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Resting Place of Many Famous Residents is Also an Arboretum
Graceland Cemetery is located a mile and a half from where we live in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood and a half-mile north of Wrigley Field, the area's most famous location.
Barb and I paid a visit today (October 27) because the cemetery, along with being the resting place of many of the city's most historic figures, is also an arboretum. The fall colors are unusually brilliant here this year, as you'll see in the photos in this article.
The food industry built Chicago, and major participants such as Cyrus McCormick (inventor of the mechanical reaper), meat packer Phillip Armour and brewer Peter Schoenhofen are interred there. We instead stopped to pay respects to three figures — an architect, a pioneering retailer, and a beloved ballplayer — who had a lasting impact on Chicago society.
Daniel Burnham is the architect who first rose to fame as the Director of Works for the legendary Columbian Exposition in 1893. But his most lasting contribution is the Plan of Chicago, better known as the Burnham Plan. Much of what many of us love about Chicago — the preservation of the lakefront as open public space, the extensive network of parks throughout the city — are embodied in the Burnham Plan.
There is a tiny island in the lake in the cemetery, reached by a short bridge, and Burnham and a number of his family members rest there. Their graves are marked by boulders with a plaque embedded in each.
Other famed architects buried in Graceland Cemetery include Louis Sullivan, John W. Root, William LeBaron Jenney, and Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe.
I have also loved Art Deco design, and as we visited Burnham's gravesite, I noticed a quite striking example of this style nearby.
The occupants of this mausoleum, John and Maud Holmes, are not famous but they were wealthy from real estate, and left behind this lovely piece of architecture for us to admire.
Marshall Field was a pioneer department store developer, beginning in the 1860s, and his flagship store on State Street in what became Chicago's Loop district was a landmark for generations of local residents and visitors. While his name was removed from the Marshall Field stores after they were taken over by Macy's, his legacy lives on with the Field Museum of Natural History and University of Chicago, which he co-founded with John D. Rockefeller.
I mentioned that Graceland Cemetery is a short walk from Wrigley Field, so it's appropriate that fans can visit Ernie Banks, the best-loved player in the Chicago Cubs' long history.
Banks first appeared as a Cub in 1953, just six years after major league baseball's ban on Black players was lifted. Although the first wave of Black players endured instances of overt racism, Banks' cheerful personality — along with his superb baseball skills — earned him a wide following. His catchphrase was, "It's a beautiful day for baseball... Let's play two."
Banks was the ninth player in major league history to hit 500 home runs, ending his career in 1971 with 512. He was chosen as the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1958 and 1959, a feat made even more amazing by the fact that the Cubs had losing records in each of those seasons.
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