Graceland Cemetery

Graceland Cemetery
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location:	4001 N. Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois
Coordinates:	41°57′16.2″N 87°39′44.2″W
Area:	48 hectares (119 acres)
Built:	1860
NRHP Reference#:	00001628
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.

History and geography

In the 19th century, a train to the north suburbs occupied the eastern edge of the cemetery where the "L" now rides. 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.

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.

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.

Notable burials

The mausoleum of Potter Palmer and Bertha Honoré Palmer

• David Adler, architect
• John Peter Altgeld, Governor of Illinois
• Philip Danforth Armour, meat packing magnate
• Mary Hastings Bradley, author
• Daniel H. Burnham, architect
• Fred A. Busse, mayor of Chicago
• Members of the William Deering family
• Augustus Dickens, brother of Charles Dickens (he died penniless in Chicago)
• George Elmslie, architect
• Marshall Field, businessman, retailer, whose memorial was designed by Henry Bacon, with sculpture by Daniel Chester French.
• Bob Fitzsimmons, Heavyweight boxing champion, born in Cornwall, UK
• Melville Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court
• Elbert H. Gary, judge, chairman of U.S. Steel
• Bruce A. Goff, architect
• Carter Harrison, Sr., mayor of Chicago
• Carter Harrison, Jr., mayor of Chicago
• Herbert Hitchcock, US Senator from South Dakota
• William Holabird, architect
• Henry Honore, businessman
• William Hulbert, president of baseball's National League
• William Le Baron Jenney, Architect, Father of the American skyscraper
• Jack Johnson, first African-American heavyweight boxing champion
• Fazlur Khan, structural engineer

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

• William Kimball, Kimball Piano and Organ Company
• John Kinzie, Canadian pioneer, first white settler in the city of Chicago
• Cornelius Krieghoff, well known Canadian artist
• Victor F. Lawson, editor and publisher of the Chicago Daily News
• Frank Lowden, Governor of Illinois
• Marion Mahony Griffin, architect
• Cyrus McCormick, businessman, inventor
• Edith Rockefeller McCormick, Daughter-in-law of reaper inventor Cyrus McCormick
• Maryland Mathison Hooper McCormick, econd wife of Col. Robert R. McCormick^{[citation needed]}
• Nancy “Nettie” Fowler McCormick, businesswoman, philanthropist
• Joseph Medill, publisher, mayor of Chicago
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, architect
• Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, influential photographer, teacher, and founder of the New Bauhaus and Institute of Design IIT in Chicago
• Walter Netsch, architect
• Richard Nickel, photographer, architectural historian and preservationist
• Ruth Page, dancer and choreographer
• Bertha Palmer, philanthropist
• Francis W. Palmer, newspaper printer, U.S. Representative, Public Printer of the United States
• Potter Palmer, businessman
• Allan Pinkerton, detective
• George Pullman, inventor and railway industrialist
• John Wellborn Root, architect
• Howard Van Doren Shaw, architect
• Louis Sullivan, architect
• Frederick Wacker, politician^{[citation needed]}
• Kate Warne, first female detective, Allan Pinkerton employee
• Daniel Hale Williams, African-American surgeon who performed one of the first successful operations on the pericardium

Other cemeteries in the city of Chicago

Graceland is one of three notable 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 to the larger ones noted above, directly south of Graceland is the German Protestant Wunder's Cemetery & Jewish Graceland Cemetery (divided by a fence), established in 1851. Also, Saint Boniface Cemetery is four blocks north of Graceland at the corner of Clark & Lawrence.

See also

• United States National Cemeteries
• List of mausoleums

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

External links

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