December 16, 2025 • 40 mins
Explore the snow-covered grounds of Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois, where Gothic towers stand sentinel over 350 acres of American ambition, tragedy, and memory. Host Kristin guides listeners through Chicago's first private cemetery, founded in 1859 on the city's highest natural elevation, uncovering the lost Victorian tradition of Christmas festivities among the graves and the spirits that linger in the winter twilight.
Featured Historical Figures:
Richard Warren Sears & Aaron Montgomery Ward – The mail-order moguls who revolutionized American commerce now rest as eternal rivals in the Rosehill Mausoleum, where Sears allegedly haunts the marble halls in a top hat, still bitter about his competitor's proximity even in death.
John G. Shedd – The Marshall Field's chairman whose mausoleum chapel features a Tiffany window designed to bathe his crypt in underwater blue light at sunset, complete with seahorse-adorned chairs—a cathedral beneath an imaginary sea.
Bobby Franks – The fourteen-year-old victim of Leopold and Loeb's 1924 "crime of the century," whose quiet grave holds the weight of innocence stolen and a city forever scarred by calculated cruelty.
Charles G. Dawes – The 30th Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate rests among Chicago's political dynasty, including "Long John" Wentworth, whose towering obelisk ensures he rises above his fellow mayors even in death.
Civil War Generals – Sixteen Union generals, including Thomas Ransom, Julius White, and John McArthur, lie beneath Leonard Volk's "Our Heroes" monument—making Rosehill the largest private burial ground of Union veterans in Illinois.
Also Featured:
William W. Boyington's Gothic Revival entrance (mirroring Chicago's Water Tower), the 1899 Horatio N. May Chapel with its winter vault for frozen-ground burials, victims of the 1903 Iroquois Theatre fire and 1915 SS Eastland disaster, three unidentified men from the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, and the glass-encased statues of Frances Pearce Stone and Lulu Fellows—where ghostly mists and phantom cries reportedly linger.
Perfect for: Chicago history enthusiasts, architecture lovers, true crime fans, cemetery tourists, and anyone fascinated by Gothic grandeur, Victorian mourning traditions, and the haunted intersections of capitalism, tragedy, and memory in America's heartland.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kristin (00:12):
Grim morning and welcome to the Grim.
I'm your host, Kristen.
On today's episode, we'll beopening the gig and entering
Rose Hill Cemetery, located inChicago, Illinois.
The aroma of coffee mingles inthe air.
The gates stand open.
Step carefully.
It's time to descend into thehauntings of history.
(00:33):
December is a month drenched inChristmas festivities, sleigh
rides, warm drinks, outdoorfireplaces crackling against the
cold.
Carolers gather beneath toweringevergreens, singing while
visitors hang ornaments andgarlands in a shared glow of the
holiday cheer.
It sounds more like an openingscene of a hallmark movie.
(00:54):
A small town brimming with loveand light.
Yet in 1900, everything I justdescribed wasn't happening in
some storybrook village at all.
It was unfolding within RoseHill Cemetery.
On Chicago's north side, thosesnow-blanketed 350 acres, once
offered everything aholiday-obsessed soul could
(01:14):
desire.
Families wandered the grounds,children played, and winter
celebrations turned the cemeteryinto a place not of sorrow, but
of shimmering seasonal magic.
Today not so much.
Have we lost our sense ofremembrance during the holiday
season?
Perhaps.
Families still visit layingevergreen wreaths, symbols of
(01:36):
eternal life upon graves, butthe festivities that once filled
these grounds have vanished.
Competing with Kris Kringlemarkets many locations may also
play a role in any attempt torevive the festivities, or maybe
our traditions have simplydrifted elsewhere.
Whatever the reason, many seemto forget Rosehill in the
winter, and all its quietbeauty, it still holds within.
(01:58):
Rose Hill Cemetery, though, is agem of the Midwest, not only for
its long distinguished list ofresidents, but for its
architecture.
Its gates and its administrationbuilding rise in a castellated
Gothic style, rarely found inthis part of the country.
Locals in Chicago willimmediately recognize the look,
as it mirrors another iconicstructure in the Windy City, the
(02:21):
Water Tower on Michigan Avenue.
During the holiday season, theWater Tower and its plaza became
one of Chicago's mostbeautifully decorated sites.
Visitors pass beneath twinklinglights, moving between shopping
and sightseeing stops.
Unaware of how deeply thisgothic silhouette is woven into
the city's identity.
And yet while the water towerglows with festive attention,
(02:43):
Rosehill, its architecturalsibling, rests quietly under
winter's veil, all butoverlooked.
The grim isn't gonna let youforget, though, not for a
moment.
Rosehill, Chicago's firstprivate cemetery began fittingly
with a vision of permanence.
On February 11, 1859, landownerFrancis H.
Benson and Dr.
(03:04):
James Van Zant Blaney,physician, civic leader, and
soon to be cemetery president,founded the Rosehill Cemetery
Corporation.
They were joined by namedChicagoans would come to know
well, railroad titan William B.
Ogden and businessman John H.
Kinsey.
Together they carved out asanctuary on 350 acres of
Benson's land, seven miles northof the city, in a tiny town of
(03:28):
Chittenden.
But this wasn't just any patchof prairie.
Rose Hill rose from the highestnatural elevation in Chicago, a
rare hill in a landscape knownfor its unwavering flatness.
A hill that looked out over thecity like a keeper of secrets.
A hill that even then feltdestined for the dead.
It was easily reached by train,the iron rails threading a path
(03:50):
from the heart of Chicago tothis quiet northern bluff.
And so long before the cemeterybecame a tapestry of marble
angels and mausoleums, the landitself seemed to wait, still,
silent, and ready to receive thestories that would one day be
written in stone.
The first burial came swiftly.
On July 11, 1859, Dr.
(04:11):
J.W.
Lutham was laid to rest,becoming the earliest resident
of what would soon be asprawling necropolis.
Weeks later, on July 27, Rosawas officially dedicated in a
ceremony that was nothing shortof Victorian pageantry.
The Chicago Tribune describedthe procession with breathless
detail, a crowd gathering beforedawn at the Tremont House.
(04:32):
Masonic fraternity in theirregala, clergy, judges, city
officials, and curious onlookersfiling into a train provided
free of charge.
Upon arrival at the cemeterygrounds, the rituals unfolded
like a gothic liturgy.
A cornerstone was laid for thechapel, a dirge sung by the
Lightguard band, hymns writtenfor the occasion, and finally a
(04:54):
benediction drifting out acrossthe untouched landscape.
And then because even the psalmhave a practical side, Potts
went for sale at 3 o'clocksharp.
As with many old cemeteries,Rose Hill's name has its
legends.
One story insists the land oncebelonged to a pioneer named Herm
Rowe, and that it was simply aclerical error transformed
(05:15):
Rosehill into Rosehill.
A more poetic tale offered inthe 1913 Company pamphlet claims
the name was inspired by thewild white roses that grew on
the hillside long before thefirst spade of earth was turned.
Either way, the name stuck, andthe roses, real or imagined,
continued to haunt its history.
Rosehill was shaped by landscapearchitect William Sanders, a
(05:39):
master of the Victorian GardenCemetery movement.
Whispering of the cemetery'searliest days.
At the heart of it all rises aGothic revival fortress, the
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entrance gate and theadministrative building,
completed in 1864 by architectWilliam W.
Boeington, the same hand behindChicago's iconic water tower.
Built from warm yellow Lamontlimestone quarried just outside
the city.
The structures are adorned withturrets, battlements, and arrow
slit windows, their castellatedgothic form more at home on a
(06:21):
moor than the flat prairie ofthe Midwest.
One guards the bustling citystreets, the other stands
sentinel over the quiet city ofthe dead.
In 1975, they were added to theU.S.
National Register of HistoricPlaces, and five years later
granted Chicago landmark status,a recognition long overdue for
this stone guardian.
(06:42):
Meanwhile, the city of Chicagowas making decisions that would
shape Rosehill's future.
In the late 1850s, officialschose to close the old city
cemetery for public healthreasons.
