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Graceland Cemetery is one of Chicago’s finest hidden treasures. On the North Side, amongst the everyday hustle and bustle, lies a serene yet vibrant park-like cemetery.
Located between two major Chicago cross streets, Clark & Irving Park, Graceland Cemetery is the final resting place to many prominent Chicago figures, including athletes, politicians, industrialists and many of the finest architects of the last century. Designed by visionary landscape architects, including O.C. Simonds, Graceland both serves as a glimpse into the past and a beautiful place for the future. Even with all of its 150 years of history, Graceland Cemetery is still an active cemetery and arboretum.
Graceland Cemetery Website
Graceland Cemetery Burial Search
Graceland Cemetery is a large historic garden cemetery located in the north side community area of Uptown, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Established in 1860, its main entrance is at the intersection of Clark Street and Irving Park Road. Among the cemetery's 121 acres (49 ha) are the burial sites of several well-known Chicagoans.
Graceland includes a naturalistic reflecting lake, surrounded by winding pathways, and its pastoral plantings have led it to become a certified arboretum of more than 2,000 trees. The cemetery's wide variety of burial monuments include a number designed by famous architects, several of whom are also buried in the cemetery.
Thomas Barbour Bryan, a Chicago businessman, established Graceland Cemetery in 1860 with the original 80-acre layout designed by Swain Nelson. Bryan's son, Daniel Page Bryan, was the first person to be buried at the cemetery after having been disinterred and removed from the city cemetery in Lincoln Park along with approximately 2,000 other individuals. In 1870, Horace Cleveland designed curving paths, open vistas, and a small lake to create a park-like setting. In 1878, Bryan hired his nephew Bryan Lathrop as president. In 1879, the cemetery acquired an additional 35 acres, and Ossian Cole Simonds was hired as its landscape architect to design the addition. Lathrop and Simonds wanted to incorporate naturalistic settings to create picturesque views that were the foundation of the Prairie style. Lathrop was open to new ideas and provided opportunities for experimentation which led to Simonds use of native plants including oak, ash, witch hazel, and dogwood at a time when many viewed native plants as invasive. The Graceland Cemetery Association designated one section of the grounds to be devoid of monuments and instituted a review process led by Simonds for monuments and family plots. Simonds later became the superintendent at Graceland until 1897, and continued on as a consultant until his death in 1931.
Graceland Cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 18, 2001.
Established in 1860 and designed by landscape architects, O. C. Simonds and H.W.S. Cleveland, Graceland is truly a haven in the city.
Walk through the cemetery and pay your respects to pioneers like Dexter Graves and John Kinzie, early settlers in Chicago, and to business leaders such as developer Potter Palmer, railroad car manufacturer George Pullman and Cyrus Hall McCormick, who revolutionized American agriculture with the invention of the mechanical reaper and other farm machinery. Other Chicago "giants" buried here include civic planners and builders Daniel Burnham and Charles Wacker: Marshall Field, the retailing genius; Martin Ryerson, lumber merchant and developer; newspaper publisher Victor Lawson; meat packer Phillip D. Armour; and Carter Harrison, Sr., five term mayor of Chicago. World famous Chicago architects such as John Root, William Holabird, Louis Sullivan, Howard Van Doren Shaw, William LeBaron Jenney and Mies Van der Rohe are also buried here. The monuments and buildings designed by Sullivan, Holibird & Roche and McKim, Mead and White, among others are still viewed as primary examples of their work.
As part of its ongoing restoration, Graceland recently completed construction of a new columbarium which is designed to reflect the enduring nineteenth century style of the Cemetery.
Open to all, Chicagoans and tourists can relax amid the quiet beauty of Graceland's curving tree lined lanes. We welcome your visits and inquiries and ask only in return that your conduct, while our guest, demonstrates a respect for those who are buried here. O. C. Simonds is the person responsible for the beauty of Graceland Cemetery as we know it today. Simonds served as the Cemetery's superintendent and chief landscape architect from 1881 until 1898. He continued working at the Cemetery until his death in 1931. During his tenure, Simonds transformed Graceland into a masterpiece of Midwest landscape architecture for which the cemetery was awarded a medal of excellence at the Paris Exposition of 1900.
Graceland was also honored by acceptance on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. Simonds vision for Graceland was of a beautifully landscaped park created by an abundance of plantings with carefully planned vistas and natural topographical and water features. The park reflects a celebration of life. Simonds' landscape designs represents the classical integration of buildings and landscape, involving a number of distinctive monuments. This is the design that Simonds created, developed, and finally perfected in his long tenure as cemetery landscape architect. Because of Simonds vision and dedication, landscape historians regard Graceland Cemetery as "one of the most remarkable park-like cemeteries of the Western world."
Chicago Architecture Center