All Dressed Up
and No Place to Go!
ot far from Giuseppe’s & Antonio’s headstone stands an ivy covered stone gothic receiving vaul. The vault was used before the advent of mechanical digging equipment, to store newly received bodies in winter until the ground was thawed. Today the structure is used for a different kind of storage – rakes & shovels.
The project is one of the earliest construction projects in Kent for master stonecutter Isaac Dexter “Dex” Tuttle. Other notable Tuttle buildings that have indured the test-of-time include the Kent Water Works building by Plum Creek, the first Rockwell building on East Main, and the Tuttle Block (today’s KSU Downtown Gallery and McKay Bricker Framing). Dex is probably most noted locally for supervising the masonry work on Marvin Kent’s “Homestead” (today’s Masonic Lodge).
I.D. Tuttle is credited with introducing Kent to it’s second automobile, a White Steamer, in 1901.
Standing Rock Cemetery, so named because of its proximity to this rugged sentinel behind the grounds. Before European settlement, Native Tribes used the huge rock left by the last glacier as a meeting place.
