Graceland Cemetery

Graceland Cemetery at 4001 N Clark Street, in the Uptown and Lakeview area of Chicago, Illinois, was established in 1860 and developed into one of the city's finest Victorian landscape cemeteries. After the 1871 fire, it was redesigned by landscape architects William Saunders and later Ossian Cole Simonds, who shaped its winding paths, lagoons and groves in the naturalistic style of the nineteenth-century rural cemetery movement. Today it is a burial ground and also an outdoor museum of Chicago's architecture and commerce. Many of the architects who shaped the city lie here, including Louis Sullivan, whose own grave is marked by a modest monument, Daniel Burnham, whose family plot sits on a small island in a lagoon, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose grave is marked by a simple dark granite slab. Business and civic figures include Marshall Field, George Pullman, Potter Palmer, Allan Pinkerton and boxer Jack Johnson. Several monuments are artworks in their own right. The Getty Tomb, designed by Sullivan with the architect Wilhelm Bernhardt's ornamental work, is widely admired for its geometric and organic ornament, and Lorado Taft's bronze figure known as Eternal Silence marks the Graves family plot. Graceland's approach is that of a landscape rather than a curated exhibit, so visitors walk the grounds with a map or on a tour led by organizations such as the Chicago Architecture Center and the Chicago Cemetery Preservation groups. The cemetery is managed as an active burial ground with ongoing maintenance and tree care, and many monuments have been conserved. Admission is free, and the grounds are typically open daily during daylight hours, closing at about 4:30 PM. Visitors should respect mourners and posted rules, and a typical walk lasts one to two hours.