Q. What is it supposed to be on the show? A. Sunset Springs Cemetery, the place where Doris Morgan is buried. Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show? A.  In or near Miami, Florida. Q. When did we see it on the show? A. We see this location in Episode 5, of Season 1.  It actually appears in three separate scenes In this one episode:  .  The first where Debra visits her mother's grave, the second where Harry visits his wife's grave,   and the third and final scene where Dexter visits his adoptive mother's grave.   all at separate times.  Q. What is it actually in real life? A. An historic home, now serving as a college  administration building.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. Note that this is not really a cemetery, but rather a former private mansion that is now part of the Doheny campus of Mount St. Mary's University, located at 10 Chester Place, in Los Angeles.

Chester Place, once an exclusive, gated community for L.A.'s  creme de la creme, is located just north of both USC and Exposition Park, which is one of the things that attracted the wealthy to this part of town, back at the turn of the century.

Chester Place began in 1899, when the land was subdivided into 23 lots, which were quickly snapped up by the ultra-wealthy families of Los Angeles at the time, who constructed impressive Victorian mansions in the new, prestigious community.

This house (at #10) was built that same year, for William Bayly, on three lots. 
 
But in 1901, oil tycoon Edward Doheny moved into the neighborhood, into what is now known as the Doheny mansion (at #8), and eventually bought up all of Chester Place, filling its remaining 13 homes with associates and family.

Doheny’s son, Ned, lived in this house (before eventually moving to Greystone in Beverly Hills).

When Edward Doheny’s widow passed away in 1962, she gifted Chester Place to the Roman Catholic Church, and it became the Doheny campus of Mount St. Mary’s college, which still uses the former mansions of Chester Place as its college buildings.

This mansion, at #10 Chester Place (located directly across the lawn from the more famous Doheny mansion (Building #8), is now known as the St. Joseph Administration Building.

Chester Place has appeared in a number of Hollywood movies and TV shows, but it is usually the more architecturally impressive Doheny mansion that is used as a filming location.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A.  This had me puzzled for a long time.

In the past, when “Dexter” has shot a cemetery scene, they have used actual cemeteries, particularly Hollywood Forever. So I went into this hunt assuming, incorrectly, that I was looking for an actual cemetery.

I am familiar with virtually all of the cemeteries in the Los Angeles area, but I didn’t recognize this one at all.

I had almost forgotten how easy it is to fake a cemetery scene. All you need is a grass lawn and a few fake headstones, and voila!, insant cemetery.

At first, I thought that it might be the Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, since it’s one of the few L.A. cemeteries that I haven’t visited in person. And the large mortuary building near its entrance looked somewhat similar to the building seen in the background of these Sunset Springs Cemetery scenes.

I did my best to compare images of the mortuary to what is seen in the episode, but despite some similarities, I just couldn’t match them, and I began to realize that they didn’t film there.

I had almost given up on finding this one, when I made one last attempt and ran a screenshot of that building through Google Images again. I was puzzled when an image showed up of this Chester Place home. It didn’t look much like the building in this scene, but I remembered hearing a rumor that they had been filming around Mount St. Mary’s, so I dug a little deeper.

Not having visited the campus before, I was only familiar with photos of its more famous Doheny Mansion, and that mansion doesn’t look anything like the house seen in the background of this scene.

But I realized that this was a different house at Chester Place, so I took a look.

The front of the house didn’t appear to match, but I thought that perhaps they had shot it from another angle. So I used Google Earth to rotate the view, and sure enough, when I looked at the north-facing side of the house, it was a perfect match: the covered driveway on the right side, the positions of the many windows… And I knew I had found it.

They had simply added a few fake gravestones to the side lawn, and hung the sign reading “Sunset Springs Cemetery” from the covered driveway.

Here is a large screenshot of the house as it is seen on the show:

And here is a photo of the actual house as it appears in real life:

Compare the placement of the windows and the driveway, and you will find it's a perfect match.
 

Here is an aerial photo of the location.  And here is a map link.

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