Just before noon yesterday, the clouds opened up and dumped rain and small bits of hail on my part of the world. One of those short, sudden downpours of summer. By this morning, the deck had dried out enough for me to do what I often do there, have breakfast and engage in some loafing.
Another summer note: in the evenings, crickets have received their chirping orders. For a few nights, only one or two bothered, on and off as the cicadas faded for the day. Now strong cricket choruses sound off by night. An excellent sound to fall asleep to.
Doesn’t this sound grand: a few weeks ago I attended a social event on the North Shore. But it wasn’t grand, not in the sense of a palatial setting. But it was at one of the many pleasant middle-class neighborhoods of the area whose real estate valuations lifted stratospherically in recent decades.
Driving all the way to the shore of Lake Michigan means passing through some thick traffic, so to my way of thinking, that also means you should go a few hours early for a look around parts of the North Shore, that narrow but long strip from Evanston to some point in Lake County to the north.
Drive up that way and you might find yourself at Lake Forest Cemetery. At the entrance gate.
Who’s waiting there, as part of the iron gate? St. Peter. Usually he has keys, but I suppose he’s holding the book he consults at the Pearly Gates.
Among the grand old rural cemeteries of metro Chicago, Lake Forest is one of the smaller ones, at 15 acres. Due to its lush landscaping, however, it seems bigger.
It too has a rural cemetery pedigree, selected as a cemetery site in 1857, coinciding with the founding of the town of Lake Forest.
“The site… selected contained the characteristics appropriate for a design in the naturalistic style,” according to a detailed history of the property at the National Registry of Historic Places. “It had topography with gently rolling changes in grade, ravines that added a rugged dimension, and a vista toward the lake.”
But some decades passed before its roads and landscaping were in place. William Le Baron Jenney (d. 1907), who designed the first fully metal-framed building – the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, the first skyscraper – did the roads and some other features in 1882 (not long before Home Insurance).
“In 1900, Ossian Cole Simonds [d. 1931] was selected to develop the site further and is responsible for its design in the Prairie Style. He perfected its beautiful graded surface, its broad open spaces, and its simple groups of trees, often with branches sweeping to the ground…
“Whereas the site had previously been open like a park, he enclosed the property with plantings, providing a feeling of privacy for the bereaved. The location of the cemetery on the bluff above the lake and surrounded by ravines provided a natural setting for quiet meditation that he emphasized through plantings. Unlike other cemetery sites that have been overtaken by urbanization, Lake Forest Cemetery still retains the character that Simonds emphasized through his plantings.”
I’ve happened across some of Simonds’ other work — Lincoln Park, but also Library Park in Kenosha.
Like any good cemetery, there’s a mix of memorials. Considering the decades of affluence on the North Shore, no shortage of sizable mausoleums.
More modest stones, but certainly weighty. Physically, but also emotionally for the bereaved.
More artful stones.
Not much Egyptian Revival that I saw, but there was a little.
The aforementioned sun dial memorial.
I liked this small section: unkempt on purpose, I think.
Lake Forest’s landscaping is meticulous otherwise, so that seems more reasonable that an omission by the groundskeepers.
