I’ve taken elevated trains between Chicago and Evanston on and off for years. The CTA Red Line has its north terminus at the Howard Station in Chicago, and from there you ride the Purple Line into Evanston.

For a short stretch just north of Howard, the Purple Line passes Calvary Cemetery, which is also called Calvary Catholic Cemetery on maps. It’s a sizable burial ground, with nearly 40,000 permanent residents, stretching from Chicago Ave. along the elevated tracks nearly to Lake Michigan.

So I’ve seen the cemetery from on high for decades, but never wandered the grounds. I decided to do that on Saturday after visiting the American Toby Jug Museum, since the cemetery is only a few blocks to the south.

The monuments and stones are seemingly spaced more widely than usual for a cemetery of mid-19th century vintage. But among the standing stones are a lot of markers flush with the ground, so it’s hard to appreciate the cemetery’s denseness at first.

There are some mausoleums. This one, strangely, had no name on the exterior that I could find.
Ambrose Plamondon, founder and head of the Plamondon Manufacturing Co. in Chicago, a maker of machinery who died in 1896 of an “obstinate pulmonary trouble of long standing.”

His son Charles is interred there as well. He too was a prominent Chicago businessman, but he and his wife Mary had the misfortune to book passage to the UK on the Lusitania in May 1915.

“The couple celebrated their 36th wedding anniversary, 6 May 1915, while on board Lusitania,” says the Lusitania Resource. “Both Charles and his wife Mary were lost in the sinking. Their remains were washed up on the Irish coast, blackened with coal dust, suggesting that they had been sucked into one of the funnels. Both bodies were recovered and identified.”

Here’s the Cuneo family mausoleum, perched on a modest hill.
I’ve happened across the Cuneos before. They acquired an Italianate mansion, now a museum, from ruined businessman Samuel Insull during the Depression. We visited it nearly 10 years ago.

I presume this is patriarch and printing baron Frank Cuneo (1861-1942) in a niche in the front of the structure.
You’d think his wife Amelia (1864-1891) would be the other bust adorning the structure, but this face looks a little old for a woman who seems to have died in her 20s giving birth to her fourth child, or at least soon after.

So this is probably Frank Cuneo’s mother, Caterina Lagomercino Cuneo (1828-1900). Maybe she counted as the tough old matriarch and wouldn’t be denied her place of honor.

Most of the Cuneos are interred in the above mausoleum, but not all of them. Frank and Amelia’s eldest son John, who died in 1977, has his own mausoleum not far from his parents and siblings.

There is some funerary art at Calvary.

Including stones whose wear speaks of their impermanence.
A group memorial to the Religious Sisters of Mercy, who have a long history in Chicago.

A number of Chicago mayors are buried here as well, most notably Jane Byrne, who died in 2014. Charlie Comiskey, the baseball boss, is here. Didn’t see either of them, but I wasn’t looking. I was just looking around.