Chicago Cemeteries
Cemeteries in Chicago, IL
Chicago Cemeteries
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Historic Sites • Cemeteries
North Park
Historic Sites • Architectural Buildings
Uptown
Historic Sites • Cemeteries
Morgan Park
Ancient Ruins • Historic Walking Areas
Cemeteries
What travellers are saying
- JPatti1Chicago, IL265 contributionsJust the most beautiful cemetery around and full of so many important figures from Chicago history, US architecture and even sports. We all should be so lucky as to spend perpetuity in a place such as this.Written 5 October 2024This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
- Taylor BChicago, IL8,483 contributionsWhen the conversation turns to cemeteries, most Chicagoans think of Graceland. But a little bit of research might change your mind. Rosehill, Graceland's sister cemetery, has all the trappings of Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC and Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. Located at 5800 North Ravenswood Avenue on the city's northwest side, in the Lincoln Square community, it is Chicago's largest cemetery with 350 acres. Founded in 1859, it is significant for several reasons. Start with Rosehill's Joliet/limestone entrance gate, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Marvel at the Rosehill Mausoleum, the largest mausoleum in Chicago with two levels, floors of Italian Carrara marble and stained glass windows designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. And the Horatio N. May Chapel with a blend of Gothic and Romanesque styles, a granite exterior and an interior appointed with mosaic floors. The list of distinguished burials includes several Illinois governors, Chicago mayors, generals, civic leaders, business tycoons, sports figures and celebrities. As a Civil War buff, I'm most interested in the fact that Rosehill is the burial place for 350 Union soldiers and sailors and at least three Confederates, including several members of the 8th Illinois Cavalry, which fired the first shots at Gettysburg, and General John McArthur, who helped Ulysses S. Grant avoid surrender at Shiloh. Rosehill has the distinction of being the largest private burial ground of Union veterans, including 16 generals and six drummer boys, in the state of Illinois. In fact, Rosehill opened its own Civil War museum in 1995. It highlights the roles played by generals and soldiers buried on the property and Chicago's part in the war.Written 7 June 2024This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
- howard p MChicago, IL85 contributionsThere are some very well executed grave markers and memorials in this cemetery. One of a must-see in Chicago.Written 30 July 2022This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
- Cathryn MIllinois4 contributionsBeautiful grounds! Lots to see! Recommend taking a tour sothat you can be sure and hit the highlights!Written 20 June 2023This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
- Taylor BChicago, IL8,483 contributionsStart at the southeast corner of North Clark Street and North La Salle Drive, across the street from the iconic BP gas station, at the entrance to the Jaffee History Trail, north of the Chicago History Museum. Walk east and you will behold the Ira Couch Mausoleum, a stone crypt that is now the last remaining marked grave in Chicago's Lincoln Park. It was commissioned in the mid-1800s by Ira Couch, a one-time tailor and haberdasher who became a millionaire through acquisitions of land and real estate. He established the Tremont House Hotel, at the corner of Lake and Dearborn, which became one of the earliest hotels in the city and one of the city's most famous hotels of its day. Couch died at the age of 50 on January 28, 1857, while vacationing in Cuba. Eighteen months later, he was entombed in the mausoleum in what was then Chicago's City Cemetery. Beginning in the 1860s, the city began relocating corpses from the cemetery and reinterring them elsewhere, mostly to Graceland and Rosehill, then transforming the land into Lincoln Park. But Couch's mausoleum remained. It is one of the few still standing structures that endured in the path of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Today, surrounded by lush greenery and large trees, on a knoll visible to traffic on North La Salle Drive, heading toward Du Sable Lake Shore Drive, the massive marble structure remains shrouded in mystery. Why wasn't it moved like other crypts in the old cemetery? Who are the occupants? Is Ira Couch the only body inside? Some historians argue they may be as many as 13 bodies in the vault. Why doesn't the city open it and find out? Who knows?Written 22 August 2024This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
