Graceland Cemetery

Graceland Cemetery
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
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Location	4001 N. Clark Street,[1] Chicago, Illinois
Coordinates	41°57′16.2″N 87°39′44.2″W / 41.954500°N 87.662278°W / 41.954500; -87.662278Coordinates: 41°57′16.2″N 87°39′44.2″W / 41.954500°N 87.662278°W / 41.954500; -87.662278
Area	119 acres (48 ha)
Built	1860
NRHP reference #	00001628[2]
Added to NRHP	January 18, 2001

Graceland Cemetery is a large Victorian era cemetery located in the north side community area of Uptown, in the city of Chicago, Illinois, USA. Established in 1860, its main entrance is at the intersection of Clark Street and Irving Park Road. The Sheridan stop on the Red Line is the nearest CTA "L" station. Among the cemetery's 121 acres, are the burial sites of several well-known Chicagoans.^[3]

History and geography

In the 19th century, a train to the north suburbs occupied the eastern edge of the cemetery where the Chicago "L" train now runs. The line was also used to carry mourners to funerals, in specially rented funeral cars, requiring an entry on the east wall, now closed. At that point, the cemetery would have been well outside the city limits of Chicago. After the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, Lincoln Park which had been the city's cemetery, was deconsecrated and some of the bodies moved here. The edge of the pond around Daniel Burnham's burial island was once lined with broken headstones and coping transported from Lincoln Park. Lincoln Park then became a recreational area, with a single mausoleum remaining, the "Couch tomb", containing the remains of Ira Couch.^[4] The Couch Tomb is probably the oldest extant structure in the City, everything else having been destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire.^[5]

The cemetery is typical of those that reflect Queen Victoria's reconception of the early 19th century "graveyard". Instead of poorly maintained headstones, and bodies buried on top of each other, on an ungenerous parcel of land; the cemetery became a pastoral landscaped park dotted with memorial markers, with room left over for picnics, a common usage of cemeteries. The landscape architecture for Graceland was designed by Ossian Cole Simonds.^[6]

The cemetery's walls are topped off with wrought iron spear point fencing.

Notable tombs and monuments

Many of the cemetery's tombs are of great architectural or artistic interest, including the Getty Tomb, the Martin Ryerson Mausoleum (both designed by architect Louis Sullivan, who is also buried here), and the Schoenhofen Pyramid Mausoleum. The industrialist George Pullman was buried at night, in a lead-lined coffin within an elaborately reinforced steel-and-concrete vault, to prevent his body from being exhumed and desecrated by labor activists.

Along with its other famous burials the cemetery is notable for two statues by sculptor Lorado Taft, Eternal Silence for the Graves family plot and The Crusader that marks Victor Lawson's final resting place. The cemetery is also the final resting place of several victims of the tragic Iroquois Theater fire in which more than 600 people died.

Notable Burials

The mausoleum of Potter Palmer and Bertha Honoré Palmer

• David Adler, architect^[7]
• Walter Webb Allport, dentist ^[8]
• John Peter Altgeld, Governor of Illinois^[9]
• Amabel Anderson Arnold, organized the Woman's State Bar Association of Missouri, the first association of women lawyers in the world^[10]
• Philip Danforth Armour, meat packing magnate^[9]
• Ernie Banks, Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame baseball player^[11]
• Frederic Clay Bartlett, artist, art collector
• Mary Hastings Bradley, author^[12]
• Lorenz Brentano, member of the State House of Representatives, United States consul at Dresden, Congressional Representative for Illinois^[13]
• Doug Buffone, Chicago Bears former linebacker, host WSCR^[14]
• Daniel H. Burnham, architect^[15]
• Fred A. Busse, mayor of Chicago^[16]
• Justin Butterfield, attorney, land grant developer^[17]
• Lydia Avery Coonley, author^[18]
• William Deering, founder of Deering Harvester Company, which later became International Harvester Company, father of James and Charles Deering^[19]
• James Deering, executive of Deering Harvester Company and original owner of the Villa Vizcaya estate
• Charles Deering, executive of Deering Harvester Company, former chairman of International Harvester Company, and philanthropist
• Augustus Dickens, brother of Charles Dickens (he died penniless in Chicago)^[12]
• George Elmslie, architect
• John Jacob Esher (1823–1901), Bishop of the Evangelical Association^[20]
• Marshall Field, businessman, retailer, whose memorial was designed by Henry Bacon, with sculpture by Daniel Chester French^[21]
• Bob Fitzsimmons, Heavyweight boxing champion, born in Cornwall, UK^[22]
• Melville Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States^[23]
• Elbert H. Gary, judge, chairman of U.S. Steel
• Bruce A. Goff, architect^[15]
• Sarah E. Goode, first African-American woman to receive a United States patent
• Bruce Graham, architect of John Hancock building and Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower)
• Richard T. Greener, first black graduate of Harvard (1870), first black professor at the University of South Carolina (1873-1877), administrator for the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, and diplomat to Russia ^[24]
• Marion Mahony Griffin, architect^[15]
• Carter Harrison, Sr., mayor of Chicago^[25]
• Carter Harrison, Jr., mayor of Chicago^[26]
• Herbert Hitchcock, US Senator from South Dakota^[27]
• William Holabird, architect^[28]
• Henry Honoré, businessman, father of Bertha Honoré Palmer, father-in-law of Potter Palmer
• William Hulbert, president of baseball's National League
• Charles L. Hutchinson, banker, philanthropist and founding president of the Art Institute of Chicago
• William Le Baron Jenney, architect, Father of the American skyscraper^[15]
• Elmer C Jensen, "The Dean of Chicago Architects"
• Jack Johnson, first African-American heavyweight boxing champion^[29]
• Fazlur Khan, structural engineer^[15]

