Dr. R. Christopher Goodwin, president of R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, leads a large team of researchers who work on historical evaluation and preservation projects on both land and in the sea. Commissioned by the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office to evaluate the state’s historical and cultural resources, R. Christopher Goodwin, PhD, and his team have been responsible for nominating multiple historic cemeteries in the state to the National Register of Historic Places.
Located in Middletown, the Connecticut Valley Hospital Cemetery was nominated to and successfully listed on the National Register because it preserves the history of how the state mental hospital interred its deceased patients. The character of the cemetery works to convey unenlightened cultural attitudes toward mental illness and institutional care in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which is the period when state patients were buried there.
The Cypress Cemetery in Old Saybrook also was nominated to and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, largely because of its display of funerary art spanning over three hundred years. Monuments and grave markers in Cypress Cemetery offer a visual history of evolving cultural and artistic norms as they relate to memorials and mortuary design. The site contains many Colonial and Early American graves, as well as Neoclassical and Gothic Revival memorials. Early tombstones there were carved by practitioners of the Boston School, noted across New England for their work. The next phase of monuments in the cemetery reflects the work of successive generations of a single family noted as founders of the Connecticut Valley School of carvers; their scripts, as well as the stone materials used in markers, were distinct from those of the original Boston School carvers.
Located in Middletown, the Connecticut Valley Hospital Cemetery was nominated to and successfully listed on the National Register because it preserves the history of how the state mental hospital interred its deceased patients. The character of the cemetery works to convey unenlightened cultural attitudes toward mental illness and institutional care in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which is the period when state patients were buried there.
The Cypress Cemetery in Old Saybrook also was nominated to and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, largely because of its display of funerary art spanning over three hundred years. Monuments and grave markers in Cypress Cemetery offer a visual history of evolving cultural and artistic norms as they relate to memorials and mortuary design. The site contains many Colonial and Early American graves, as well as Neoclassical and Gothic Revival memorials. Early tombstones there were carved by practitioners of the Boston School, noted across New England for their work. The next phase of monuments in the cemetery reflects the work of successive generations of a single family noted as founders of the Connecticut Valley School of carvers; their scripts, as well as the stone materials used in markers, were distinct from those of the original Boston School carvers.