The Lost Lincoln Park Cemetery

Posted on August 28, 2019 by admin

Back again on September 3 after the long weekend. But not long enough. They never are.

That southern Lincoln Park used to be a cemetery in Chicago’s earliest days, before the apotheosis of the man from Springfield, wasn’t news to me. I’m pretty sure I read about it during my own early days in Chicago.

The last burial there was in 1866, and soon the graves were moved to “rural” cemeteries like Graceland. Except that bones still turn up from time to time in this part of the park. Wonder if that’s common knowledge among the recreational sports players in the park. Signs posted nearby explain these things, but who reads them?
City Cemetery Chicago-Lincoln Park now Actually, more than signs. Not far from the Chicago History Museum is the sole remaining mausoleum from the cemetery period, the Couch Tomb.

In “Hidden Truths: The Chicago City Cemetery and Lincoln Park,” artist Pamela Bannos notes the following about the Couch Tomb: “As a part of Hidden Truths, I have asserted that the Couch family tomb is the oldest structure left standing in the Chicago Fire zone. This stone vault has stood in place since it was built on-site in 1858.

“It was this conspicuous vestige from the City Cemetery that initiated this project. During informal polling of friends and acquaintances living in Chicago, I was surprised to learn that many who exited Lake Shore Drive, driving through Lincoln Park, had not noticed the family mausoleum.”

Ira Couch was an early Chicago millionaire who died in 1857. He’s likely in the tomb, along with family members, though that isn’t quite certain. A discussion of that question and much more are included in the Hidden Truths web site.

Most intriguing is why the tomb is still there. Bannos’ best guess, and I will go along with it, is that it was too expensive to move. Plant a few trees around it and before long, no one notices. That’s exactly what has happened.

A Few Lincoln Park Statues (And Where’s Garibaldi?)

Posted on August 27, 2019 by admin

The southern part of Lincoln Park in Chicago features statues of famous men fairly close together, but not quite within sight of each other. Visible from W. North Blvd., barely — at the other end of a linear garden — is Lincoln.
This isn’t just any Lincoln statue, of which there are many. This is Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Standing Lincoln, whose formal title is “Abraham Lincoln: The Man,” completed in 1887. Among Lincoln statues, it has few peers.
I understand there are full-sized replicas in both Mexico City and London, where he keeps statuary company with nearby works depicting Winston Churchill, Robert Peel, Benjamin Disraeli, Mahatma Gandhi and others.

Stanford White designed the memorial’s semicircular exedra, where I parked myself for a few minutes.
On the exedra’s left is this curious globe.
The text is Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greely of August 22, 1862. Interesting choice, rather than the Gettysburg Address or part of the Second Inaugural Address, which are carved into the Lincoln Memorial. Perhaps in 1887 the letter was considered the essence of the man.

On the north side of a pedestrian tunnel under W. LaSalle Dr. is a statue of Benjamin Franklin.
The Chicago Park District says: “Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune, wrote, ‘I have deemed it a personal duty to keep [Franklin’s] memory fresh in the minds of Chicago’s youth.’ Along with the Old-Time Printers’ Association, Medill hired sculptor Richard Henry Park (1832–1902) to create the Benjamin Franklin Monument. Park came to Chicago from New York to participate in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

“The monument was originally located on the east side of the Lincoln Park Zoo near the South Lagoon. In 1966, the Chicago Park District moved the bronze sculpture and its white granite base to accommodate an expansion of the zoo.”

Further north, and visible from the South Pond, is the Ulysses S. Grant Monument.
That’s the view from west. I wanted to get a closer look at it, since I never had. All the years I’ve been here, you’d think I would have, but no. The view from the east:
From just under the statue.

Looks like Grant, all right. The park district again: “William Le Baron Jenney, the noteworthy designer of early skyscrapers, recommended that the memorial should include a monumental Romanesque arched structure. More than a dozen artists competed for the project.

“The winning proposal came from Louis T. Rebisso (1837–1899), a Cincinnati-based artist who had emigrated from Italy to America in 1857. Rebisso produced an eighteen-foot-tall equestrian bronze statue of Grant above an elegant version of the arched structure that Jenney had suggested.

“When the sculpture was dedicated in 1891, more than 200,000 people attended the ceremonies.”

Also in this part of Lincoln Park is an empty plinth rising in a bleak little patch of land.
A recent statue removal I hadn’t heard about, like in New Orleans? That didn’t seem likely, especially when I noticed GARIBALDI carved in the plinth. Turns out that Garibaldi was removed — so he could be displayed in a park closer to a Chicago Italian neighborhood at the time. That was in 1982.