What followed was a sombermigration, wagon loads of
exhumed bodies, monuments, andfamily histories were carried to
this new resting place,including Oakwoods, Graceland,
(07:04):
and Rosehill.
By the time the cemetery openedits gates, it was ready to
receive them.
And then there was the railway.
In 1855, before Rose Hill evenexisted, a small station opened
at Rose Hill Drive andRavenswood Avenue.
Named Chittenden after thesurrounding town, it became Rose
Hill Station once the cemeterytook shape.
(07:25):
Soon a custom-built funeraltrain departed daily from
Chicago's depot, carryingmourners, visitors, and the
deceased directly to thecemetery gates.
Coffins traveled in a dedicatedcompartment, gliding along the
tracks toward their final stop.
When the railway was elevated in1896, a new station was
constructed of limestone tomatch Rosehill's gothic
(07:47):
architecture.
A casket elevator, yes, anelevator designed for the dead,
lowered coffins from theplatform to the burial grounds
with quiet efficiency.
The station closed in 1958, butremnants remain.
The old stairway and the stoneelevator tower still stand like
centuries.
Doorways to a pass were theboundary between the city and
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the cemetery, blurred with everypassing train.
In 1899, another monument wasunveiled at Rosehill, a place
where both grief and grandeurcould gather beneath one root.
Both at the cost of$30,000, theHoratio Henme Chapel was the
creation of architect JosephLyman Silsby, a man known for
blending elegance with quietsimility.
(08:30):
At Rosehill, though, he outdidhimself.
The chapel is a fusion of gothicand Romanesque moods,
light-colored granite catchingthe winter sun, heavy arches
brooding over the entrance, anda sweeping carriage porch that
spans the entire facade like anopen set of arms, welcoming
mourners, shielding them fromthe wind.
(08:50):
Inside the space becomes almostsacred in its beauty, stained
glass windows filled with alight and jeweled tones.
Mosaics shimmer across the floorin tiny, meticulous patterns.
Overhead an oak roof rises indramatic hammer beam trusses and
curved brackets, woodwork thatfeels both architectural and
spiritual, as if the buildingitself is exhaling.
(09:13):
Beneath all that beauty lies acolder truth.
For decades the chapel's vaultserved a very practical, very
Victorian purpose.
It held the dead through winter,when the ground froze solid and
the graves couldn't be dug.
Caskets were stored within thesewalls, waiting for the thaw.
The chapel became the seasonalsanctuary, a quiet holding place
(09:34):
between death and burial, areminder that even in Chicago's
bitterest months, Rose Hillnever stopped receiving its own.
In 1914, Rosehill unveiled oneof its grandest monuments to
memory, the Great Mausoleum,designed by architect Sidney
Lovell.
Colossal in scale and solemnpresence, it remains the largest
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mausoleum in Chicago, a city notexactly short on stone giants.
Lovell chose a Greek revivalentrance for the facade, a
temple-like threshold that feelsless like a doorway and more
like crossing into anotherrealm.
Today visitors enter through amodern expansion, but the
original architecture stilllooms in quiet dignity.
(10:15):
The mausoleum stretches acrosstwo levels, the lower one partly
submerged into the earth, anarchitectural half burial,
mirroring the purpose of thebuilding itself.
Inside the halls are lined withFrench and Italian marble
crypts, and the floors are pavedin Roman Travertine.
Bronze and brass doors guardmany of the individual chambers,
(10:35):
their metalwork darkened bytime, their stories sealed in
stone.
Since its opening, the mausoleumhas expanded eight times,
growing like a great limestonecathedral of the dead.
It now holds more than 13,000crypts and two chapels.
Many are family-owned rooms withornate bronze gates and stained
glass, glowing in jewel-likecolors.
(10:57):
More than 30 windows illuminatethe interior, some crafted by
Lewis Comfort Tiffany himself.
His signature iridescenceturning the halls into a dim,
sacred kaleidoscope.
Among the notable intermentsrest a panthenon of Chicago's
builders and dreamers, AaronMontgomery Ward, Richard Warren
Searce, Milton Florsheim, andJohn G.
(11:20):
Shedd, the department storemagnet whose name would one day
grace the city's aquarium.
The Shedd Memorial Chapel,though, is a world within a
world.
The space consists of marblefloors, marble walls, and marble
benches, softened with leathercushions.
The space fills carved from asingle luminous stone.
Tall pillars flank the bronzedoors to the family crypt,
(11:43):
crowned with urns that burn withan almost otherworldly glow.
And then there's the window.
Mad Huggy, author of Graveyardsof Chicago, tells the story
best.
Shedd mission Tiffany to craft astained glass window unlike any
other, one that would bathe hiscrypt in blue light at sunset,
an underwater dream rendered inglass.
(12:03):
The theme carries into thesunlit ante room, where even the
chairs are adorned withseashells and seahorses,
although the family rests notbeneath the mausoleum, but
beneath the surface of atranquil sea, a sanctuary of
stone, a cathedral of thedeparted, a place where the last
light of the day turns oceanblue and quiet as a tide.
(12:24):
But Rose Hill is more thanprivate chapels and family
crypts.
Long before it became asanctuary of stone and silence,
it was a cemetery shaped by war.
At the onset of the Civil War,the Rose Hill Cemetery Company
set aside an entire militaryplot for U.S.
soldiers.
An act of civic mourning etchedinto the very landscape.
(12:45):
Many of these graves still lienear the entrance gate, where
the wind moves through rows ofstone like a low, restless hymn.
The original sandstone markershave eroded into illegible
ghosts over time, replaced oneby one to ensure that the
stories of those who served arenot lost.
Today approximately 350 Unionsoldiers and sailors rest at
(13:07):
Rose Hill.
Sixteen Union generals lie amongthem, alongside a handful of
Confederate soldiers, and 15unknown dead, men whose names
were lost at time, though theirservice was not.
Several were members of the 8thIllinois Cavalry, the unit that
fired the first shots atGettysburg.
And then there are the names westill remember.
(13:29):
Thomas Enwood Greenfield Ransom,Brigadier General, Reverend
Major General, whose command inthe Western Theater was marked
by relentless service andrepeated wounds.
He didn't fall in battle butdied of disease in 1864, a fate
as common and unforgiving as anybullet.
Julius White, Brigadier Generalof Volunteers, Reverend Major
(13:52):
General, who raised the 37thIllinois Infantry, and led men
through multiple campaignsbefore returning home to serve
Cook County in peace.
John MacArthur, BrigadierGeneral, Reverend Major General,
one of the Union's most capablecommanders in the Western
Theater, President FortDonaldson, Shiloh, Vicksburg,
(14:13):
and Nashville, battles whosenames still echo.
Among us also rest Edward N.
Kirk, Brigadier General, whoseservice carried him through the
brutal machinery of the Unioncommand, and Martin R.
M.
Wallace, Reverend BrigadierGeneral, men whose ranks were
earned in a long grind of war.
Not their ceremony, butendurance.
(14:34):
Together they make Rosehill thelargest burial ground of Union
veterans in the state ofIllinois, a quiet military city
within a city of the dead.
But one of Rosehill's moststriking memorials is the
Soldiers and Sailors Monument,originally called the General
Military Monument, dedicated onMay 31, 1870.
(14:55):
Sculptor Leonard Vach, bestknown for creating one of the
only life masks of PresidentAbraham Lincoln, designed the
Towering Tribute.
Constructed of solid granite andcrowned with Italian marble, the
monument rises nearly 40 feet.
A color sergeant stands atop thecolumn, a flag draped loosely in
his arms, one hand resting onthe hilt of his sword.
(15:16):
On the pedestal, four bronzepanels depict the major branches
of service, infantry, cavalry,artillery, and the marines.
On the capstone, the simplepowerful inscription, our
heroes.
It's both a grand and solemndedication, a silent sentinel
watching over those who neverreturned home.
(15:36):
A few steps away stands anotherof Vox's creations, the Chicago
Light Artillery Monument,dedicated in 1874.
It commemorates Company A, thefirst Chicago military unit to
join the Civil War, mustering inApril of 1861 under Captain
James Smith.
