Chicago: Day 6 - Rosehill Cemetery

After our fascinating foray into the worlds of vintage soaps and cleaning and sewing implements, we headed over to the nearby Rosehill Cemetery (yelp reviews here). This was also in the Edgewater/Andersonville neighborhood. After seeing Graceland and reading up on Rosehill and its famous "occupants", I felt we had to go and check it out. Oh yeah, more on Rosehill here and here.
Rosehill is the oldest Victorian era cemetery in Chicago and also one of the largest at 350 acres. This entrance was designed by William W. Boyington, the architect of the Chicago Water Tower and the Old University of Chicago, who is buried in Rosehill.
The grave of Charles Hull which is located near the entrance of the cemetery. He's just sittin in his chair watching everyone go by . More info about him here.
One of the many roads that meander through Rosehill. It looks kind of normal now, but I wouldn't want to be here at night.
This glass encased monument commerates Frances Pearce who died in childbirth with her infant daughter. Her grief stricken husband had the statue made in their memory. It is one of two glass encased sites at Rosehill, the other being the gravesite of Lulu Fellows which we did not have a chance to see. More about Frances Pearce's grave here. I found this monument quite sad.

This cemetery was much much larger than Graceland, but I thought Graceland had more "personality". This was too vast to travel by foot so we drove most of the way and stopping here and there occasionally.
The Rosehill Mausoleum houses such Chicago luminaries as former mayors and department store magnates Montgomery Ward and Sears (they were rivals in life but "neighbors" in death - Ward supposedly haunts the crypt) and John G. Shedd (as in the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago). We did go inside (the entrance is actually in the back) but after walking down one or two halls, got creeped out and left. Yes, even I got creeped out by this place. Not that it was spooky or anything - it was actually quite modern inside with marble floors and real Tiffany windows inside. Rather, it was so damn quiet (well, duh, it's full of the entombed remains of rich and famous Chicagoans) and no one was in there. Plus, it was humongous and I didn't want to wander the halls looking for Montgomery Ward or Sears' crypts.
Not sure who this was but this was a pretty large private mausoleum.
Here's something creepy...As Bert and I were looking for the grave of Ignaz Schwinn, the bicycle manufacturer, I felt several bone chilling breezes as I gingerly stepped around a series of headstones. Even though it was sunny, there was still a slight coldness in the air along with the wind. At the time, I figured, "It's the wind"...But when I asked Bert if he felt any super cold breezes, he didn't! Or, maybe I'm blowing it out of proportion, but it felt unnaturally cold in some spots! It was that point where I was wanting to speed this little visit up so we could have lunch sooner!
Although we knew that Oscar Mayer was buried here, we didn't have time to look for his grave. Turns out it wasn't a huge monument or anything, just a small plain headstone seen here.

The one below is called "A Buck" but it's horns are broken off. Here's another shot here.
Monument for Leonard Volk, a sculptor who made busts of President Abrahama Lincoln and Senator Douglas.
Now this was a cool monument - This marks the spot where George S. Bangs lies. His claim to fame? He originated the idea of the railroad mail car, thus speeding up the mail process.
Detail of the base of the limestone tree trunk, depicting a mail car going through a tunnel.
This obelisk is the tallest in Rosehill , rising 72' above everyone else's graves. It is the monument for former Chicago Mayor John Wentworth.
The grave of A. B. Dick, a businessman whose company made copying machines and office supplies (he coined the word "mimeograph").
Huge monument here...
Speed bumps are called speed "humps" here.
We had enough of the boneyard! On to lunch!

Chicago: Day 3 - Graceland Cemetery

Before heading over to Graceland Cemetery, we passed by a few places on W. Irving Road, like St. Benedict Parish - so many of these older churches are really pretty and have a lot of character.and the Chemically Imbalanced Theatre in neighborhood of Irving Park. I just liked the name!Graceland Cemetery was our destination - yes, you heard that right. A cemetery? Morbid, perhaps, but most importantly, educational and FREE! Seriously, who wants to see the boring old Navy Pier or the Field Museum? There's lots to see here at one of Chicago's most historic Victorian era graveyards. More on Graceland here and the overwhelmingly positive yelp reviews here!
Entering the gates...mua-ha-ha-ha-ha (say this in a Vincent Price "Thriller" kind of way!)
Established in 1860, Graceland was modeled after the park like cemeteries in Europe. Graceland is also known as the "Cemetery of Architects" because there are so many of them buried here - like Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan (the father of "Modernism"), and Howard Van Doren Shaw. A few other famous folks include Jack Johnson), (no, not the surfer turned singer but the first black boxer to win world heavyweight championship), Philip Armour - yes, thank you for making Vienna Sausages in a can!), Cyrus Mc ormick(inventor of the farming implement, the reaper---"Don't Fear the Reaper dude!), and George Pullman (inventor of the sleeping car). In addition, many of the monuments and mauseleums themselves are architecturally significant. There were so many interesting headstones, like this one (kinda phallic, don't you think?), although I am not sure who "McPherson" was.
These are headstones in a family plot. This foray into the cemetery also gave me the chance to demonstrate to TC how different life was back then. As we looked at the many tiny grave makers, many of which were worn down by the elements as to be rendered unreadable , I explained that people had large families back then, but many children died young. We looked at the dates on many of the stones and saw that many did not live past their toddler years, a very sad but real fact of life back in the late 1800's. She was also mentally calculating the ages at which people died when looking at the dates....The stones serve as a concrete reminder of the high mortality rate during the post Civil War years. Headless statue...
Another statue with raised hand...

