Graceland Cemetery – Clark and Irving Park Road

Eli Williams and Family – many

died in the Iriquois Theatre

Fire in 1911

John Kinzie (1763 - January 6, 1828) was Chicago's first permanent white settler. Born in Quebec, he became an Indian trader in Detroit, later arriving in Chicago in 1804. He purchased the house of Jean Baptiste Pont Du Sable, who had departed for Peoria. Fort Dearborn was soon established at the mouth of

the river, and Kinzie's influence in the area grew as he traded with the soldiers at the fort and the natives.

On August 15, 1812, an attack by Pottawatomie Indians left about forty dead, in what is known as the "Fort Dearborn Massacre". Kinzie had been with the

soldiers but escaped unharmed; his family had already gone into hiding. They fled by boat to Detroit.

Four years after the Massacre, John Kinzie returned to Chicago, remaining here until his death in 1828.

Kinzie had originally been buried in the Fort Dearborn cemetery, then moved to the original north side City Cemetery, and again to the new City Cemetery in

what is now Lincoln Park. Finally, when City Cemetery was closed in the early 1860s, his remains and tombstone were moved to their current location in

Graceland.In front of Kinzie's original limestone marker is a simple granite headstone,

placed there in this century.

• A robed and hooded bronze figure stands before a polished black slab of granite, its face partially hidden by one arm. Eternal Silence, also called the "Statue of Death", was created by sculptor Lorado Taft in 1909.

• Eternal Silence marks the plot of hotelier Dexter Graves (1789-1844), who, in 1831, brought the first colony to Chicago from Ashtabula, Ohio.

• Crusader, a huge granite statue of a knight in armor, stands in an open grassy area ringed with flowers and low bushes. No other grave markers are nearby, and no name appears on the Crusader itself. This is the grave of newspaper publisher Victor Lawson (1850-1925), who established the Chicago Daily News in 1875.

• Crusader was carved in 1931 by famed sculptor Lorado Taft, the creator of Graceland's Eternal Silence.

Jack Johnson, first Black Heavyweight – buried at

the foot of his wife’s grave stone.

Note the “unfinished” look, why? Note the

missing components, why?

• Kroenschell

• William Kimball (1828-1904) was a manufacturer of pianos. • Kimball's monument is one of the largest in Graceland. Across the rear are four

Corinthian columns, with two more on the sides. The structure is without a roof. Below, an angel kneels, watching over the two graves beneath the floor. The entire monument is of white marble, and was erected in 1907 from a design by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White.

• Much of the original detail has eroded away, most noticeably the face of the angel. On bright days, this monument is more brilliant than any other.

• To the left and behind Kimball can be seen the grave of architect Louis Henri Sullivan.

Henry Hamilton Honoré (1823-1916) came to Chicago from Kentucky in 1855 and made his fortune in real estate.

Honoré's daughter, Bertha, married Potter Palmer in 1871, shortly before the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the Honoré

Building at Adams and Dearborn. The Honoré tomb is in the French Gothic style, and was

designed by McKim, Mead and White.

• Potter Palmer (1826-1902) Bertha Honoré Palmer (1850-1918).Erected 1921.

• Potter Palmer was responsible for much of the development of State Street. He operated an extremely successful dry-goods store in partnership with Marshall Field and Levi Leiter. In the 1860s he withdrew from this business (leasing the building to Field and Leiter for $50,000 a year). He owned 3/4 mile of State street and constructed a number of buildings, including the Palmer House Hotel. In 1871 he married the young and beautiful Bertha Honoré, daughter of Henry Hamilton Honoré.

• The Palmer House Hotel was newly completed in 1871 when the Great Chicago Fire struck. In a single night, all of Palmer's State Street properties were destroyed. He borrowed $2 million from an insurance company, up to then the largest amount ever loaned to a private citizen, and immediately began rebuilding State Street and the new Palmer House Hotel.

• Bertha Palmer was considered the queen of Chicago high society, and was a patron of Impressionist artists. The Palmers lived in a Gothic castle at 1350 North Lake Shore Drive, built in 1885. Before the construction of the Palmer home, south-side Prairie Avenue had been the most desirable residential real-estate for the rich, but following Palmer's lead they began building on the "Gold Coast". Mrs. Palmer created a 75-foot picture gallery in her richly ornamented home, collecting the work of French Impressionist painters such as Claude Monet. She frequently entertained such guests as President McKinley.

• When Mrs. Palmer died in Florida in 1918, her body was returned to her castle beneath a blanket of orchids. Potter and Bertha Palmer now lie within the two large granite sarcophagi, with the inverted torches on the sides symbolic of death. Three generations of their descendants lie beneath the floor around them. McKim, Mead & White designed their tomb the style of a Greek temple, the largest and most magnificent in Graceland.

• Lumber magnate William Goodman (1848-1936) hired architect Howard Van Doren Shaw to design this tomb in 1919 after the death of his son. Lieutenant Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, a playright, died in 1918 of influenza while in Naval training.

• The Goodman tomb was built into a hillside on the shore of Lake Willowmere. A concrete platform in front, just above the water level, permits access to the front door. The ground slopes upward away from the lake, and, at the rear of the mausoleum, is level with its roof. Visitors may step onto the roof from the rear, protected by a granite railing on the other three sides. In the center of this railing is a marble panel featuring relief carvings in the classical style. To either side are the words from the Song of Solomon, "Until the Day Breaks and the Shadows Flee Away." (4:6)

Schoenhofen

• "A man who won't meet his own men halfway is a damn fool!" --Mark Hanna, on George Pullman • George Pullman (1831-97) was the inventor of the Pullman sleeping car. When a Pullman car was

attached to the funeral train carrying Abraham Lincoln's body, demand for Pullman's product surged, and the Pullman Sleeping Car Company grew quickly.