The monument is carved fromsolid sandstone and features a
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draped field gun resting atopthe hexagonal base.
The names of the soldiers etchedin stone at a time when grief
was fresh, circle the pedestallike a roll call, frozen in
time.
The tribute was made possible bySmith himself, who set aside
$2,000 in his will to ensure hismen would never be forgotten,
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making it even more memorable.
Nearby stands the monument tothe Briggs Battery of the
Illinois Light Artillery, analternative unit that fought in
Tennessee and Georgia afterbeing mustered into service in
early 1863.
Built between 1869 and 1870 byCook County and the Chicago
Board of Trade, the structurerises 20 feet, marking the
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burial place of 25 or moremembers of the unit.
Its dedication, fittingly, washeld on the same day as the
unveiling of the Our HeroesMonument.
Together the two memorials forma corner of Rose Hill where
history feels especially close,almost breathing.
But then there's a differenttype of heroism.
In 1864, Rose Hill installed theVolunteer Firemen's Monument,
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donated by the Fireman'sBalevolent Association, to honor
those who died in thecatastrophic 1857 fire.
Men who's deaths ultimately ledChicago to establish its first
professional fire department.
Leonard Volk sculpted thismonument as well.
A lone fireman stands atop atall column, hose in hand,
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watching over the graves of 15firefighters who rest below.
Sculpted panels at their basetell their story in stone,
courage, duty, and the brutalcost of both.
The monument was restored in1979 when a new granite marker
was added, listing each of thefirefighters by name, a roll
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call not unlike a prayer.
But Rose Hill is not only a cityof soldiers and mourners, it's a
ledger of ambition, profit, andpermanence.
Beneath its lawn lie thearchitects of modern Chicago,
the men who transformed tradeinto empire and consumption into
ritual.
Aaron Montgomery Ward restshere, the man who revolutionized
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how America bought its goods.
Through catalogs and rail lines,Ward reached into rural kitchens
and prairie towns, promisingmodern delivery by post.
His legacy reshaped commerce andthe skyline he once fought to
protect.
Nearby lies Richard WarrenSears, founder of Searce Roebuck
and Company, whose mailwaterempire would rival Ward's and
(18:30):
eventually eclipse it.
Rivals in life, neighbors anddeath.
Two visions of Americancapitalism now still beneath the
same soil.
At Sear's side, both in businessand legacy, was Julius
Rosenwald, an early partner andone of Chicago's greatest
philanthropists.
His fortune helped buildschools, museums, and cultural
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institutions, including theMuseum of Science and Industry.
Wealth in his hands becamesomething more enduring than
profit.
And then there's John G.
Shedd, chairman of MarshallField and Company, whose name
still flows with the water ofLake Michigan.
The aquarium he endowed standsas a temple to the living world,
while here at Rosehill, hejoined the Quiet of the Dead.
(19:14):
And among them, Oscar F.
Meyer, those name becameinseparable from American
kitchens, ballparks, andchildhood lunches, a business
built on the sustenance andbranding, now reduced, as we all
are, to a name in stone.
Completing this constellation isLeo Burnett, a man who taught
America how to feel about whatit bought.
(19:35):
He gave Prince personalities,mascots, voices, shaping desire
itself.
In death, the architect ofpersuasion lies silent, his
slogans dissolved into memory.
Together they make Rosehill aresting place not just of
bodies, but of industry,capitalism, and legacy.
Chicago's Titans lying shoulderto shoulder.
(19:56):
Their empire is outliving themin name alone.
Rosehill is also a gallery ofpermanence, shaped by those who
believe memory should be built,not merely spoken.
William W.
Boyington, architect ofRosehill's fortress like
entrance gate, rests within thegrounds he helped define.
He's also the mind behind theChicago's Water Tower, as we've
(20:17):
mentioned previously.
Two gothic sentinels standingguard over life and death alike.
The Rosehill Mausoleum itselfbears the influence of Sidney
Lovell, the architect, acathedral for the departed,
designed not for worship, butfor waiting.
Sacred among the monuments isthe quiet presence of Leonard W.
Vaugh, sculptor of the Civil Warmemorials, and creator of one of
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the only life masks of AbrahamLincoln.
He captured a living face thathistory would soon turn into
legend, and then like all otherartists of memory, vanished into
stone himself.
And then there's George W.
Mayer, a master of the PrairieSchool, whose architecture
sought harmony between structureand landscape.
Even in death, his philosophypersists.
(21:02):
Buildings and bodies return tothe earth that shaped them.
Here the architecture becomeselegy, stone becomes witness.
If Rosehill feels crowded withauthority, it's because power
too comes here to die.
Charles G.
Dawes, the 30th Vice Presidentof the United States, a noble
peace piece lauderate, liesamong the many who govern behind
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desks and podiums, shapingpolicy while history watched.
Towering among many others,though, is John Wentworth, long
John, mayor of Chicago, U.S.
Congressman, and owner of theTall Soblesque in the cemetery.
Even in death, he rises.
Nearby rests Roswell B.
Mason, Chicago's mayor impliedduring the Great Fire of 1871, a
(21:47):
man whose tenure coincided withthe city's destruction and
rebirth.
And then there are others,Boone, Rice, Rothbard, Swift,
mayors, power brokers, namesetched into Chicago's civic
bones.
So many in fact that Rosehillholds more former mayors than
some state capitals holdportraits.
(22:08):
They govern, they commanded,they shaped a city, and now,
like all the rest, they'regoverned only by time.
Not all legacies at Rosehillwere built of stone and seal.
Some were born as ideals, sparksthat reshaped how people
communicated, learned, and movedthrough the world.
Elijah Gray lies here, aninventor whose name is forever
(22:30):
entwined with the birth ofmodern communication.
As the founder of WesternElectric, Gray helped wire a
nation, transforming sound intosignal, distance into illusion.
His work hum beneath citiesalong after his voice went
silent.
Nearby rests Henry HavenWindsor, the founder of Popular
Mechanics.
Through its pages, innovationbecame accessible, science
(22:52):
translated for the curious mind.
In an age hungry for progress,Windsor fed it with wonder, one
diagram at a time.
And then there's Max Adler, abusinessman who turned his gaze
to the stars.
His vision gave Chicago theAdler Planetarium, a place where
science meant awe, and where theheavens were brought within
reach of the city's streets.
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Now the man who mapped thecosmos rests beneath it, and
finally Ignis Schwinn, whosebicycles carry generations
forward across city blocks,factory roads, and childhood
freedoms, forging movement,momentum, and independence into
steel frames that outlive theirmaker long after.
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Together these names markRosehill as more than a
cemetery.
It's a final resting place ofideas, of voices that travel
farther than bodies ever could,of inventions that continued to
move, connect, and luminate theliving.
Rosehill though is not only aplace for the celebrated, but
for lives cut short by suddenhorror, moments when Chicago
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itself seemed to hold his breathin grief.
Bobby Franks was just 14 yearsold when his life was stolen on
May 21, 1924, his epheming knownas the crime of the century, a
phrase that still chills nearlya hundred years later.
Bobby was kidnapped and murderedby Nathan Leopold, who was 19,
and Richard Lowe, who was 18,two University Chicago students
(24:20):
who believed themselvesintellectual supermen,
untethered for morality or law.
The crime was planned with coldprecision.
Bobby was chosen not for who hewas, but for his nearness and
familiarity.
He was Loeb's second cousin, aneighbor, a boy whose trust came
easily.
That afternoon, Leopold and Loeboffered him a ride home, luring
(24:41):
him into the rented car underthe harmless pretense of
discussing a tennis racket.
Once inside the backseat, theunimaginable unfolded.
Loeb struck Bobby with a chiselwhile Leopold drove.
His body was later dumped into aculvert near Wolf Lake.
In the final grotesque attemptto erase his identity,
hydrochloric acid was pouredonto his face.
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A calculating cruelty lair ontop of an already senseless act.
When the story broke, Chicagorecoiled.
The nation watched in stunnedhorror, transfixed not only by
the brutality of the murder, butby the chilling arrogance behind
it.
