Graceland Cemetery National Register of Historic Places Listing

It is not just a graveyard. When Thomas Bryan founded Graceland in 1860, he wanted to escape the cramped, muddy churchyards of a rapidly growing Chicago. He hired H.W.S. Cleveland, and later O.C. Simonds, who basically pioneered the "prairie spirit" style of green space design right here. They banned fences. They planted native oaks, sculpted gentle hills, and dug winding lagoons to make the space look entirely natural, though workers shaped every single inch of it. It became the resting place of Chicago's dead elite. Walk through the gates today and you will trip over the giants of American history.

Louis Sullivan designed the Getty Tomb here. It is a masterpiece of limestone and bronze, covered in his signature intricate, leafy carvings. But the real drama lies in how these people lived-and how they wanted to be remembered. Take industrialist George Pullman. His workers hated him so much that his family buried his coffin under several tons of concrete and steel railway ties, terrified that angry labor unionists would dig him up. Right nearby lies Potter Palmer, the hotel magnate, alongside his wife Bertha, inside a massive Greek temple that looks big enough to house a living family. Lorado Taft's eerie bronze statue, "Eternal Silence," stares out from a dark pine grove. It creeps people out. Ultimately, Graceland got its spot on the National Register because it reflects the raw power, money, and artistic ambition of nineteenth-century Chicago.