Getty Tomb for Carrie Eliza Getty, designed by Louis Sullivan, 1890

• William Wallace Kimball, Kimball Piano and Organ Company
• John Kinzie, Canadian pioneer, early white settler in the city of Chicago^[12]
• Cornelius Krieghoff, well-known Canadian artist
• Bryan Lathrop, businessman, philanthropist, and longtime president of the cemetery^[30]
• Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., first African American astronaut (cremated at Graceland, but not physically buried there)
• Victor F. Lawson, editor and publisher of the Chicago Daily News^[31]
• Frank Lowden, Governor of Illinois^[32]
• Alexander C. McClurg, bookseller and Civil War general
• Cyrus McCormick, businessman, inventor
• Edith Rockefeller McCormick, Daughter-in-law of reaper inventor Cyrus McCormick^[12]
• Katherine Dexter McCormick, Daughter-in-law of reaper inventor Cyrus McCormick, MIT grad, biologist, suffragist, philanthropist
• Maryland Mathison Hooper McCormick, second wife of Col. Robert R. McCormick^[33]
• Nancy "Nettie" Fowler McCormick, businesswoman, philanthropist
• Joseph Medill, publisher, mayor of Chicago^[34]
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, architect^[15]
• László Moholy-Nagy, influential photographer, teacher, and founder of the New Bauhaus and Institute of Design IIT in Chicago^[15]
• Dawn Clark Netsch, comptroller of Illinois, professor & spouse of architect Walter Netsch
• Walter Netsch, architect^[15]
• Richard Nickel, photographer, architectural historian and preservationist^[15]
• Ruth Page, dancer and choreographer
• Bertha Honoré Palmer, philanthropist^[21]
• Francis W. Palmer, newspaper printer, U.S. Representative, Public Printer of the United States^[35]
• Potter Palmer, businessman^[21]
• Richard Peck, author^[36]
• Allan Pinkerton, detective^[37]
• George Pullman, inventor and railway industrialist
• Hermann Raster, politician and editor
• John Wellborn Root, architect^[38]
• Howard Van Doren Shaw, architect^[15]
• Washington Smith, pioneer wholesale grocer and philanthropist.^[39] The Washington and Jane Smith Home (now Smith Village) was named in his honor.^[40]
• Louis Sullivan, architect^[15]
• Charles Wacker, businessman and philanthropist, also director of the 1893 Columbian Exposition^[41]
• Kate Warne, first female detective, Allan Pinkerton employee^[42]
• Daniel Hale Williams, African-American surgeon who performed one of the first successful operations on the pericardium^[43]
• George Ellery Wood, lumber baron.^[44] His home, built in 1885, on 2801 S. Prairie Ave. in Chicago, IL is a historical landmark^[45]

Other cemeteries in the city of Chicago

Graceland is one of three large 19th century cemeteries which were previously well outside the city limits; the other two being Rosehill (further north), and Oak Woods (South of Hyde Park) which includes a major monument to Confederate civil war dead.

In addition, directly south of Graceland across Irving Park Road is the smaller German Protestant Wunder's Cemetery and Jewish Graceland Cemetery (divided by a fence), established in 1851. Also, the Roman Catholic, Saint Boniface Cemetery (1863), is four blocks north of Graceland at the corner of Clark and Lawrence.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Graceland Cemetery.

• United States National Cemeteries
• List of mausoleums

Notes

Further reading

• Hucke, Matt and Bielski, Ursula (1999) Graveyards of Chicago: the people, history, art, and lore of Cook County Cemeteries, Lake Claremont Press, Chicago
• Kiefer, Charles D., Achilles, Rolf, and Vogel, Neil A. "Graceland Cemetery" (pdf), National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, HAARGIS Database, Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, June 18, 2000, accessed October 8, 2011.
• Lanctot, Barbara (1988) A Walk Through Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Architectural Foundation, Chicago, Illinois
• Vernon, Christopher (2012) Graceland Cemetery: A Design History, University of Massachusetts Press

External links

• Official Website
• Photographs of Graceland Cemetery
• Graveyards of Chicago: Graceland
• Graceland a Poem by Carl Sandburg