Two privileged young men,steeped in distorting
Nietzschean ideas of theSuperman, believed they could
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commit the perfect crime.
At trial, Clarence Darrell'simpassioned defense argued
against the death penalty, forframing the case as a meditation
on the youth, responsibility,and the limits of punishment
itself.
The sentence, life imprisonmentplus ninety-nine years, stood as
justice shaped by law,restraint, and uneasy mercy.
(25:47):
The years that followed thoughdid nothing to dispel the shadow
they had cast.
Louv was murdered in prison in1936.
Leopold, after decades behindbars, was released on parole in
1958 and lived the remainingyears in Puerto Rico, dedicated
to science and study until hisdeath in 1971.
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Bobby Franks didn't get thoseyears though.
His grave at Rose Hill Cemeteryremains quiet and unassuming, a
small stone holding anunbearable weight.
It stands as a reminder ofinnocence stolen, a city
scarred, and a moment inChicago's history when youthful
intellect curled into cruelty,leaving echoes that have never
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fully faded.
On a bitter December afternoonin 1903, Chicago's Iroquois
Theater, newly opened andproudly proclaimed absolutely
fireproof, became a furnace ofhuman tragedy.
A holiday matinee of Mr.
Bluebear drew nearly 1,700 eagerattendees, families and children
among them.
(26:50):
Unaware they were stepping intohistory's deadliest American
theater fire.
The disaster began quietly.
A broken arc lamp ignited themuslin curtains, and within
moments the stage was engulfedin flames.
Smoke poured into the auditoriumas the burning scenery rained
down from above.
Stagehands attempted to lowerthe safety curtain, but it was
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jammed partway, sealing panicwithin the fire.
What followed was chaos shapedby neglect.
Exit doors were locked, hidden,or swung inward against the
press of fleeing bodies.
Firescapes were icy, incomplete,or useless.
There were no fire alarms, noemergency lights, and little
guidance from an untrainedstaff.
(27:33):
Panic spread faster than theflames.
Hundreds were crushed at thebases of stairways, suffocated
where they fell, or trampled inthe desperate surge for escape.
Others leapt from windows intothe freezing air below.
In a matter of minutes, sixhundred and two lives were lost,
and more than two hundred andfifty were injured.
(27:53):
The scale of the calamitystunned the nation, remaining
the deadliest theater fire in UShistory, and one of the
deadliest single building firesuntil the World Trade Center
attacks nearly a century later.
In the aftermath, the troop wasimpossible to ignore.
The Iroquois fire laid bare adevastating failure of safety
and oversight.
(28:14):
Outrage field reform, outwardopening exit doors, illuminated
signage, panic bars, mandatoryfire drills, and improved fire
curtains became standards notjust in Chicago, but around the
world.
A memorial hospital was built,and for years, Chicagoans
gathered each December to honorthe dead, their absence carried
(28:36):
on the winter air.
But at Rose Hill Cemetery, someof the victims now rest, their
gravestand as quiet witnesses toa lesson written in smoke and
silence that uncheckedconfidence can turn Marvel into
nightmare, and an afternoon oflaughter into one of the city's
darkest hours.
On a Hatchaline morning in 1915,the SS Eastland lay tied to the
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dock along the Chicago River, asleek passenger steamer packed
with 2,572 workers and theirfamilies, bound for a picnic in
Michigan City.
It was a day meant for laughterand a summer escape, but the
river had another plan.
By 728 a.m.
the ship listed suddenly toport.
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Attempts to stabilize herfailed, and an instant Eastland
rolled onto her side, pittinghundreds beneath decks, crushing
them against pianos, tables, andrailings.
The common of the river became agraveyard.
In total, 844 souls, men, women,and children, died that morning,
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making it the deadliest singleship disaster on the Great
Lakes.
Many aboard were immigrants,drawn from the neighborhoods of
Cicero, Prague, Poland, Norway,and Germany, hardworking people
whose lives ended before theyhad fully begun.
Stories of heroism flickeredamid the horror.
Peter Boyle, a decade from anearby ship, drowned trying to
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save others.
Nurcell and Repa guided panickedpassengers to makeshift
escapers.
Yet the river claimed them allwith merciless speed.
The disaster exposed a chillingindifference.
A top heavy vessel modified forspeed and capacity, ignored
warrants about stability, andoverloaded with passengers.
Indictments followed, but thecourt found little cause for
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punishment.
Island's tragic legacy remained,a somber reminder of human
ambition, regulatory failure,and the fragility of life.
Even decades later, survivorslike three-year-old Marion
Eccoltz carried the memory ofthat morning, the screams, the
failing hands, and the waterrising to swallow families.
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At Rose Hill Cemetery, some ofthese lost Chicagoans rest.
Their absence a silent echo ofanother darkest day in Chicago's
history.
By February of 1929, the citywas hardened by loss.
Its grief no longer allowed butfamiliar.
On a bitter Valentine's Daymorning, that grief returned in
a new form.
In the quiet Chicagoneighborhood of Lincoln Park,
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inside a modest garage at 2122North Clark Street, seven men,
members and associates of theNorth Sign gang, waited.
They were to meet their leader,George Bugs Moran, though they
would never arrive.
Outside a black Cadillac pulledup to the curb, two men in
police uniforms, three in plainclothes, stepped inside.
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Within minutes the garage becamea chamber of slaughter.
The men were lined up againstthe wall.
Six men died instantly.
One Frank Gusenberg crawledtwenty feet, riddled with
bullets, and whispered nothing.
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He refused to name the killerstaking the secret to the grave.
The massacre was more thanmurder, it was theater,
calculated and chilling.
A grim message in the midst ofthe Prohibition's bloody
rivalry.
Moran's Northside gang headlongbattled Al Capone's Chicago
outfit for control of Chicago'sillegal empire.
The massacre was meant to wipeout Moran's men.
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The Moran himself escaped bymere chance, seeing the false
police car and turning away forcoffee.
The City Mill recoiled.
Newspapers splashed the horroracross headlines.
Detectives examined the shellcasings and Thompson drums.
Yet the killers vanished intothe shadows.
Investigations dragged on foryears.
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Indictments were ignored, andwitnesses offered conflicting
accounts.
Names Fred Burkett, Gus Winkler,Fred Goates, Ray Nugent, Bob
Carey surfaced, but justiceremained elusive.
Capone was never convicted, andthe city was left with an
enduring stain of violence.
The echoes of gunfire frozen intime.
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The garage was demolished in1967, leaving only a lawn where
the seven men had been executed.
Bricks on the north wall, pockedand riddled with bullet holes,
were salvaged and sold asrelics, grim souvenirs of
another dark day in Chicago.
Three of the murdered men nowrest within Rose Hill Cemetery,
their graves only known to thekeepers of the grounds, with
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help from public record.
The massacre endures as atestament to the cruelty of
ambition, the mercilessmachinery of organized crime,
and the human lives crushedbeneath its cold and different
weight.
But beyond stories, marble andgranite, lies a deeper, darker
legacy.
The stories of spirits of thelinger long after death.
One of Rosehill's most famousand tragic tales begins with
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Frances Pierce Stone.
She married at 17, becamepregnant shortly after, and died
at 20, only four months afterher ten-month-old daughter.
A sculpted likeness of themother and child was created,
placed beneath a glass case, andeventually moved to Rosehill.
Visitors leave coins at thebase, playing quiet homage.
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Legends whisper though that onthe anniversary of France's
death, a ghostly mist rises fromthe glass, as if the love of the
mother and her child refuses tobe contained.
Some say the mist takes on thefaint shape of a pear, fleeting,
but unmistakable to the faithfulobserver.
Within the grounds also sits thememorial of Lulu E.
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Fellows, a young woman who diedof typhoid fever at just 16 in
1883.
Her marble likeness, seated witha book in her lap in the
inscription, Many Hopes LieBuried Here, is protected behind
a glass case, placed to shieldthe statue from weather damage.
Unlike many other graves, Lulu'smemorial has become the focus of
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legend and visitor tradition.
People leave coins, flowers,small toys, and trinkets inside
its glass enclosure, slippingofferings through the vents at
the top.
