Friday, November 2, 2012

All Souls Rich And Poor: Chicago's Graceland Cemetery

Eternal Silence by Loredo Taft
Graveyard angel
Crematorium and headstone on All Souls Day
Today is All Souls Day. In the traditional calendar of the Catholic Church, this is the day set aside to remember and pray for the dead. In the U.S., we don't hear much about this day. As soon as midnight strikes on Halloween night, we forget celebrations of all things ghostly and ghoulish, without a moment's thought for our dearly departed, and turn our minds immediately to the next big American holiday--Thanksgiving. The contrast between the two celebrations of All Souls Day and Thanksgiving is striking and reveals a lot about the cultures that celebrate one over the other. If Thanksgiving is about giving thanks and praise for what you've got, All Souls Day is about giving thanks and praise for what you've lost. It's the difference between reflecting on what you have versus reflecting on what you've had that is now gone.

Grave of John Kinzie, first permanent settler of European descent in Chicago
Egyptian-inspired mausoleum of railroad magnate Darius Miller in Rosehill Cemtery in Chicago

Celtic cross marking burial site of A.C. McClurg, Civil War general and original publisher of the first Tarzan books
Americans don't like to dwell too much on death and loss. Our culture is a youth-worshipping one that puts the focus on what you can acquire, gain, and win in life, the pursuit of happiness or riches or power or, to be fair to many of my countrypeople, maybe just a decent roof over your head, a good education, a satisfying job, and three squares a day. In any case, it's a culture that doesn't like to think about what's missing and can never be had again.

In other cultures, it's just the opposite. In countries like Spain, Mexico, Haiti, Ireland, and many more with a strong Catholic history, the first days of November are given over to honoring those who came before us, all our departed friends and family and ancestors. Some of these countries celebrate with parties and fiestas, special masses, and visits to the local cemeteries to decorate or leave mementos at the graves. Depending upon the culture, it can be a surprisingly upbeat and colorful celebration or a more somber one. Either way, it's just a way to acknowledge and pay respect to the most inevitable fact of life--the end of it.    

Cemetery in Galicia in Spain, few days after All Souls Day

This year I planned to visit one of Chicago's most famous (and haunted) cemeteries on Halloween, snap a few pictures, write a post about it. Well, I didn't make it to the graveyard that day--and maybe it's for the best, since visiting a cemetery on Halloween is not exactly a very original idea. Valhalla knows how many other people I would've encountered there. Not to mention that the cemetery I'd planned on visiting--Graceland Cemetery, on Chicago's north side--usually has a few organized tours of the graveyard going for Halloween.

So I waited until today, All Souls Day, a quieter day since it's mainly a forgotten day in the American calendar. I went to Graceland and my parents came with me. None of us are new to Graceland Cemetery. My father's grandparents are buried there in fact, in graves with flat, almost sinking headstones in a far back corner of the vast cemetery grounds. They aren't next to each other for some reason, the graves of my great-grandfather Karl Ostberg and great-grandmother Anna Ostberg. And Karl's is backed up against a wall, above which the city's Red Line el train rumbles by all day and well into the night.

My great-grandfather Karl's grave in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

Scraping fall leaves of Anna's grave in Graceland

My parents looking for Karl and Anna's graves, el train passing by above
The very humble graves of my great-grandparents (who immigrated to America from Norway) make a striking contrast to much of the rest of the graves in Graceland. Because along with poor, immigrant nobodies like my kin, Graceland is the resting site to industry and architecture bigwigs such as Marshall Field, Henry Harrison Getty, Potter Palmer, Louis Sullivan, and Daniel Burnham--to name just a few. The graves of these gentlemen and other powerhouses like them are both mighty and intricate in design--in a city known for its pioneering architecture, many of the graves and tombs at Graceland are architectural wonders in themselves. Thus, Halloween is not the only day when people gather for walking tours of this place, and my own family's familiarity with the cemetery extends beyond the forgotten corner where my great-grandparents lie.

I think there are two kinds of parents in this world: the kind of parents who take their kids to visit dead people for fun and the kind of parents who don't. Happily, I was raised by the former variety. Growing up (and to this day) I never did things like snorkeling or water skiing, and rarely did my family even visit amusement parks. Instead our family vacation activities have involved tracking down an old Irish immigrant ancestor's grave in unconsecrated ground in Iowa, the final resting places of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane in Deadwood, South Dakota, the monument to President Taft that no one bothers to even walk in the direction of in Arlington National Cemetery (where everyone is too busy paying their respects at the Kennedy gravesite, which, yes, we also visited), soldiers' graves at various Civil War battlefields throughout the former Union and Confederacy, dead poets' graves, dead pets' graves, Elvis's grave in that other Graceland, Abraham Lincoln's tomb in downstate Illinois, and the crumbling old headstones of long-gone patriots Paul Revere and Crispus Attucks. When we weren't grave hunting all over the USA, we were enjoying summer afternoons roaming around Graceland. I loved visiting Graceland Cemetery. Apart from the sense of pride that we actually had family buried at such a famous Chicago tourist attraction (which Graceland indeed is), my brothers and sisters and I liked to scare each other at the graveyard's spookier-looking tombs.

