Parishioners at a Pasadena church are hoping that the City Council will lay to rest Monday a more than century-old ban on all resting places for the dead within city limits.
In a rare but not unheard-of city policy dating back to the turn of the century, Pasadena land-use laws have prohibited cemeteries and mausoleums. In later years the ban also came to include columbaria--vaults with niches for urns containing ashes of the dead.
Even the Pasadena Cemetery Assn. is based in Altadena. Mountain View Cemetery, also in Altadena, is but a stone's throw from the Pasadena border, and since the 1880s has been the preferred burial ground for many Pasadena residents.
But after a year of careful lobbying by All Saints Episcopal Church, the council is expected to lift this prohibition and allow churches and synagogues to keep cremated ashes in columbaria. All Saints, among the largest churches in Pasadena, plans a columbarium with 300 niches at its church, located in the shadow of Beaux Arts City Hall.
"Who would prefer being at Forest Lawn or Rose Hills to where they've prayed for generations?" said Russell Kully, a lawyer and All Saints senior warden. "Our family will be the first in line."
Few California cities as old as Pasadena make no provisions for their dead. "It is an unusual practice," said Bill Conway, executive director of the State Interment Assn.
"Even San Francisco, where all the cemeteries were moved out, still has a columbarium."
But two trends more than a century apart may be responsible for Pasadena's ban and the move to end it.
In the 1870s and 1880s, fear of the dead spreading disease ran rampant, historians said. Among the primary beliefs at the time was that decomposing bodies produced an unhealthy gas known as miasma, said one cemetery expert.
"Miasma theory became very important. Cemeteries, along with slaughterhouses, were considered a danger," said David C. Sloane, author of "The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History."
"Typically, at the time, major cemeteries were placed outside the city limits."
Boston leaders built a cemetery in nearby Cambridge, and New York opted for Brooklyn, he said. A few cities enacted outright cemetery bans, said Sloane, who is a USC assistant professor of urban planning.