In local lore, Lulu's memorialcarries its own eerie
reputation.
Some visitors report hearingcries or voices near the statue,
especially on quiet evenings, ornoticing the scent of flowers
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lingering in the winter airaround her grave.
Details suggest of a lingeringpresence or an attention from
the unseen.
While these experiences areanecdotal and not verified by
documented investigation, theybecome part of Roshell's haunted
atmosphere in storytelling andghost tours.
Whether viewed as paranormal ordeeply symbolic of human loss,
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Lulu's statue, like aglass-enclosed memorial of
Francis Pierce Stone, embodiesthe way grief, memory, and
imagination converge in a placewhere lives were cut short and
remembered.
In the elaborate Rose HillMausoleum, Richard W.
Sears, founder of Sears Roebook⁇ Co., is said to haunt his
private family room.
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Locked in marble, his spiritreportedly roams the halls.
Angered by the proximity of hisarrival, Aaron Montgomery Ward,
witnesses have claimed to see atall figure in a top head,
pacing along the corridor, thenvanishing suddenly, leaving
behind only the echo offootsteps and the chill of
unresolved rivalry.
It's a reminder that even titansof industry cannot always leave
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their grudges behind.
Elsewhere in the cemetery,visitors report fleeting visions
of floating women alongPearson's Avenue, drifting
silently into the fog whenapproach.
These whispers of movementsuggest the dead at Rosehill
remain in some way conscious ofthe living world.
Charles Hopkinson, a wealthyreal estate magnet, rests in the
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cathedral like Mausoleum.
Some say resonates with strangesounds.
Chains rattle in the stillness,and distant moans echo through
the stone halls, particularly onthe anniversary of his death.
Some claim the noises are echoesof a life unwilling to release
its hold on the world.
Others simply say the stonesthemselves remember the ambition
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and hubris of the man within.
Roselle is not only home to thepowerful and infamous, it also
holds the spirits of itsyoungest residents.
The gatehouse, designed byWillem Boyington, is rumored to
host the ghost of hisgranddaughter, Philomena, who
died in childhood.
At dust she is said to wanderthe grounds, glimpse briefly
through windows beforedisappearing into the gathering
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mist, and the grave of BobbyFranks, the young victim of
Leopold and Leb, remains a siteof quiet sorrow, where whispers
of tragedy seem to hang in theair like the morning fog.
Rose Hill's history isintertwined with the stories of
the living and the dead.
Victims of Chicago's famouscrimes, civil war and
revolutionary soldiers also liewithin, and the city leaders
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share the grounds with legendsof apparitions, glowing figures,
and mournful sounds.
Footsteps echo along the emptypaths, mists rise from the
crypts, and the shadows twistwhere none should exist.
For those who walk Rosehill atnight, the ordinary becomes
extraordinary.
Each monument holds a story,each path carries the weight of
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lives once lived.
Some spirits linger for love,others for revenge, and simply
because the world will not letthem go.
Each year around Halloween, acandlelit 5K winds through the
cemetery, tracing the graves ofsoldiers, mares, and tycoons
alike.
The flickering lights stretchlong, trembling shadows across
moss-covered monuments, and fora fleeting moment, the living
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and the dead seem to share thesame space.
Rosehill is an active graveyardwith the average of 460 burials
each year, spanning the 19th,20th, and now the 21st
centuries.
Over the years, groundskeepershave overseen more than 193,000
traditional burials, with roomfor countless more, each adding
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to the silent enduring story ofRosehill.
Gravestones range from theinnate Victorian Gothic markers
to modern slabs of stone, eachtelling a story to those who
wander the grounds.
As graveyards of Chicago, ThePeople, History, Art, and the
Lore of Cook County by MattHuckey and Ursula Bilski notes,
it offers the single mostimpressive cemetery experience
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to be had in the Chicagometropolitan area.
Designed in 1914 by SydneyLovell, the massive structure is
a multi-level maze ofmarble-lined passageways,
stacked to the ceilings withthousands of the dearly
departed.
And in December, when the snowdrifts along the winding paths,
and wreaths hang on to thewrought iron gates, Rosehill
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seems to pause in quietreverence.
The cold air carries the weightof memory, the whisper of the
past, and the soft shimmer ofcandlelight from distant homes,
as if the spirits of thecemetery themselves are keeping
a Christmas vigil.
In this season, the dead ofRosehill and the living who
remember them meet, if only forher fleeting, frost-touched
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moment.
And for now, the stories ofRosehill slid back into stone,
and the dead return to theiruneasy rest.
Yet they're never silent forlong.
Thank you for walking with usthrough the veil into Rosehill
Cemetery, descending once moreinto the hauntings of history.
The gate is sealed, the veildrawn, yet death.
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Keeps no calendar, and so weshall return, as we always do,
on the grim.
Grim morning and welcome to the Grim.
I'm your host, Kristen.
On today's episode, we'll beopening the gig and entering
Rose Hill Cemetery, located inChicago, Illinois.
The aroma of coffee mingles inthe air.
The gates stand open.
Step carefully.
It's time to descend into thehauntings of history.
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December is a month drenched inChristmas festivities, sleigh
rides, warm drinks, outdoorfireplaces crackling against the
cold.
Carolers gather beneath toweringevergreens, singing while
visitors hang ornaments andgarlands in a shared glow of the
holiday cheer.
It sounds more like an openingscene of a hallmark movie.
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A small town brimming with loveand light.
Yet in 1900, everything I justdescribed wasn't happening in
some storybrook village at all.
It was unfolding within RoseHill Cemetery.
On Chicago's north side, thosesnow-blanketed 350 acres, once
offered everything aholiday-obsessed soul could
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desire.
Families wandered the grounds,children played, and winter
celebrations turned the cemeteryinto a place not of sorrow, but
of shimmering seasonal magic.
Today not so much.
Have we lost our sense ofremembrance during the holiday
season?
Perhaps.
Families still visit layingevergreen wreaths, symbols of
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eternal life upon graves, butthe festivities that once filled
these grounds have vanished.
Competing with Kris Kringlemarkets many locations may also
play a role in any attempt torevive the festivities, or maybe
our traditions have simplydrifted elsewhere.
Whatever the reason, many seemto forget Rosehill in the
winter, and all its quietbeauty, it still holds within.
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Rose Hill Cemetery, though, is agem of the Midwest, not only for
its long distinguished list ofresidents, but for its
architecture.
Its gates and its administrationbuilding rise in a castellated
Gothic style, rarely found inthis part of the country.
Locals in Chicago willimmediately recognize the look,
as it mirrors another iconicstructure in the Windy City, the
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Water Tower on Michigan Avenue.
During the holiday season, theWater Tower and its plaza became
one of Chicago's mostbeautifully decorated sites.
Visitors pass beneath twinklinglights, moving between shopping
and sightseeing stops.
Unaware of how deeply thisgothic silhouette is woven into
the city's identity.
And yet while the water towerglows with festive attention,
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Rosehill, its architecturalsibling, rests quietly under
winter's veil, all butoverlooked.
The grim isn't gonna let youforget, though, not for a
moment.
Rosehill, Chicago's firstprivate cemetery began fittingly
with a vision of permanence.
On February 11, 1859, landownerFrancis H.
Benson and Dr.
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James Van Zant Blaney,physician, civic leader, and
soon to be cemetery president,founded the Rosehill Cemetery
Corporation.
They were joined by namedChicagoans would come to know
well, railroad titan William B.
Ogden and businessman John H.
Kinsey.
Together they carved out asanctuary on 350 acres of
Benson's land, seven miles northof the city, in a tiny town of
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Chittenden.
But this wasn't just any patchof prairie.
Rose Hill rose from the highestnatural elevation in Chicago, a
rare hill in a landscape knownfor its unwavering flatness.
A hill that looked out over thecity like a keeper of secrets.
A hill that even then feltdestined for the dead.
It was easily reached by train,the iron rails threading a path
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from the heart of Chicago tothis quiet northern bluff.
And so long before the cemeterybecame a tapestry of marble
angels and mausoleums, the landitself seemed to wait, still,
silent, and ready to receive thestories that would one day be
written in stone.
