Graceland Cemetery

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Graceland Cemetery
National Register of Historic Places
Historic District
Graceland Cemetery, designed in the style of an English landscape garden

Graceland Cemetery, designed in the style of an English landscape garden

Graceland Cemetery (Illinois)
Paris plan pointer b jms.svg
location Chicago , Cook County , Illinois
Coordinates 41 ° 57 '16.7 "  N , 87 ° 39' 43.6"  W Coordinates: 41 ° 57 '16.7 "  N , 87 ° 39' 43.6"  W.
surface 49 hectares
Built from 1860
NRHP number 00001628
The NRHP added January 18, 2001

The Graceland Cemetery is a private cemetery in Chicago in the US state of Illinois . It was laid out in the northern district of Uptown in the style of an English landscape garden from 1860 and has been registered as a Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places since January 2001 . Numerous important personalities found their final resting place in this cemetery.

Location and history

Graceland Cemetery is located north of downtown Chicago in the Uptown neighborhood. It is bounded in the east by the railway line of the Purpe Line and the Red Line of the Chicago Elevated , and the narrow Challenger Park that had been running since the early 1990s . W. Irwing Park Road runs along the southern boundary of the cemetery, N. Clark Street to the west and W. Monroe Avenue to the north . The main entrance is at 4001 N. Clark Street. The nearby light rail system was an important means of transport for the mourners in the early 20th century, and special funeral wagons were available for rent to the bereaved. A previously existing direct access from Chicago Elevated to Graceland Cemetery no longer exists today.

With an area of ​​approximately 49 hectares (121 acres ), Graceland Cemetery is one of the three major cemeteries that were laid out outside the city center in the 19th century. The other two major cemeteries are Rosehill Cemetery to the north of Graceland Cemetery and Oak Woods Cemetery to the south of Chicago . In the vicinity of Graceland Cemetery is the Protestant Wunder's Cemetery, south of W. Irwing Park Road , to which the Jewish Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery (also known as Jewish Graceland ) adjoins. The Catholic Saint Boniface Cemetery is four blocks north of Graceland Cemetery.

Founded in 1860, Graceland Cemetery only developed into a major burial site after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. Previously, the city's main cemetery was on what is now Lincoln Park . This old cemetery was abandoned after 1871 and some of those buried there were reburied in Graceland Cemetery. In Lincoln Park only the remaining couch tomb reminds of the former use as a cemetery.

Design and important tombs

Pyramid as a grave monument for the brewery owner Peter Schoenhofen
Getty Mausoleum for Carrie Eliza Getty, designed by Louis Sullivan , 1890

The design of the Graceland Cemetery was carried out by various landscape gardeners. The first design from 1861 came from Swain Nelson, William Saunders, a revised plan was provided by Horace Cleveland in 1870 , followed by changes by John Cole in 1878. The final design also dates from 1878 by William Le Baron Jenney and Ossian Cole Simonds . Instead of a row of stone graves, which was customary up to that time, a park landscape with curved wide streets, a lake, numerous trees and resting places for visitors was created. The graves are integrated into this landscape and partly visible as grave slabs in the lawns, partly as imposing grave monuments or mausoleums dominate the complex. The cemetery chapel was designed by the architects William Holabird and Marti Roche in 1888 with a gable roof and granite facade in the style of the British Arts and Crafts Movement .

Graceland Cemetery has a wide variety of tree species. These include sweetgum trees , American Gleditschia , American linden , American plane , Amur cork tree , apple trees , Digger pine , real weeping willow , ash maple , yellow oak , Norway spruce , antler , common robinia , ginkgo and tree of gods . There are also hickory , hop beech , Japanese lilac , judas trees , persimmons , cornel and mulberries . There is also Ohio horse chestnut , magnificent trumpet tree , horse chestnut , red beech , red oak , sassafras , sour cherry , black walnut , silver maple and silver poplar . Other tree species are Norway maple , star magnolia , pedunculate oak , swamp oak , tulip trees , primeval sequoia , Virginian bird cherry , sugar maple and hackberry trees .

One of the most significant monuments is the grave site of the real estate entrepreneur Potter Palmer and his wife Bertha Honoré Palmer with temple architecture inspired by antiquity. A single Corinthian column looms over the tomb of the sleeping car manufacturer George Mortimer Pullman . The Schoenhofen Pyramid Mausoleum for the beer brewer Peter Schoenhofen is designed in the Egyptian style . The design for this comes from the architect Richard E. Schmidt . The Martin Ryerson Mausoleum for the banker Martin L. Ryerson is also reminiscent of a pyramid . The design for this was provided by the architect Louis Sullivan , who is also resting in the cemetery. The Getty Tomb for Carrie Eliza Getty, wife of a lumberjack, is another significant design by Louis Sullivan in Graceland Cemetery.

There are also two famous sculptures by the sculptor Lorado Taft in the cemetery . The figure of Eternal Silence adorns the grave of Dexter Graves . His grave was originally in the city's old cemetery, now Lincoln Park. The second sculpture by Taft is the knight figure The Crusader , which rises above the grave of the newspaper publisher Victor Lawson . In addition, numerous victims of the fire in the Iroquois Theater of 1903 are buried in the cemetery.

Buried personalities

Tomb for George Pullman
Mausoleum for Potter Palmer and Bertha Honoré Palmer
Mausoleum for Martin L. Ryerson , designed by Louis Sullivan in 1889
Gravestone for Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

literature

Web links

Commons : Graceland Cemetery  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Graceland Cemetery on the National Register Information System. National Park Service , accessed August 11, 2017.
  2. ↑ Barbara Lanctot: A Walk Through Graceland Cemetery , p. 2.