Arthur Cushman Haskell, New England Architectural Photographer,” Old Time New England, v. 59, no. 214, Fall 1968, p. 56.