Lakeville Cemetery

01 / The story of this place

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Lakeville Cemetery has served the small unincorporated community of Lakeville in Addison Township, in rural northern Oakland County, since its founding in 1843, and it remains an active burial ground for area families. Architect Minoru Yamasaki, who designed some of the 20th century's most recognizable buildings, including the original World Trade Center towers in New York, the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, and Detroit-area works such as the McGregor Memorial Conference Center at Wayne State University, died in Detroit in February 1986 and was buried at Lakeville, near his wife Teruko, in a quiet, wooded corner of the cemetery. His grave is notably understated for an architect of his global stature, a plain headstone set among evergreens with no monument marking his connection to the Twin Towers. The cemetery continues to hold burials today, tended as a small, rural community graveyard far from Detroit's more famous cemeteries.

1. Founded in 1843 in rural Addison Township
2. Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the original World Trade Center, is buried here
3. His grave is a plain, unmarked headstone in a wooded corner