My sister Arla, me, and my brother Eric at the Pullman Memorial in Graceland, 1980s
My sister sitting on a headstone, Arlington National Cemetery, early 1970s
Havin' a good time in Graceland, Chicago, 1980s
Graceland Cemetery is a bit of a freaky place. When my dad was growing up (and going to nearby Lake View High School), he and other kids were able to climb over the cemetery walls in search of ghosts at night. These days, there's a barrier of barbed wire stretched all along the top of the wall to keep people from getting in after visiting hours. It keeps the riff-raff out, but only the living, human kind. Coyotes have been known to haunt Graceland (I saw one myself today--what kind of omen do you think it is to see a coyote in a graveyard on the day of the dead?), and of course ghosts.

The cheerful tomb of Ludwig Wolff

Wolff's tomb half-buried at Graceland Cemetery

Is that Ludwig Wolff's howling midnight guard...or just a city coyote?

Coyote (behind tree) in Graceland on All Souls Day
Two more canines, one headless, in Graceland
One of the creepiest graves is a tomb built partly underground that belongs to the very Grimm-ishly named Ludwig Wolff, a German coppersmith. Legend says a large, green-eyed wolf guards the tomb at night and has been heard howling during full moons. (Sure that wolf isn't just one of the Graceland coyotes, ghost hunters?) Competing with the Wolff tomb in creepiness is a statue at the other end of the cemetery of a tall, green, Grim Reaper-like figure, a sculpture called Eternal Silence by the artist Loredo Taft that marks the burial site of an early Chicago hotel owner named Dexter Graves. This statue is truly unsettling. It's a pity you can't go into the cemetery after dark to get the full freak-out experience of it. It used to be said that the statue was haunted in such a way that it couldn't be photographed or captured on film. Check the pics below to see how well that story holds up.

Statue at Dexter Graves's burial site--ghost in the reflection?
Me gettin' cozy with Death
I think the grave that affected me the most, that stayed in my thoughts for days after seeing it as a kid, was the one of a little girl named Inez Clarke who died at the age of 6 in 1880. Her grave is of a life-size marble statue of the girl, sitting with a little parasol inside a glass case. The glass case was prone to vandalism for a time--when I was young I remember seeing it broken by a bullet or BB hole. Why would someone shoot at the little girl in the glass box, I remember wondering when I was young. Was that how she died? In fact, it's not clear how Inez Clarke died--some say she died from tuberculosis, others say she was struck by lightning. It's said her statue sometimes goes missing from the case at night, especially during bad storms, only to be found in its proper place the next morning.

Statue of Inez Clarke, died age 6, at her grave

The little girl in the glass box

What she sees...when she's there
Apart from hauntings, many of Graceland's graves and tombs are quite imposing. Piano and organ man William Kimball's grave is a classical monument with giant columns and an angel--whose face is missing oddly enough, given the other details of the statue are largely still visible and unweathered. The grave of super-rich Potter Palmer, founder of the beautiful Palmer House hotel in downtown Chicago, one-ups Kimball's monument with a full classical-style temple with 16 Ionic columns and granite sarcophagi. Palmer's monument is located on the edge of a small lake in the cemetery that features a tiny island, reached by a wooden bridge, where the graves of Daniel Burnham and his family are found. Burnham is the man who essentially made Chicago into the stunning city it is today--an architect and urban planner who developed a plan for the city at the start of the 20th century that included an accessible lakefront (accessible to the city's people as a whole and not just privately available to the rich) and parklands and green space for every neighborhood. Burnham's island is a lovely spot, and a mecca for young architecture students and urban planners. Once while walking around the cemetery with my friend Shirese, we were coming back across the bridge from Burnham's island when we saw a car pull up and a young bride and groom, with their parents and a photographer, jump out of the car. The bride wore a white dress and sneakers, and she and her groom quickly crossed the bridge to get their picture taken at Burnham's grave. "Wow," my friend Shirese said once we were out of earshot of the little group. "Talk about 'til death do us part'."

Kimball Memorial in Graceland

Faceless angel at Kimball's grave

Potter Palmer's monument

View of Palmer monument from across lake in Graceland
Daniel Burnham's grave on an island on the lake in Graceland
The accessibility of Burnham's grave (and his vision of Chicago) stands in contrast to George Pullman's resting place. Pullman's monument looks like a stripped-down version of Kimball's, with no angels and only one column. But beneath this elegant memorial is Pullman's coffin covered in tar and asphalt, sunk in a giant concrete block, covered over with railroad ties and more concrete. His burial supposedly occurred at night under the protection of armed guards. Pullman was a pretty unpopular fellow. An industrialist who invented the railroad sleeping car (called the Pullman car), Pullman was notorious for mistreating his workers by demanding they live in his own company times at high rents with low pay that left them often penniless once their rents and food costs (bought at the company store) were deducted. His employees eventually went on a strike that pitted railroad workers against railroad magnates, the latter of whom were ultimately backed up by the federal government. Pullman died in 1897, only 3 years after the strike, and bitterness and hard feelings were still strong among his former employees (who'd all lost their jobs and were replaced by new workers forced to pledge not to join any union).

