Building Community at Congressional Cemetery
Building Community at Congressional Cemetery
by Larry Janezich
Posted: Tuesday, September 2, 2025
The wrought iron entrance to Congressional Cemetery, 1801 E Street, SE. The gate house is at left.
Anthony “A.J.” Orlikoff, Interim Director of the Association for the Preservation of Historic Congressional Cemetery
It’s easy to overlook the community building attributes of Congressional Cemetery. In truth, the cemetery is powerful unifying force on Capitol Hill.
CHC interviewed Anthony “A.J.” Orlikoff, Interim Director of the Association for the Preservation of Historic Congressional Cemetery: “Cemeteries need to be places of solemn contemplation of grief or mourning – they need to be that space – but what we’re seeing now across North America is cemeteries more as places of community, engaging people in different ways. There are a lot of reasons for that and it comes out of communities themselves organizing and using these places.”
We take cemeteries for granted until they fill up and are taken for granted. Their fortunes wax and wane, driven by demographics and other factors, and Congressional Cemetery’s history has been one of periods of prominence and affluence and then periods of decline.
Orlikoff says, “Congressional cemetery was in decline in the 1980s and when you look at the cemetery as a community building organization it really starts with a group of neighbors who lived nearby in the late 1980s that began walking their dogs here and they realized, ‘Hey, this amazing historic place that I’m walking my dog in is really overgrown and it’s dangerous and there’s open-air crime.’”
Asserting that this was not something they wanted in the neighborhood, neighbors began organizing the first group of community dog walkers and started thinking about raising money to hire a landscaper and about alerting MPD on some of the criminal activity on the grounds. As the conditions improved, the cemetery started filling with people who appreciated the green space and cared about the community. Orlikoff said, “And so it really was from this kernel of community that you can chart the activity that led to calls to Congress to save the cemetery and the later appropriation of funds.” Congress now provides matching funds for the Congressional Cemetery Endowment administered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
And the dog walkers are now organized as the K-9 Corps. They have a committee made up of K-9 members which oversees the dog walkers’ use of the cemetery by the Corp’s 700 families and 1,000 dogs. Those families constitute the core of the Congressional Cemetery community, but equally important (though more loosely organized) are the component parts of the community within the larger community. This includes the large number of residents and visitors who attend and participate in the cemetery’s programs. Some of these programs are the Cinamatery (the outdoor summer movie screenings), 5k races (including the upcoming Dead Man’s Run), tours (including the upcoming historically theatrical outdoor Soul Stroll Tours), the Death Awareness program, the Bee Keeping program and the Book Club. In addition to the attendees, there are hundreds of community volunteers ranging from tour guides to Adopt-A- Plot volunteers to Association Board members.
There’s considerable overlap with respect to the contributions of volunteers and Orlikoff says, “You need to have harmony – you need everybody in the symphony kind of playing together or it’s just going to be 21 notes.“
Congressional Cemetery held its Spring Fair on Sunday, March 30, featuring more than two dozen vendors, an Introduction to Green Burial in the Chapel, a tour of historical trees and grave sites, and a presentation on Equinox Gardening.
Orlikoff is a historian by profession and came to Congressional Cemetery after working as a contractor for both the Navy and Army at several military museums. He says, “I see myself as a history translator – someone who can help people find the meaning in those things that maybe otherwise could be inaccessible, and you do that through programming and education. So when I heard about the opportunity here at Congressional Cemetery for a Director of Programming position it was a perfect fit for me.” That was three years ago. When the then-Director of the Association Jackie Spainhour left last January, Orlikoff was named Interim Director by the Association’s Board. He says he is proud of his work since then, including supporting the team of professionals working at the cemetery even in areas outside of his expertise. He also counts the collective effort of the team in the World Pride programming this year, and especially becoming part of and getting up to speed on the newly initiated Master Plan – an expansive project to chart the next two decades of the cemetery’s future which had just launched when he took the job of Interim Director.
The Master Plan Initiative came about because one of the major issues facing Congressional Cemetery is the question of how to sustain the cemetery after running out of space – how to make it a place people will continue to want to support.
Orlikoff says that many cemeteries have to figure out how to keep the cemetery going with a model that is ultimately unsustainable once capacity for full casket site burial is reached: “How do you pivot – how do you change those revenues? What we’re trying to do is pivot and become more of a nonprofit model. And the strategy is to find ways to maximize what site space is left – because there’s not much (hundreds but not thousands of burial sites) – and then really adopt a nonprofit model that relies on programming and institutional giving and development.”
There are three primary components addressed in the Master Plan: storm water management (the cemetery has a drainage issue – never good in a cemetery), burial site expansion (including the development of columbariums for the interment of ashes), and enhancing the visitor experience (including things like gatehouse and chapel upgrade, signage, etc.).
The Board will continue seeking community feedback on the Master Plan throughout the process; the next community meeting will be October 15 at Christ’s Church. The Board is scheduled to receive a finalized Master Plan in February of 2026. After that, Orlikoff says, the Board will be undertaking several fundraising initiatives to realize the plan.
Orlikoff says of the cemetery, “It’s a place for people who love history – it’s a place for people who want to walk their dog. It’s a people place for people who love nature – it’s a place for people who want to attend our programs. But most of all it’s a place where living people want to come and gather. And we’re always going to be taking care of our first mission as a place of grief and solemn contemplation in mourning. We always have to remember that we still serve families. It’s our original mission. But cemeteries can be so much more than just that and I think that’s something that we’re really helping chart for North American cemeteries.”
The Association for the Preservation of Historic Congressional Cemetery is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit who realizes its mission in large part through charitable donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations. For more, including a calendar of events and programs and how to support, go here: https://congressionalcemetery.org/
CAPITOL HILL CORNER 