You’d think that the park district could get around to putting another statue there after nearly 40 years, but apparently not.

I passed by one more statue in the park on Sunday, back south of LaSalle, and not of a famous man: “Fountain Girl.”
This work has a curious history. I was so curious I sat on a park bench near the statue and looked it up on my gizmo. It is a copy of an earlier work.

The park district: “The piece was sculpted by English artist George Wade in 1893 as a commissioned piece by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The WCTU raised $3,000 for the original public fountain to provide ‘pure drinking water’ as an alternative to liquor.”

The fountain stood at the world’s fair and later in downtown Chicago. Copies of it were installed in other cities. Eventually, the original was located in Lincoln Park, only to be stolen in the 1950s.

“In 2007, the Chicago Park District, the State of Illinois, the Lincoln Park Conservancy and private donors raised funds towards the project. The bronze figure was recast from the Portland, Maine fountain, and it is now installed on its original base.”

Originally, the fountain provided non-alcoholic refreshment for people, dogs and horses, but the park district is quick to point out that the modern version provides non-potable water.

South Pond, Lincoln Park

Posted on August 26, 2019 by admin

Frame your photos just so and you can achieve the appearance of wilderness.

Not only did I not visit the wilderness yesterday, I was smack in a densely populated city. Chicago, of course. Late in the morning I took a walk through the southern reaches of Lincoln Park — south of the better-trod zoo and conservatory and other parts of the park. Go far enough along this path and you reach the park’s South Pond.
In August, it’s lush with vegetation, but also clearly urban.

I don’t remember walking this particular path before. No matter how many times you go somewhere, there’s always more.

Chance the Snapper Has Gone Home

Posted on August 25, 2019 by admin

I left for college for the first time 40 years ago today. So long ago that I flew on Braniff to get to Nashville, as I like to say. At least to anyone who might remember that airline.

Nothing so milestone-like happened today. At least I don’t think so. Sometimes you quietly pass by milestones and only realize it in retrospect, if then.

Sometimes that’s literally true. On the Trans-Siberian, I knew that some kind of post is visible from the train marking the “border” between Asia and Europe, as you cross the Urals. I missed it. I think I was concerning myself with lunch at that moment.

One place we went today was the former home of Chance the Snapper. That is, Humboldt Park in Chicago. Chance has been returned from the park’s lagoon to Florida. Presumably Florida Man brought him to Chicago at some point.

Temps today were warm but not too hot, so we took a walk around. Plenty of ducks and geese to see. Lilypads, too.
But presumably no gators to bother the people who rent paddleboats.

We’ve visited the park a number of times, including for a look at its various artworks, but today we discovered a curious snail sculpture near one of the footpaths, but also partly covered by bushes.

According to the Chicago Park District: “In 1999, teenagers involved in a Chicago Park District program known as the Junior Earth Team spent several months learning about nature in Humboldt Park. The JETs developed an interpretive trail and provided sculptor Roman Villarreal with notes and sketches for a series of artworks.

“For this project, Villarreal and the students produced three carved artworks that are scattered and remain relatively hidden throughout the park. The three pieces relate to the theme of air, water, and earth. Among the trio is a two-foot tall snail sculpture located northeast of the Humboldt Park Boat House that bears the inscription ‘breathe oxygen.’ ”

Calvary Cemetery, Evanston

Posted on August 21, 2019 by admin

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.
IMCalvary Cemetery Evanston Cuneo 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.

Jaume Plensa, Here and There

Posted on August 4, 2019 by admin

Here’s a line from The Sun Also Rises that I didn’t much appreciate until recently. In one of the many conversations among the protagonists, the subject of the character Mike’s bankruptcy is broached:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

A lot of things happen that way. Learning often happens that way. Or at least awareness. Fortunately, I don’t have the experience of bankruptcy in mind. Still, a minor example of gradually-suddenly just happened to me.

Back in 2008, we visited the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Mich. One of the works was by Jaume Plensa, “I, you, she or he…”
In 2014, I took note of Plensa’s monumental head, temporarily placed in Millennium Park in Chicago, “Looking Into My Dreams, Awilda.” I also knew at the time that the Catalan artist had also done Crown Fountain in the park as well.

Interesting that the vitriol against “Dreams” in the comments of this Chicago Reader item obsesses about the size of the head. When I happen across public art, I judge it by an admittedly subjective standard: does it make the space more interesting? By that standard, all the Plensas I’ve seen are successful works.