Pullman's memorial--more complicated than it looks

Private eye Allan Pinkerton's obelisk

Epitaph on Pinkerton's grave

Headstone of Timothy Webster, a Pinkerton detective

Memorial to Pinkerton employees, some of whom spied on Pullman's workers
Other impressive graves include those of former Chicago Daily News publisher Victor Lawson, whose site features another sculpture by Loredo Taft, this time of a crusading knight; and the world's first ever private detective Allan Pinkerton, whose obelisk grave bears a touching (if maybe a bit overdone) dedication that begins "A Friend To Honesty, A Foe To Crime." (It should be noted that while Pinkerton was responsible for heroic feats such as uncovering an early plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, his detectives also became hated for working as spies later on for the likes of George Pullman against union workers and organizers.) Meanwhile one tomb in the cemetery, known as the Getty Tomb, which houses the bodies of lumber magnate Henry Harrison Getty and his wife, has been designated a city landmark. A big cube of a tomb with delicate ornamentation, it was designed by the great architect Louis Sullivan--who also rests in Graceland, originally (and ironically) in a poor man's grave. Despite his genius (and his later tremendous influence), Sullivan died penniless. Today his original grave is flanked by a still modest but much more fitting monument that, like Burnham's grave, attracts devoted architects, artists, designers, and urban planners, who leave coins on the headstone to show their appreciation for his pioneering work.

Loredo Taft's Crusader marking newspaper publisher Victor Lawson's grave

Crusader for the truth

The Getty Tomb, designed by Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan's pauper's grave

Monument built for Sullivan 5 years after his death

Tribute to the great architect
Coins left for Louis Sullivan; the design on the side of the monument is meant to evoke the skyscrapers common to Sullivan's 20th-century urban vision

Just as modest is the grave of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, another important architect whose grave--a plain slab of black granite--can easily be passed by unnoticed. The great boxer Jack Johnson, the first black fighter to win the heavyweight world championship, also lies beneath a simple headstone that doesn't even reveal his first name or birth and death dates. The only way a visitor can tell its Johnson's grave is by noticing the much smaller headstone of his first wife, Etta, whose marker reads "Beloved Wife Of Jack Johnson." Throughout his career, Jack Johnson was the target of intense racism, as were many of his fans who took pride in his achievements. Perhaps the most humble grave of anyone in Graceland with famous connections is...or was, that of English novelist Charles Dickens's younger brother Augustus. Augustus left England for America in the 1850s, abandoning a blind wife and arriving in Chicago with a pregnant girlfriend, the daughter of an Irish barrister. He had some success initially in various jobs, but he and his family were poverty-stricken by the time he died from tuberculosis in 1866. He was buried in a grave marked only with a small, flat round stone with a number on it--not even a name. That was his headstone, if you can even call it that, for over a century. Only in 2004 was a proper headstone erected bearing his name and those of his girlfriend and three of their children, paid for by his descendants and the Chicago Dickens Fellowship, a kind of Charles Dickens fan club.

Boxer Jack Johnson's monument with his wife Etta's headstone in foreground


Where Charles Dickens's brother lies

New headstone marking grave of Augustus Dickens, brother of Charles Dickens, The English Author
Augustus Dickens's spanking and spiffy new headstone got me thinking about the humble burial plots of my great-grandparents on the other side of the cemetery--up against the wall, disturbed by the rumble of the el all day, gradually sinking in the cemetery's soft earth. Perhaps I can get a Chicago Ostberg Fellowship going that can help fund nicer headstones for my ancestors? Why not? Dickens schmikens, I'm a writer too after all. Karl and Anna Ostberg, Great-Grandparents of René, The American Blogger...The Girl Traveler. I would indeed appreciate an appreciation club someday. Until then, I'm proud to have kin resting in such a beautiful graveyard, where my family hasn't forgotten them, All Souls Day or no All Souls Day. I think they even get more visitation than some of the bigwigs in Graceland do. Nobody leaves coins at their graves, but we put memories on paper and film, and I put these blog posts up, telling the stories of my amazing family.

Angel and sphinx marking tomb of a former beer baron

Pyramid tomb of the brewer

Honestly? This is the creepiest thing in the cemetery to me.

Headstones of German immigrants in Graceland

Headstone of the dancer Ruth Page, in Graceland

Poor Man's Grave?

That's another way of looking at death, I suppose. In Rosehill Cemetery, Chicago

Civil War soldiers' graves in Rosehill

Me at Ludwig Wolff's tomb, laughing at death but eyes shut with fear

Do

Too late for this guy

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