The first burial came swiftly.
On July 11, 1859, Dr.
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J.W.
Lutham was laid to rest,becoming the earliest resident
of what would soon be asprawling necropolis.
Weeks later, on July 27, Rosawas officially dedicated in a
ceremony that was nothing shortof Victorian pageantry.
The Chicago Tribune describedthe procession with breathless
detail, a crowd gathering beforedawn at the Tremont House.
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Masonic fraternity in theirregala, clergy, judges, city
officials, and curious onlookersfiling into a train provided
free of charge.
Upon arrival at the cemeterygrounds, the rituals unfolded
like a gothic liturgy.
A cornerstone was laid for thechapel, a dirge sung by the
Lightguard band, hymns writtenfor the occasion, and finally a
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benediction drifting out acrossthe untouched landscape.
And then because even the psalmhave a practical side, Potts
went for sale at 3 o'clocksharp.
As with many old cemeteries,Rose Hill's name has its
legends.
One story insists the land oncebelonged to a pioneer named Herm
Rowe, and that it was simply aclerical error transformed
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Rosehill into Rosehill.
A more poetic tale offered inthe 1913 Company pamphlet claims
the name was inspired by thewild white roses that grew on
the hillside long before thefirst spade of earth was turned.
Either way, the name stuck, andthe roses, real or imagined,
continued to haunt its history.
Rosehill was shaped by landscapearchitect William Sanders, a
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master of the Victorian GardenCemetery movement.
Whispering of the cemetery'searliest days.
At the heart of it all rises aGothic revival fortress, the
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entrance gate and theadministrative building,
completed in 1864 by architectWilliam W.
Boeington, the same hand behindChicago's iconic water tower.
Built from warm yellow Lamontlimestone quarried just outside
the city.
The structures are adorned withturrets, battlements, and arrow
slit windows, their castellatedgothic form more at home on a
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moor than the flat prairie ofthe Midwest.
One guards the bustling citystreets, the other stands
sentinel over the quiet city ofthe dead.
In 1975, they were added to theU.S.
National Register of HistoricPlaces, and five years later
granted Chicago landmark status,a recognition long overdue for
this stone guardian.
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Meanwhile, the city of Chicagowas making decisions that would
shape Rosehill's future.
In the late 1850s, officialschose to close the old city
cemetery for public healthreasons.
What followed was a sombermigration, wagon loads of
exhumed bodies, monuments, andfamily histories were carried to
this new resting place,including Oakwoods, Graceland,
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and Rosehill.
By the time the cemetery openedits gates, it was ready to
receive them.
And then there was the railway.
In 1855, before Rose Hill evenexisted, a small station opened
at Rose Hill Drive andRavenswood Avenue.
Named Chittenden after thesurrounding town, it became Rose
Hill Station once the cemeterytook shape.
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Soon a custom-built funeraltrain departed daily from
Chicago's depot, carryingmourners, visitors, and the
deceased directly to thecemetery gates.
Coffins traveled in a dedicatedcompartment, gliding along the
tracks toward their final stop.
When the railway was elevated in1896, a new station was
constructed of limestone tomatch Rosehill's gothic
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architecture.
A casket elevator, yes, anelevator designed for the dead,
lowered coffins from theplatform to the burial grounds
with quiet efficiency.
The station closed in 1958, butremnants remain.
The old stairway and the stoneelevator tower still stand like
centuries.
Doorways to a pass were theboundary between the city and
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the cemetery, blurred with everypassing train.
In 1899, another monument wasunveiled at Rosehill, a place
where both grief and grandeurcould gather beneath one root.
Both at the cost of$30,000, theHoratio Henme Chapel was the
creation of architect JosephLyman Silsby, a man known for
blending elegance with quietsimility.
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At Rosehill, though, he outdidhimself.
The chapel is a fusion of gothicand Romanesque moods,
light-colored granite catchingthe winter sun, heavy arches
brooding over the entrance, anda sweeping carriage porch that
spans the entire facade like anopen set of arms, welcoming
mourners, shielding them fromthe wind.
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Inside the space becomes almostsacred in its beauty, stained
glass windows filled with alight and jeweled tones.
Mosaics shimmer across the floorin tiny, meticulous patterns.
Overhead an oak roof rises indramatic hammer beam trusses and
curved brackets, woodwork thatfeels both architectural and
spiritual, as if the buildingitself is exhaling.
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Beneath all that beauty lies acolder truth.
For decades the chapel's vaultserved a very practical, very
Victorian purpose.
It held the dead through winter,when the ground froze solid and
the graves couldn't be dug.
Caskets were stored within thesewalls, waiting for the thaw.
The chapel became the seasonalsanctuary, a quiet holding place
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between death and burial, areminder that even in Chicago's
bitterest months, Rose Hillnever stopped receiving its own.
In 1914, Rosehill unveiled oneof its grandest monuments to
memory, the Great Mausoleum,designed by architect Sidney
Lovell.
Colossal in scale and solemnpresence, it remains the largest
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mausoleum in Chicago, a city notexactly short on stone giants.
Lovell chose a Greek revivalentrance for the facade, a
temple-like threshold that feelsless like a doorway and more
like crossing into anotherrealm.
Today visitors enter through amodern expansion, but the
original architecture stilllooms in quiet dignity.
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The mausoleum stretches acrosstwo levels, the lower one partly
submerged into the earth, anarchitectural half burial,
mirroring the purpose of thebuilding itself.
Inside the halls are lined withFrench and Italian marble
crypts, and the floors are pavedin Roman Travertine.
Bronze and brass doors guardmany of the individual chambers,
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their metalwork darkened bytime, their stories sealed in
stone.
Since its opening, the mausoleumhas expanded eight times,
growing like a great limestonecathedral of the dead.
It now holds more than 13,000crypts and two chapels.
Many are family-owned rooms withornate bronze gates and stained
glass, glowing in jewel-likecolors.
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More than 30 windows illuminatethe interior, some crafted by
Lewis Comfort Tiffany himself.
His signature iridescenceturning the halls into a dim,
sacred kaleidoscope.
Among the notable intermentsrest a panthenon of Chicago's
builders and dreamers, AaronMontgomery Ward, Richard Warren
Searce, Milton Florsheim, andJohn G.
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Shedd, the department storemagnet whose name would one day
grace the city's aquarium.
The Shedd Memorial Chapel,though, is a world within a
world.
The space consists of marblefloors, marble walls, and marble
benches, softened with leathercushions.
The space fills carved from asingle luminous stone.
Tall pillars flank the bronzedoors to the family crypt,
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crowned with urns that burn withan almost otherworldly glow.
And then there's the window.
Mad Huggy, author of Graveyardsof Chicago, tells the story
best.
Shedd mission Tiffany to craft astained glass window unlike any
other, one that would bathe hiscrypt in blue light at sunset,
an underwater dream rendered inglass.
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The theme carries into thesunlit ante room, where even the
chairs are adorned withseashells and seahorses,
although the family rests notbeneath the mausoleum, but
beneath the surface of atranquil sea, a sanctuary of
stone, a cathedral of thedeparted, a place where the last
light of the day turns oceanblue and quiet as a tide.
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But Rose Hill is more thanprivate chapels and family
crypts.
Long before it became asanctuary of stone and silence,
it was a cemetery shaped by war.
At the onset of the Civil War,the Rose Hill Cemetery Company
set aside an entire militaryplot for U.S.
soldiers.
An act of civic mourning etchedinto the very landscape.
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Many of these graves still lienear the entrance gate, where
the wind moves through rows ofstone like a low, restless hymn.
The original sandstone markershave eroded into illegible
ghosts over time, replaced oneby one to ensure that the
stories of those who served arenot lost.
Today approximately 350 Unionsoldiers and sailors rest at
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Rose Hill.
Sixteen Union generals lie amongthem, alongside a handful of
Confederate soldiers, and 15unknown dead, men whose names
were lost at time, though theirservice was not.
Several were members of the 8thIllinois Cavalry, the unit that
fired the first shots atGettysburg.
