Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CEMETERY TOURS
Don't be scared away by the creepy connotations.
Some of Chicago's cemeteries are as pretty as parks, and they offer a variety of
intriguing monuments that offer insight into the city's history.
One of the best area cemeteries is
Graceland,
which stretches along Clark Street
in the Swedish neighborhood of Andersonville. The land between Irving Park
Road and Montrose Avenue, running for about a mile along Clark Street, is occu-
pied exclusively by cemeteries—primarily Graceland. Here you can view the
tombs and monuments of many Chicago notables. When Graceland was laid out
in 1860, public parks as such did not exist. The elaborate burial grounds that were
constructed in many large American cities around this same time had the dual
purpose of relieving the congestion of the municipal cemeteries closer to town and
providing pastoral recreational settings for the Sunday outings of the living.
Indeed, cemeteries like Graceland were the precursors of such great municipal
green spaces as Lincoln Park. Much of Lincoln Park, in fact, had been a public
cemetery since Chicago's earliest times. Many who once rested there were rein-
terred in Graceland when the plans for building Lincoln Park went forward.
The Chicago Architecture Foundation (
&
312/922-3432
) offers walking
tours of Graceland on selected Sundays during August, September, and Octo-
ber. The tour costs $10 per person and lasts about 2 hours. Among the points
of interest you will discover as you meander the paths of these 121 beautifully
landscaped acres are the Ryerson and Getty tombs, famous architectural monu-
ments designed by Louis Sullivan. Sullivan himself rests here in the company of
several of his most distinguished colleagues: Daniel Burnham, Ludwig Mies van
der Rohe, and Howard Van Doren Shaw, an establishment architect whose sum-
mer home in Lake Forest, called Ragdale, now operates as a writers' and artists'
colony. Some of Chicago's giants of industry and commerce are also buried at
Graceland, including Potter Palmer, Marshall Field, and George Pullman. An
ambiguous reference in the
WPA Guide to Illinois
(Pantheon Books, 1983),
reprinted without revisions, records that Graceland also contains the grave of
Chicago's first white civilian settler, John Kinzie. (The racial adjective is a
reminder that Chicago's very first settler was a black man named Jean Baptiste
Point du Sable.) The Chicago Architecture Foundation offers tours of some
other cemeteries, as well, including the Oak Woods Cemetery, Rosehill Ceme-
tery, and the suburban Lake Forest Cemetery. Call for details.
Oak Woods,
located just south of Hyde Park on the city's south side, is the final resting place
for many of Chicago's most famous African-American figures, including Jesse
Owens, Ida B. Wells, and the late Mayor Harold Washington. Also buried here
are nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi, who helped give birth to the atomic age
while at the University of Chicago, and legendary trial lawyer Clarence Darrow.