Today I was looking at pictures I’d taken in August 2013, and happened across these — two images of the same work in Chicago.
“Self Portrait With Tree,” by none other than Plensa. I’d forgotten about it, and when I took the picture, probably didn’t associate it with the other works of his I’d seen. “Self Portrait” was next to the Hancock Tower on E. Chestnut St. I checked the Street View of that block, dated July 2018, and the work is gone. It was put up by the nearby Richard Gray Gallery, so perhaps it found a buyer.

All that is the gradual part. Somehow or other, Plensa hadn’t made much of an impression on me over the years. But when I looked at the 2013 images, I suddenly wanted to know more about him, since I don’t make a close study of sculpture or public art. If I had, I would have known how widespread his works are. (Had we walked further along Buffalo Bayou in Houston in May, we’d have come across yet another.)

Is it important that I know this? Maybe, maybe not. But better to err on the side of knowing something, however small.

Thursday Balderdash

Posted on June 13, 2019 by admin

An unusual string of chilly days here in mid-June. As in, lower than 70 degrees F. even during the day. But at least it hasn’t been this cold, as the Weather Underground claimed it to be on the evening of May 26 in northern Illinois.

It was fairly chilly that night, but I believe 52 F. was correct.

Toward the end of May, I visited Navy Pier in Chicago for a short while after dark. Unfortunately not on an evening with fireworks. But the area is alive with people well into the evening, many of them giddy and dressed to the nines after disembarking from party boats.

The new Ferris wheel on the pier (installed in 2016) is pretty by night.
“Both the 1995 and the 2016 wheels were manufactured by Dutch Wheels,” the Chicago Architecture Center says, referring to the two wheels that have been on the site since the redevelopment of Navy Pier in the mid-90s.

“Known as the Centennial Wheel, the new attraction measures 196 feet in height and has 42 gondolas. While this Ferris wheel won’t contend for the ‘world’s tallest’ title, it is currently the sixth-tallest wheel in the United States.”

The world’s tallest Ferris wheel would be…? The High Roller in Las Vegas, according to Wiki, since its development in 2014. You’d think it would a Chinese wheel, but no. Some functionary in the Chinese government hasn’t been doing his job, which is making sure that mindless giantism expresses itself in highly noticeable public structures. Too bad for him, the tallest one is in this country. USA! USA!

Spotted in I don’t remember which store recently.
The product might or might not be effective for pest control, but I know one thing: I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more.

For some reason, we had a 45 of that song around the house when I was a kid, though I don’t recall either of my brothers being Dylan fans. I had a certain fascination with it, especially imagining a literal window made of bricks in a room surrounded by National Guardsmen.

Curiously, Dylan saw fit recently to put the song on YouTube, along with others of similar vintage.

In case you’re wondering what the Alabama Coat of Arms looks like, wonder no more.
Found between a pair of elevator doors at the Alabama State Capitol. The Latin reads, We dare to defend our rights, which happens to be the state motto, adopted in 1939 due to the efforts of Marie Bankhead Owen, a ladylike white supremacist who also happened to be Tallulah Bankhead’s aunt. The ship is the Badine, which first brought Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville and Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville to the future Alabama, where they founded Mobile.

Othello

Posted on May 6, 2019 by admin

Not long ago we went to the Factory Theater in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood to see a staging of Othello by the Babes With Blades Theatre Company. I suggested we go because I’d never seen that play staged. Also, Ann read it not too long ago for school — wrote some papers and so on, the usual sort of things you do in high school.

The Factory is a small venue, about 70 seats on three sides of a simple stage. As far as I could tell, we saw a completely traditional staging of Othello, complete with well-done period costumes and actual swords and knifes, except for one thing. Babes With Babes is an entirely female theater company.

But not just a female company. A company of players with some specific talents.

According to the BWB web site: “Our initial showcase, in 1997, was conceived by founder Dawn ‘Sam’ Alden as a two-day presentation of fights and monologues, intended to bring to the Chicago art world an awareness of the large number of stage combat-trained women it had in its midst whose talent was being consistently underutilized.”

While not an overly stabby play (unlike Titus Andronicus) Othello certainly has its share of swords and knives as a part of the action, and the troupe handled them well.

More importantly, they handled their parts well. The novelty of women in the parts always played by men — Deveon Bromby as Othello and Kathrynne Wolf as Iago, to name the principals — lasted for a few minutes. Then it wore off and you were simply watching a solid production of Othello.