And then there are the names westill remember.
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Thomas Enwood Greenfield Ransom,Brigadier General, Reverend
Major General, whose command inthe Western Theater was marked
by relentless service andrepeated wounds.
He didn't fall in battle butdied of disease in 1864, a fate
as common and unforgiving as anybullet.
Julius White, Brigadier Generalof Volunteers, Reverend Major
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General, who raised the 37thIllinois Infantry, and led men
through multiple campaignsbefore returning home to serve
Cook County in peace.
John MacArthur, BrigadierGeneral, Reverend Major General,
one of the Union's most capablecommanders in the Western
Theater, President FortDonaldson, Shiloh, Vicksburg,
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and Nashville, battles whosenames still echo.
Among us also rest Edward N.
Kirk, Brigadier General, whoseservice carried him through the
brutal machinery of the Unioncommand, and Martin R.
M.
Wallace, Reverend BrigadierGeneral, men whose ranks were
earned in a long grind of war.
Not their ceremony, butendurance.
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Together they make Rosehill thelargest burial ground of Union
veterans in the state ofIllinois, a quiet military city
within a city of the dead.
But one of Rosehill's moststriking memorials is the
Soldiers and Sailors Monument,originally called the General
Military Monument, dedicated onMay 31, 1870.
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Sculptor Leonard Vach, bestknown for creating one of the
only life masks of PresidentAbraham Lincoln, designed the
Towering Tribute.
Constructed of solid granite andcrowned with Italian marble, the
monument rises nearly 40 feet.
A color sergeant stands atop thecolumn, a flag draped loosely in
his arms, one hand resting onthe hilt of his sword.
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On the pedestal, four bronzepanels depict the major branches
of service, infantry, cavalry,artillery, and the marines.
On the capstone, the simplepowerful inscription, our
heroes.
It's both a grand and solemndedication, a silent sentinel
watching over those who neverreturned home.
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A few steps away stands anotherof Vox's creations, the Chicago
Light Artillery Monument,dedicated in 1874.
It commemorates Company A, thefirst Chicago military unit to
join the Civil War, mustering inApril of 1861 under Captain
James Smith.
The monument is carved fromsolid sandstone and features a
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draped field gun resting atopthe hexagonal base.
The names of the soldiers etchedin stone at a time when grief
was fresh, circle the pedestallike a roll call, frozen in
time.
The tribute was made possible bySmith himself, who set aside
$2,000 in his will to ensure hismen would never be forgotten,
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making it even more memorable.
Nearby stands the monument tothe Briggs Battery of the
Illinois Light Artillery, analternative unit that fought in
Tennessee and Georgia afterbeing mustered into service in
early 1863.
Built between 1869 and 1870 byCook County and the Chicago
Board of Trade, the structurerises 20 feet, marking the
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burial place of 25 or moremembers of the unit.
Its dedication, fittingly, washeld on the same day as the
unveiling of the Our HeroesMonument.
Together the two memorials forma corner of Rose Hill where
history feels especially close,almost breathing.
But then there's a differenttype of heroism.
In 1864, Rose Hill installed theVolunteer Firemen's Monument,
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donated by the Fireman'sBalevolent Association, to honor
those who died in thecatastrophic 1857 fire.
Men who's deaths ultimately ledChicago to establish its first
professional fire department.
Leonard Volk sculpted thismonument as well.
A lone fireman stands atop atall column, hose in hand,
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watching over the graves of 15firefighters who rest below.
Sculpted panels at their basetell their story in stone,
courage, duty, and the brutalcost of both.
The monument was restored in1979 when a new granite marker
was added, listing each of thefirefighters by name, a roll
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call not unlike a prayer.
But Rose Hill is not only a cityof soldiers and mourners, it's a
ledger of ambition, profit, andpermanence.
Beneath its lawn lie thearchitects of modern Chicago,
the men who transformed tradeinto empire and consumption into
ritual.
Aaron Montgomery Ward restshere, the man who revolutionized
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how America bought its goods.
Through catalogs and rail lines,Ward reached into rural kitchens
and prairie towns, promisingmodern delivery by post.
His legacy reshaped commerce andthe skyline he once fought to
protect.
Nearby lies Richard WarrenSears, founder of Searce Roebuck
and Company, whose mailwaterempire would rival Ward's and
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eventually eclipse it.
Rivals in life, neighbors anddeath.
Two visions of Americancapitalism now still beneath the
same soil.
At Sear's side, both in businessand legacy, was Julius
Rosenwald, an early partner andone of Chicago's greatest
philanthropists.
His fortune helped buildschools, museums, and cultural
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institutions, including theMuseum of Science and Industry.
Wealth in his hands becamesomething more enduring than
profit.
And then there's John G.
Shedd, chairman of MarshallField and Company, whose name
still flows with the water ofLake Michigan.
The aquarium he endowed standsas a temple to the living world,
while here at Rosehill, hejoined the Quiet of the Dead.
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And among them, Oscar F.
Meyer, those name becameinseparable from American
kitchens, ballparks, andchildhood lunches, a business
built on the sustenance andbranding, now reduced, as we all
are, to a name in stone.
Completing this constellation isLeo Burnett, a man who taught
America how to feel about whatit bought.
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He gave Prince personalities,mascots, voices, shaping desire
itself.
In death, the architect ofpersuasion lies silent, his
slogans dissolved into memory.
Together they make Rosehill aresting place not just of
bodies, but of industry,capitalism, and legacy.
Chicago's Titans lying shoulderto shoulder.
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Their empire is outliving themin name alone.
Rosehill is also a gallery ofpermanence, shaped by those who
believe memory should be built,not merely spoken.
William W.
Boyington, architect ofRosehill's fortress like
entrance gate, rests within thegrounds he helped define.
He's also the mind behind theChicago's Water Tower, as we've
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mentioned previously.
Two gothic sentinels standingguard over life and death alike.
The Rosehill Mausoleum itselfbears the influence of Sidney
Lovell, the architect, acathedral for the departed,
designed not for worship, butfor waiting.
Sacred among the monuments isthe quiet presence of Leonard W.
Vaugh, sculptor of the Civil Warmemorials, and creator of one of
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the only life masks of AbrahamLincoln.
He captured a living face thathistory would soon turn into
legend, and then like all otherartists of memory, vanished into
stone himself.
And then there's George W.
Mayer, a master of the PrairieSchool, whose architecture
sought harmony between structureand landscape.
Even in death, his philosophypersists.
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Buildings and bodies return tothe earth that shaped them.
Here the architecture becomeselegy, stone becomes witness.
If Rosehill feels crowded withauthority, it's because power
too comes here to die.
Charles G.
Dawes, the 30th Vice Presidentof the United States, a noble
peace piece lauderate, liesamong the many who govern behind
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desks and podiums, shapingpolicy while history watched.
Towering among many others,though, is John Wentworth, long
John, mayor of Chicago, U.S.
Congressman, and owner of theTall Soblesque in the cemetery.
Even in death, he rises.
Nearby rests Roswell B.
Mason, Chicago's mayor impliedduring the Great Fire of 1871, a
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man whose tenure coincided withthe city's destruction and
rebirth.
And then there are others,Boone, Rice, Rothbard, Swift,
mayors, power brokers, namesetched into Chicago's civic
bones.
So many in fact that Rosehillholds more former mayors than
some state capitals holdportraits.
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They govern, they commanded,they shaped a city, and now,
like all the rest, they'regoverned only by time.
Not all legacies at Rosehillwere built of stone and seal.
Some were born as ideals, sparksthat reshaped how people
communicated, learned, and movedthrough the world.
Elijah Gray lies here, aninventor whose name is forever
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entwined with the birth ofmodern communication.
As the founder of WesternElectric, Gray helped wire a
nation, transforming sound intosignal, distance into illusion.
His work hum beneath citiesalong after his voice went
silent.
Nearby rests Henry HavenWindsor, the founder of Popular
Mechanics.
Through its pages, innovationbecame accessible, science
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translated for the curious mind.
In an age hungry for progress,Windsor fed it with wonder, one
diagram at a time.