- Taylor BChicago, IL8,483 contributionsThe grave site of widely acclaimed architect Daniel Burnham in Chicago's historic Graceland Cemetery is noted on TripAdvisor's website. But Daniel Burnham Park on Chicago's lakefront, which covers 583.4 acres and includes some of the city's most endearing attractions, isn't listed at all. Go figure. Burnham, was was described as "the most successful power broker the American architectural profession has ever produced," was an architect and urban designer who was the Director of Works for the 1892-1983 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and co-authored the visionary Plan of Chicago in 1909. He died in 1912 and his ashes were interred on a picturesque island in Lake Willowmere in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery, a unique shrine for a larger-than-life figure in a "cemetery of architects" that also includes the burial plots of Lorado Taft, Louis Sullivan, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, John Root, Howard Van Doren Shaw and Daniel Chester French. Burnham and his family are buried under natural glacial granite boulders at the north end of the lake. The grave site is reachable via a permanent footbridge. Today, it is surrounded by shrubs, trees, lush greenery and wetland plants that attract fish, turtles, frogs and a host of water birds. Of all the grand monuments and mausoleums that are part of the history of Graceland Cemetery, which is located at 4001 North Clark Street and dates to 1860, no grave site is more impressive than Burnham's. He may not have said "Make no little plans" in referring to his work -- the quote was credited to him by a biographer -- but it certainly applies.Written 20 August 2024This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
- Taylor BChicago, IL8,483 contributionsChicago's Graceland Cemetery is one of the most historic and picturesque cemeteries in the United States, in a class with Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC and Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. And one of the reasons why is the Carrie Eliza Getty Tomb, acknowledged as the most significant piece of architecture in the 121-acre garden/arboretum located at Clark Street and Irving Park Road on the city's North Side, north of Wrigley Field. Commissioned in 1890 by the lumber baron, Henry Harrison Getty, for his wife, the tomb was designed by the noted American architect, Louis Sullivan, who also designed the Martin Ryerson Mausoleum for Getty's late partner, which also stands in Graceland Cemetery. The Getty Tomb is said to be the beginning of Sullivan's involvement in the architectural style known as the Chicago School. It stands on its own triangular plot of land and is composed of limestone masonry construction. Roughly a cube in shape, the bottom half is composed of large, smooth limestone blocks while the upper half is composed of a rectangular pattern of octagons, each containing an eight-pointed starburst design. The cornice is banded with smooth limestone above intricate spiraling patterns below and the top-edge of the roofline is straight and horizontal on the front and back and scalloped in a concave fashion on the sides. But what is most compelling about the design with the ornate doorway, an intricately ornamented bronze gate and door, spanned by a broad semi-circular archway. Henry Getty joined his wife in the tomb after his death in 1919 and their only child was added in 1946. In 1971, the tomb as designated a Chicago Landmark. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.Written 13 May 2023This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
- Taylor BChicago, IL8,483 contributionsThere are many reasons to visit historic Graceland Cemetery at 4001 North Clark Street in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. It is the burial site of many notable Chicagoans and it features several mausoleums and burial sites that are masterpieces of architecture and landscape. One is the Potter Palmer and Bertha Honore Palmer Memorial. Erected in 1921, it is a monument to two of the giants of Chicago development and high society. Potter Palmer (1826-1902) was a business tycoon and real estate developer who built State Street and the Palmer House Hotel. Bertha Honore Palmer (1850-1918) was considered the queen of Chicago high society and patron of impressionist artists. They lived in a Gothic Castle at 1350 North Lake Shore Drive, once the largest private residence in Chicago. Today, they lie within the two large granite sarcophagi of the massive memorial structure, which is embellished with flowery garlands and inverted torches symbolizing death. Designed by architects McKim, Mead and White, it is built in the style of a Greek temple, the largest and most significant tomb in Graceland Cemetery. Sixteen massive ionic columns ring the structure and a line of antifixes stand at attention along the roofline. Three generations of the Palmers' descendants lie beneath the floor around time. The tomb was Palmer's way of displaying his wealth in a big way. How wealthy was Potter Palmer? When his hotel was destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, he borrowed $2 million from an insurance company, the largest amount lent to a private individual up to that time, and rebuilt State Street and the Palmer House Hotel and turned swampland into North Lake Shore Drive.Written 2 October 2020This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.