Why Do Some Cemeteries Require a Flat Bronze Grave Marker?

By Blake Blomquist · Memorial Design Artist and Monument Installer · 31 years of experience

Why do some cemeteries require a flat bronze grave marker?

There are a lot of reasons.

Before Perpetual Care

Cemeteries in the category of perpetual care “memorial gardens” started in the mid-1950s all across the USA. The “Perpetual Care Cemetery” concept was an inevitable answer to the majority of interments being done at a church, a homestead, or a small private cemetery on the edge of a farm field.

Prior to the inception of perpetual care “Memorial Parks,” families actually bought the piece of property where their loved one would be buried. Literally, they got a deed of actual ownership of the small parcel of land called a “cemetery plot.” In many cases, it was legally filed with the county where it was located and even had a tax stamp placed upon it.

What that meant was once you purchased it… it was yours, and that meant it was yours to maintain, too!

As our population grew and industrialization continued to expand, and more and more people across the country became categorized as a “white collar” worker… the average person ended up changing the location of their residency about every six years.

And if some family members moved away… well, other family members moved away, and so on and so forth, until there was no one left to take care of the cemetery property that they actually owned — where that care was up to them and fully their responsibility.

The Rise of Memorial Parks

The trend of the “Memorial Park” became a very accepted thing amongst the populace. The idea of not having to mow the grass, to blow the leaves, and no trimming every time you visited began to sound more and more comforting.

Sure, it cost a little bit more than burying somebody on a $25 lot on the edge of farmer Johnson’s field or down at the Baptist church where many of the other families in the community buried their loved ones… but in the ever-changing culture of residency locality change… it began to be “the norm.”

The peace of mind of “when we end up moving away, the perpetual care concept of a Memorial Park will take care of those items and services so we don’t have to worry about it… and when we return from time to time to visit, it will look pretty darn nice” — because it was widely accepted.

And that is how the perpetual care cemetery concept started.

Owners of the perpetual care cemeteries, or the investors who started them in the very beginning, realized that a Memorial Park need not have an upright headstone. They figured that since the care and maintenance was their responsibility and by far their largest expense, they wanted to minimize their liability, their labor costs, and their risks.

Upright headstones are solid rock set up on their side, standing up on another piece of granite called a “base.” They could topple over, be vandalized, be damaged by lawnmowers or trimmers — and not to mention, you could tell who owned the bank and who swept the bank out, because the upper-class folks had massive ones and the common folk didn’t. Plus, they were quite expensive, and many families just couldn’t afford to erect a massive piece of stone in their loved one’s name.

Marble vs. Granite

In the 1950s, the average headstone — the normal headstone — was made of white marble. Especially in the Southeast, where towns like Tate, Georgia, which was the capital of the marble industry, made marble headstones and shipped them all over the eastern seaboard. Marble was a very porous material and easy to cut and engrave — but it was very porous and susceptible to mold and mildew and all the other things that could get blown up upon it during pollen seasons and during grass-cutting times, which would then lead to discoloration, which eventually led to pitting, and then without regular maintenance and cleaning could lead to not even being able to read the names and dates that were engraved upon it when it was originally built.

With small cities growing fast and high-rises being built, architects realized that granite was superior and more durable and long-lasting. A material that, when polished, demanded almost ZERO maintenance. Almost the perfect product to put on the fascia of massive skyscrapers and other buildings. As a result of the demand for granite for those industrial uses, upright headstones began to be made from granite also, as the growing demand for granite caused its cost to go down.

Locals in Elberton, Georgia — now the Granite Capital of the World — realized that they had granite right under their feet. A supply so massive that they would probably never be able to quarry it all in many lifetimes. This was because the supply of it was almost endless. As demand continued to grow exponentially around the country, they started being able to quarry, cut, and polish granite almost as cheaply — or even cheaper — than the much softer white marble that was more predominant earlier in the same century. As marble’s demand began to waver, its cost began to rise, resulting in fewer and fewer producers being able to compete with granite. Not to mention granite’s wide variety of color options.

Why Bronze Won

Perpetual care cemetery operators realized that having an upright monument standing in the middle of their cemetery, along with hundreds and hundreds of others, was a massive cost for caring for the grounds that surrounded them.

So they started using flat bronze plaques. Basically laid directly on the ground, and there were no more problems with headstones toppling over or being damaged by a falling limb or a car going slightly off the cemetery drive, or becoming unlevel due to settling of the associated gravesite. Bronze basically was a “business decision” that allowed cemetery managers to make the gardens look really nice with less labor costs and way less liability. Plus, setting the super-heavy granite stone took special heavy equipment and more numbers of experienced manpower.

Patina and the Granite Base

Later, as bronze plaques became more and more popular, they realized that placing the bronze plaque directly onto the ground caused them to patina more quickly.

Patina is the process that bronze goes through — much like silver tarnishes, bronze forms a beautiful patina that is a light green haze. This happens because the vast majority of the alloy called “bronze” is copper, and most of the bronze plaques at the cemetery are above 80% copper. As a matter of fact… the higher the copper content in the alloy of bronze, the higher its quality is considered.

So to delay this patina process, cemeteries began mounting the bronze plaques onto a granite base. Having the bronze plaque not in direct contact with the soil, and rather having it resting atop a granite base, allowed them to maintain their shiny new look from when they were first installed for a longer and longer period of time. As time went on, with the inception of more modern and advanced coatings and the likes of UV inhibitors, you can now purchase a bronze plaque today and its original new finish can last many decades before it begins the slow process of aging into its eventual patina — which many think is beautiful.

Just take a look at the Statue of Liberty. It appears to be a very soft, lovely tint of subtle green, and that’s because it was fashioned from copper — the main metal in bronze, which is basically 80+% copper and a mixture of other metals that create the alloy that we call bronze.

So now when you go to your memorial park in your local town or municipality and you walk in the office and you want to inter a loved one and they tell you that the cemetery only allows a flat bronze plaque on a granite base, you can understand not only the “why” but the “when,” and the reasons behind that dynamic evolution of the way that we mark the graves of our beloved deceased.

Bronze Today

The good news is that due to its demand… foundries have evolved in their ability to fashion bronze castings into magnificent pieces of art. With beautifully sculpted roses or dogwood blooms and custom emblems, or even with including images or “photographs” of the deceased with spectacular detail… right in the bronze plaque.

So don’t be upset or confused about the requirement of a bronze plaque at your memorial park. The vast majority of the reasons for its popularity are benefits for those that are left to design the memorial marker and later visit their loved one’s graves to reminisce and remember their loved ones.