Graceland Cemetery - IL

In 1860 Thomas Barbour Bryan purchased 86 acres, one mile west of Lake Michigan and two miles north of the city limits, for a new cemetery, engaging landscape gardeners Swain Nelson and William Saunders to design 50 acres in the plot’s southwest section. Landscape gardener H.W.S. Cleveland further developed the cemetery’s park-like setting in 1870 with a design that featured curvilinear paths along gently graded topography and expansive, grassy plots uninterrupted by railings, which created a seamless sequence of green spaces.

In the late 1870s an additional 35 acres were acquired, and architect and engineer William Le Baron Jenney was engaged to drain the marshy eastern portion, lay out new drives and earthworks, and create Lake Willowmere, a Picturesque drainage reservoir with an island where the ashes of architect Daniel H. Burnham are buried. In 1881 landscape gardener O.C. Simonds replaced Jenney and introduced plantings that focused views internally, creating a sense of immersion in a varied landscape. A perimeter wall and dense vegetation heightened this effect and screened the city beyond. The cemetery's monuments, whose designs typify the prevailing art and architectural styles of their time, were subordinated into the landscape and blended with naturalistic plantings to create a series of secluded outdoor rooms connected by grass paths. Architects Holabird & Roche (now Holabird & Root) designed several contributing structures, such as the cast iron gates for the main entrance at the intersection of Clark Street and Irving Park Road and the Administration Building (both 1896). 

The island in Lake Willowmere was rehabilitated in 2007 by landscape architect Ted Wolff of Wolff Landscape Architecture (now Confluence). In 2023 Hoerr Schaudt landscape architects transformed the main entrance into a plaza that serves as a threshold and flexible gathering space; this included a new iron archway whose planting design pays homage to the original design intent.