1 July 1864 – 21 February 1924 Annie was a teacher which is really the most surprising thing that I found in my research – that per early-century census records (and a couple other references in school-related documents at the time, mostly in lists), she had a husband, a child, and an occupation that she […]
This stunner was hard to get good shots of the day I was there just due to the time of day and angle of the sun, so I tried to get a lot of detail photos to make up for it. Peter Schoenhofen was a German immigrant who started a brewery in Chicago that became […]
3 September 1856 – 14 April 1924 Sullivan was a massively influential architect whose work was foundational in both the birth of the skyscraper and in the Chicago School of architecture. He was a mentor of Frank Lloyd Wright and inspired many of the architects who would later be known collectively as the Prairie School. […]
As it says over the door, the Balaban Mausoleum was built “In Memoriam to Ida Balaban Katz,” the sister of the founders of Balaban and Katz, the iconic movie palace moguls. The mausoleum was designed by Rapp and Rapp, the same architects who designed the Chicago Theater which still stands as a highly recognizable icon […]
Charles Walter Trogg 17 February 1869 – 24 July 1915 Catherine “Kate” Serowka Trogg 17 July 1884 – 24 Jul 1915 The Eastland, one of five chartered excursion boats meant to ferry employees, their families and friends from Chicago over to the Michigan City shore for the annual Western Electric Company picnic, keeled over into […]
This stunning monument marks the Cummings family plot in the Fairlawn section at Graceland. Patriarch Columbus R. Cummings (1834 – 1897) — another of the Gilded Age tycoons whose monuments dot the cemetery’s landscape — came to Chicago from New York as a young man and went to work for Potter Palmer (whose spectacular monument […]
27 February 1849 – 5 January 1900 Ernst is another one of those Victorian rags-to-riches stories that are inescapable in American folklore. He was born in Germany to poor parents who immigrated to hte US when he was a toddler. They first lived in Wisconsin and then moved to Chicago. His father made baskets and […]
All three generations of Ludwig/Louis* Wolffs are interred at Graceland. Ludwig Sr is entombed in this sunken mausoleum on the far northern side of the cemetery while his son Louis Jr and grandson Louis III are buried together on a family lot near the southeastern corner of the cemetery, memorialized by this unique stone. The […]
31 December 1910 – 4 June 1926 Lucille was the middle daughter of three sisters (as well as having one living older brother and another older sibling who had died in infancy), and her headstone marks her as a deeply loved child whose family took special pains to commemorate. The Katz family plot is pretty […]
Norine Hanna “Nora” Baker Boettcher October 1871 – 30 December 1903 This is the second and final article about victims of the Iroquois Theater Fire buried at Concordia. Please see the previous entry for an overview of the fire and links for more information. Nora was born in Virginia to a Canadian-born father and a […]