Here's someone's 2-part video of Graceland that I found quite cool...

and this one...

Someone's personal mausoleum (there were a lot of those here). This reminded me of a scary book I'd read as a kid - I think it was "The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn" by John Bellairs. I was attracted to the book covers (at least the original ones) becuse they were illustrated by the amazing Edward Gorey. Anyhow, in the book, a young boy tries to solve a mystery and it involves a dead man coming back to life on doomsday. The story also featured Winterborn's "crypt". I got chills just thinking about that and now, here I am in front of one!

Headstone with carving of the deceased...
Obelisks were quite the popular choice of monument back then...the taller it was, the richer you were, I presume? Attention getting maybe? Fascination with Egyptology?
Angel putting a wreath on a cross...
I'm not sure who "Bartels" was, but this looks like a coffin with a blanket draped over it. I could be wrong, but that's what it looked like to me.

Monument of a woman...
Headstones...
This is the distincly forboding monument that marks the gravesite of Chicago hotelier Dexter Graves. The statue pictured here is called "Eternal Silence" and was sculpted by Lorado Taft. We were driving along the little road in the cemetery and I literally shouted, "Stop!". I had to get out and take a photo of this...This has got to be one of the most creeptastic monuments ever. You feel like a huge dark presence is staring you in the face...This statue is also known as "The Statue of Death" and some say that it is impossible to take a photo because a wierd presence makes cameras go batty. Well, as you can see, my camera worked just fine.
Here is a detail of the face, which is still black, save for the nose, which has turned green over time. I didn't stay too long in front of this...so off we went again!
There were so many monuments with columns or pillars...Certainly many of these folks had a lot of money to pay for these elaborate markers. That was another thing we were trying to point out to TC...looking at the markers, could she tell which people had money? What about family size? Lots of markers? Dates of death? How long did most people live back then? What type of stone was used? Limestone? Granite? Marble? You know, stuff like that.
The Schoenhofen Pyramid Monument, named after Peter Schoenhofen, a brewer...More on his company here.

See a detail of the Lotus doors here. That is one cool grave! One grave that I regret not paying more attention to was the Getty Tomb because it was considered a very significant piece of architecture by Louis Sullivan (also buried in this cemetery). This one is for William Kimball, founder of the Kimball International Piano Company.
If you've ever the enjoyed walking along Lake Michigan or the unfettered view of the Lakefront, you can thank Daniel Burnham, who was an architect, as well as the Director of Works for the World's Columbian Exposition (aka the Chicago World's Fair) in 1893 and the creator of the Burnham Plan (also known as the Burnham Plan) which laid out the map of the Chicago we know today. His grave is on a little manmade island and you get to it by crossing the little bridge.
Marshall Field's grave - This owned the largest retail and wholsesale dry-goods company in the world at one point. The Field Museum is also named after him.
Here are a few more links to the other monuments here.

Now, prior to going on our trip, I was reading up on Graceland Cemetery in the book, "Wierd Chicago" and came across a story that kind of gave me the creeps...This is the story of Inez Clarke , a little girl who died at the age of six whose statue is encased in glass to protect it from the harsh weather. Legend has it that her statue sometimes "disappears" from it's case. (cue creepy music here)
Now I guess that depends on which story you believe. In the same book, it also mentions that no one by the name of Inez Clarke was ever buried there at the cemetery nor was she even a child of John and May Clarke! Some speculate that the statue was put there as a marker by a sculptor who wanted to advertise his business and that the monument actually marks the grave of a young boy.
This is the only monument encased in glass at Graceland. There is another cemetery that we hoped to visit at Rosehill Cemetery (another one of Chicago's oldest cemeteries), which has two monuments in glass cases. More on THOSE in a later post.
You could really see a lot of details in the statue - the ruffles in her dress, the strands of her hair, the folds in her parasol, the grain of her wooden chair...
Sometimes people have been known to leave little toys and gifts as offerings at the foot of her monument, but there weren't any that day.
Now this was a really cool headstone! This is the grave of William Hulbert- the founder of the the National Baseball League as well as the Chicago Cubs. According to the lady at the visitor's desk, this was a popular grave for many visitors. Bert really liked this headstone...
Another view here...
And here...
Here is a "Beauty Shop Nagel" sign - seems to be ubiquitous at all beauty salons across America...
It was really quite a cool experience wandering around the cemetery. It was a great history lesson for all of us. We also appreciated the cemetery's layout - the graves were arranged in various ways, not just in linear rows. Some were arranged in arcs and not all stones faced the same way. That was also done purposefully because back then, cemeteries were used as picnic grounds. People actually chilled out at the cemetery. Judging from the number of graves at some of the plots, I can imagine that some families were probably here A LOT since people seemed to drop like flies back then.