Wolf was particularly good as Iago. If you’re not going to have a spot-on Iago, a character that believably exults in the art of deceit, you might as well not do the play, since everything turns on that performance.

Much has been made of the muddled motives of Iago, or perhaps his motivelessness, but I’m not sure that matters. If it’s perversely captivating to watch his glee at destroying the Moor, I’d say the actor has done his, and in this case, her job.

Wolf Point & The Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame

Posted on April 30, 2019 by admin

On Friday I went to downtown Chicago for business. Since it was a warm, clear spring day, I wanted to do a more extensive walkabout, especially in the River North area, where I attended to business. But I didn’t have much time.

Instead I was able to take a quick walk near the Chicago River, mostly on the way to my appointment and heading back to Union Station afterward. I was near the place where the river divides into its North and South Branches, which is known as Wolf Point and is the origin of the Chicago Municipal Device.

For quite a while, Wolf Point was oddly underdeveloped, at least compared with the rest of the riverfront. For instance, until recently the point was occupied mostly by a parking lot.

No more. The latest project there, Wolf Point East, is still under construction.

So Wolf Point looks a little different than at the beginning of this decade, and a lot different than it did in 1833.

Hines, Joseph P. Kennedy Enterprises, the AFL-CIO Building Investment Trust and PNC Realty Investors are the developers of Wolf Point East; Pelli Clarke Pelli did the design. The 60-story tower will have 698 residential units — upper-end rentals — that will be available late this year.

Just to the east, of course, is the 4 million-square-foot Merchandise Mart, seen here catching a shadow in the mid-afternoon.

A street runs between the Merchandise Mart and the river — the unimaginatively named W. Merchandise Mart Plaza — and from there, you can see the Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame. That is, eight bronze busts honoring one-time U.S. merchant princes, each facing the building. Joseph P. Kennedy himself commissioned the busts in the early 1950s, which was possible because the Kennedy family owned the Merchandise Mart for many decades.

The busts are in two groups of four. These are the busts to the west. They don’t look so large from across the street, but the heads are four times the size of a regular human head.
From left to right: John Wanamaker, founder of the stores by that name; George Hartford, founder of A&P; Edward Filene, founder of those stores; and Montgomery Ward.

These are the busts to the east.
Construction and taxis whizzing by made it a little harder to make an image, but in any case they are Robert Wood, a chairman of Sears; F.W. Woolworth; Julius Rosenwald, another chairman of Sears and founder of the Museum of Science and Industry; and Marshall Field.

More about each of the busts is here. Twelve years ago, at least, they looked like they needed some restoration. I didn’t get quite close enough to them this time to know whether that has happened.

Thursday Nokorimono

Posted on April 11, 2019 by admin

One major installation we saw at the Elmhurst Art Museum on Saturday didn’t have anything to do with the Bauhaus (which got a Google doodle today), or Mies van der Rohe, or anything but the sky.

“Skycube” by David Wallace Haskins, which was installed in 2015. It may look light, but it’s made from 6,000 lbs. of steel.
The mirrors inside the cube deliver an image of the sky to — in — at — the square window — hole — aperture — on the side. It’s a little unnerving to sit there and look at it, but also hard to turn away.
Stand next to the “window” and you can get a self-portrait in the sky. Got a surreal tinge to it.
The view might be even more interesting on one of those days when rafts of clouds are speeding along at high altitudes.

The YouTube autoplay algorithm is pretty much of the same dense mindset as Top 40 radio is, or at least used to be. Play one song, well known or even not so well known, and it will line up nothing unusual or surprising.

Odd, then — and I’ve tested this on a few separate days — when I queue up something by the B-52s, a good many lesser-known songs of theirs appear on the autoplay. Mostly published by the group itself, but not always (and who doesn’t like a song that mentions ancient Mesopotamia?).

Might just be a fluke, though. Your results may vary. I doubt that algorithms will ever be good enough to weed out all the flukes. Hope not.

The last time I was in downtown Chicago, earlier this month, I paused for a moment to take a picture of a sign on E. Adams St. marking the eastern terminus of the former U.S. 66.
That’s the western-facing side of the side, covered by stickers from all over, with many European in origin. Shortly before I took my picture, a group of Germans were doing the same. Must be in their Reiseführer von Amerika. And what does the Meat Bunny know?

By the time I took a picture of the eastern-facing side, the Germans were gone.
Leaving only this fellow and his selfie stick.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Chicago