• George Pullman and architect Solon Beman built the town of Pullman for his employees near 111th street. Pullman joked that the town had been named for both of them: the first syllable of his name, the second syllable of Beman's. The town of Pullman was a planned community, with schools, theaters, library, hotel, all operated by the Pullman Sleeping Car Company.

• When the fortunes of the company declined in 1894, Pullman slashed wages by 25 percent. However, he neglected to lower the rents or cost of groceries in the company town. A delegation of workers went to meet with Pullman and ask him to reduce these costs - the next day, these men were fired. His workers went on strike, aided by Eugene Debs' American Railway Union. Workers refused to handle any train with Pullman cars attached. In order to ensure that the mail on those trains would not be delayed, President Cleveland sent federal troops to break the strike, over the protests of Governor Altgeld. All Pullman employees were then required to sign a statement that they would never attempt to join a union.

• Pullman was so hated by his employees that when he died in 1897, his heirs feared that the body would be stolen and held for ransom. The coffin was covered in tar paper and asphalt, and enclosed in the center of a room-sized block of concrete, reinforced with railroad ties. Ambrose Bierce said "It is clear the family in their bereavement was making sure the sonofabitch wasn't going to get up and come back."

• The monument was designed by Solon Beman and features a towering Corinthian column, flanked by curved benches.

• Louis Henri Sullivan (Sept. 3, 1856 - Apr. 14, 1924) was one of Chicago's best-known architects. Among his works are the Auditorium Theater, the Carson Pirie Scott store, and the Transportation Building at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.

• Louis Sullivan designed a total of three tombs, two of them here in Graceland:

• Ryerson, 1887, Graceland • Getty, 1890, Graceland

                                                       Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846-1912), an architect and city planner, is responsible for many of the features of Chicago today. Wacker Drive, and the parks along the lakefront were among the ideas in Burnham's Chicago Plan of 1909. Not all of the plan was fulfilled - Wacker Drive was meant to be encircle the Loop entirely, and there was to have been a civic center complex further west. Burnham gained fame as the chief of construction for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Burnham's "White City" influenced a great many architects to favor the neoclassical style over the next few decades, in spite of Sullivan's claims that architecture in America had been set back years.

• John Peter Altgeld (1847-1902) served as governor of Illinois from 1893-1897. Early in his term as governor, he was asked to review the sentences of the surviving prisoners convicted after the Haymarket affair. He saw that a great injustice had been done - four men hanged, three imprisoned for life on the flimsiest of evidence - and issued a pardon for the survivors. Public opinion was still against the prisoners, however, and this move effectively ended Altgeld's political career.

• The next year, during the Pullman strike, Altgeld refused to send in troops against the striking railway workers, and protested when President Cleveland defied his authority as governor and broke the strike. This resulted in as much public scorn as his pardon of the Haymarket prisoners.

• Altgeld's monument has bronze plaques inscribed with his words, from his public speeches as well as his document pardoning Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab. Villified and ridiculed at the time, Altgeld is now seen as one of Illinois' most upright and heroic politicians.

• Henry Harrison Getty (1838-1920), a lumber merchant, commissioned this tomb for his wife Carrie Eliza Getty in 1890. Getty chose Louis Henri Sullivan to create his wife's tomb, admiring the work Sullivan had recently done for Getty's partner, Martin Ryerson.

• • Sullivan's Getty Tomb has been called "the beginning of modern architecure in

America", and was designated a city landmark in 1971 by Mayor Daley. • The Getty tomb is in the shape of a cube, with the roof overhanging the walls

slightly. Sullivan's trademark arches are above the doors and windows, concentric arches with radial spokes. Octagons fill the space around the arches on the upper half of the walls. An intricate bronze gate with floral and geometric patterns, another Sullivan trademark, stands in front of the equally ornate door. A plaster cast of this doorway won Sullivan an award at the Paris Exposition of 1900.

• The monument, known as Memory, was designed in 1906 by Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon, who later went on to create the Lincoln Memorial. - also by

Daniel Chester French Marshall Field (1835-1906) was the wealthiest man in Chicago of his time, worth an

estimated $100 million when he died. Originally working as a clerk for Potter Palmer, he saved half of his $400/year salary, and in 1865 with his partner Levi Leiter bought

Palmer's dry-goods store. Field and Leiter eventually became "Marshall Field and Company", which is now one of the most successful and widespread department-

store chains in the world. Field donated $8 million to establish the Field Museum of Natural History. His Prairie

Avenue mansion was the first home in Chicago to be wired for electric lighting.

• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Architect

• Martin Ryerson (1818-1887) brought his lumber business to Chicago in 1850. He invested his lumber wealth in real estate, hiring the firm of Adler & Sullivan to build four office buildings. Upon Ryerson's death in 1887, Louis Sullivan was commissioned to design this mausoleum.

• Louis Sullivan's design drew upon Egyptian traditions. For the base, he chose the form of the mastaba, a flat-roofed structure with sloped sides that pre-dates pyramids. Above the mastaba Sullivan placed a pyramid. The black granite gives a very solid and dramatic look to the entire structure.

• Philip Danforth Armour

• William Hulbert, National League

Richard Nickel – Died trying to save parts of the old Chicago Stock

Exchange Building -