We walked through part of Graceland, then did the rest of our "tour" by car. We stopped from time to time when we spotted a certain grave. If you ever go here, stop first by the visitor's center. You can pick up a map of the cemetery (it's like going to the zoo, but with dead people) which is marked with the brief biographies of their "notable residents" as well as conveniently marked maps of the more well-known monuments and graves. The people at the front office are really nice and helpful and won't think you're odd for visiting a cemetery for fun!

Okay, now let's go to my cousin's in Morton Grove for a brief pitstop! Then, we're going to the Dells!!!

El Campo Santo Cemetery - Old Town

This excursion was the same day we went to Rancho la Lena and got my newly refurbished wedding ring back. Like the Six Million Dollar Man or like the nose of Jocelyn Wildenstein
(or her eyes, cheeks, chin, boobs, ass, or spleen for that matter), the prongs were melted down or taken apart and rebuilt so it could be better... faster ...and stronger than ever! Since the diamond place was in Old Town, one of San Diego's tourist attractions, street parking was awful. We parked high up on hill on Juan Street, past Acapulco restaurant. As we headed down for lunch, we passed by what is billed as the Most Haunted House in the U.S....
(cue creepy music here)...The Whaley House!

I've never been in it, but read about it online. They say sometimes, you can smell cigar smoke in the back yard even though no one is there. You can buy tickets next door to take a self-guided tour in the house. The rooms are non accesible to tourists, obviously and get this, they do not do any Night Tours during the last week of October!!! I'm sure it's to deter those gorehounds or people who get their thrills from seeing ghosts or whatever! Guests have often remarked that they have the feeling that they are being watched. Sometimes a few have encountered a few "spirits" in the Whaley House. There are docents there sometimes in period dress. Wouldn't it be really wierd if you thought you met one, but they were really an apparition? I just scared myself there! Another bone chilling story I read was that one of the bedrooms looked like it had been slept in, but no one was in there and the bed was fixed a few minutes before....Oooo...

A few blocks away is this place...El Campo Santo Cemetery (The Holy Field):

I figured, WTF, let's all go, me, Bert and TC! It was broad daylight and there were other tourists there (see Asian tourists in picture above)...This was one of San Diego's oldest cemeteries. It used to be a lot larger, but when the area started to become more developed, houses and businesses were built on top of the old burial grounds, which are now reduced to a small plot of land along San Diego Avenue... Here's another blogger's photos here.

I am SO GLAD I read about El Campo Santo AFTER we visited. I got chills reading some of the stuff online there (referenced in my Rancho la Lena post). See the diagram below of the graves? They are under the street. Sometimes people who parked by the cemetery remarked that their car alarms would mysteriously go off even if no one touched their cars. Or sometimes cars engines would fail to start...

This place is a historical landmark as well...

See the blue van? I wonder if the owners had problem starting that car? The cemetery is rather small, with lots of wooden crosses scattered throughout. There were also some graves that were also enclosed by white picket fences.

Here's the grave of a notorious denizen of old San Diego, Yankee Jim Robinson. He was hanged in the backyard of the Whaley House and it took 45 minutes for him to die. He is known to haunt the Whaley House...Read more about his story here and here .

Grave of an "Indian Babe"

Here's another geranium covered marker of an "Indian Maiden"

The placards here are kind of grungy since they're exposed to the elements.

There's a huge tree in the middle of the cemetery. There was also a portion of the site which had that yellow police tape on it. I didn't venture into that area, although it would have been easy to do so.

This was kind of sad. It says "Anita Gillis - A Little Girl". When I read about this online, turns out that this grave is quite popular with guests. As you can see, some people even leave "gifts" for her (small toys, marker pens, coins). TC and I offered a few pennies.

Here are those picket enclosed graves...

There's that yellow tape...

OMG, I'm so glad I didn't encounter any "cold spots" in the cemetery. I'm also relieved that my photos don't show any ghost orbs or any shadowy figures...It was still an interesting excursion seeing this place and it provided an opportunity to discuss death with my daughter, who remarked that people didn't seem to live that long back then (she was looking at the dates of birth and death). Not pictured in this post is the grave of the caretaker, also known to "haunt" the cemetery.

So, if you want to check out one of San Diego's creepy places, this is one of the places to go! Bring the whole family!