And then there's Max Adler, abusinessman who turned his gaze
to the stars.
His vision gave Chicago theAdler Planetarium, a place where
science meant awe, and where theheavens were brought within
reach of the city's streets.
(23:13):
Now the man who mapped thecosmos rests beneath it, and
finally Ignis Schwinn, whosebicycles carry generations
forward across city blocks,factory roads, and childhood
freedoms, forging movement,momentum, and independence into
steel frames that outlive theirmaker long after.
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Together these names markRosehill as more than a
cemetery.
It's a final resting place ofideas, of voices that travel
farther than bodies ever could,of inventions that continued to
move, connect, and luminate theliving.
Rosehill though is not only aplace for the celebrated, but
for lives cut short by suddenhorror, moments when Chicago
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itself seemed to hold his breathin grief.
Bobby Franks was just 14 yearsold when his life was stolen on
May 21, 1924, his epheming knownas the crime of the century, a
phrase that still chills nearlya hundred years later.
Bobby was kidnapped and murderedby Nathan Leopold, who was 19,
and Richard Lowe, who was 18,two University Chicago students
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who believed themselvesintellectual supermen,
untethered for morality or law.
The crime was planned with coldprecision.
Bobby was chosen not for who hewas, but for his nearness and
familiarity.
He was Loeb's second cousin, aneighbor, a boy whose trust came
easily.
That afternoon, Leopold and Loeboffered him a ride home, luring
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him into the rented car underthe harmless pretense of
discussing a tennis racket.
Once inside the backseat, theunimaginable unfolded.
Loeb struck Bobby with a chiselwhile Leopold drove.
His body was later dumped into aculvert near Wolf Lake.
In the final grotesque attemptto erase his identity,
hydrochloric acid was pouredonto his face.
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A calculating cruelty lair ontop of an already senseless act.
When the story broke, Chicagorecoiled.
The nation watched in stunnedhorror, transfixed not only by
the brutality of the murder, butby the chilling arrogance behind
it.
Two privileged young men,steeped in distorting
Nietzschean ideas of theSuperman, believed they could
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commit the perfect crime.
At trial, Clarence Darrell'simpassioned defense argued
against the death penalty, forframing the case as a meditation
on the youth, responsibility,and the limits of punishment
itself.
The sentence, life imprisonmentplus ninety-nine years, stood as
justice shaped by law,restraint, and uneasy mercy.
(25:47):
The years that followed thoughdid nothing to dispel the shadow
they had cast.
Louv was murdered in prison in1936.
Leopold, after decades behindbars, was released on parole in
1958 and lived the remainingyears in Puerto Rico, dedicated
to science and study until hisdeath in 1971.
(26:08):
Bobby Franks didn't get thoseyears though.
His grave at Rose Hill Cemeteryremains quiet and unassuming, a
small stone holding anunbearable weight.
It stands as a reminder ofinnocence stolen, a city
scarred, and a moment inChicago's history when youthful
intellect curled into cruelty,leaving echoes that have never
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fully faded.
On a bitter December afternoonin 1903, Chicago's Iroquois
Theater, newly opened andproudly proclaimed absolutely
fireproof, became a furnace ofhuman tragedy.
A holiday matinee of Mr.
Bluebear drew nearly 1,700 eagerattendees, families and children
among them.
(26:50):
Unaware they were stepping intohistory's deadliest American
theater fire.
The disaster began quietly.
A broken arc lamp ignited themuslin curtains, and within
moments the stage was engulfedin flames.
Smoke poured into the auditoriumas the burning scenery rained
down from above.
Stagehands attempted to lowerthe safety curtain, but it was
(27:12):
jammed partway, sealing panicwithin the fire.
What followed was chaos shapedby neglect.
Exit doors were locked, hidden,or swung inward against the
press of fleeing bodies.
Firescapes were icy, incomplete,or useless.
There were no fire alarms, noemergency lights, and little
guidance from an untrainedstaff.
(27:33):
Panic spread faster than theflames.
Hundreds were crushed at thebases of stairways, suffocated
where they fell, or trampled inthe desperate surge for escape.
Others leapt from windows intothe freezing air below.
In a matter of minutes, sixhundred and two lives were lost,
and more than two hundred andfifty were injured.
(27:53):
The scale of the calamitystunned the nation, remaining
the deadliest theater fire in UShistory, and one of the
deadliest single building firesuntil the World Trade Center
attacks nearly a century later.
In the aftermath, the troop wasimpossible to ignore.
The Iroquois fire laid bare adevastating failure of safety
and oversight.
(28:14):
Outrage field reform, outwardopening exit doors, illuminated
signage, panic bars, mandatoryfire drills, and improved fire
curtains became standards notjust in Chicago, but around the
world.
A memorial hospital was built,and for years, Chicagoans
gathered each December to honorthe dead, their absence carried
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on the winter air.
But at Rose Hill Cemetery, someof the victims now rest, their
gravestand as quiet witnesses toa lesson written in smoke and
silence that uncheckedconfidence can turn Marvel into
nightmare, and an afternoon oflaughter into one of the city's
darkest hours.
On a Hatchaline morning in 1915,the SS Eastland lay tied to the
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dock along the Chicago River, asleek passenger steamer packed
with 2,572 workers and theirfamilies, bound for a picnic in
Michigan City.
It was a day meant for laughterand a summer escape, but the
river had another plan.
By 728 a.m.
the ship listed suddenly toport.
(29:19):
Attempts to stabilize herfailed, and an instant Eastland
rolled onto her side, pittinghundreds beneath decks, crushing
them against pianos, tables, andrailings.
The common of the river became agraveyard.
In total, 844 souls, men, women,and children, died that morning,
(29:40):
making it the deadliest singleship disaster on the Great
Lakes.
Many aboard were immigrants,drawn from the neighborhoods of
Cicero, Prague, Poland, Norway,and Germany, hardworking people
whose lives ended before theyhad fully begun.
Stories of heroism flickeredamid the horror.
Peter Boyle, a decade from anearby ship, drowned trying to
(30:00):
save others.
Nurcell and Repa guided panickedpassengers to makeshift
escapers.
Yet the river claimed them allwith merciless speed.
The disaster exposed a chillingindifference.
A top heavy vessel modified forspeed and capacity, ignored
warrants about stability, andoverloaded with passengers.
Indictments followed, but thecourt found little cause for
(30:23):
punishment.
Island's tragic legacy remained,a somber reminder of human
ambition, regulatory failure,and the fragility of life.
Even decades later, survivorslike three-year-old Marion
Eccoltz carried the memory ofthat morning, the screams, the
failing hands, and the waterrising to swallow families.
(30:43):
At Rose Hill Cemetery, some ofthese lost Chicagoans rest.
Their absence a silent echo ofanother darkest day in Chicago's
history.
By February of 1929, the citywas hardened by loss.
Its grief no longer allowed butfamiliar.
On a bitter Valentine's Daymorning, that grief returned in
a new form.
In the quiet Chicagoneighborhood of Lincoln Park,
(31:06):
inside a modest garage at 2122North Clark Street, seven men,
members and associates of theNorth Sign gang, waited.
They were to meet their leader,George Bugs Moran, though they
would never arrive.
Outside a black Cadillac pulledup to the curb, two men in
police uniforms, three in plainclothes, stepped inside.
(31:28):
Within minutes the garage becamea chamber of slaughter.
The men were lined up againstthe wall.
Six men died instantly.
One Frank Gusenberg crawledtwenty feet, riddled with
bullets, and whispered nothing.
(31:48):
He refused to name the killerstaking the secret to the grave.
The massacre was more thanmurder, it was theater,
calculated and chilling.
A grim message in the midst ofthe Prohibition's bloody
rivalry.
Moran's Northside gang headlongbattled Al Capone's Chicago
outfit for control of Chicago'sillegal empire.
The massacre was meant to wipeout Moran's men.
(32:10):
The Moran himself escaped bymere chance, seeing the false
police car and turning away forcoffee.
The City Mill recoiled.
Newspapers splashed the horroracross headlines.
Detectives examined the shellcasings and Thompson drums.
Yet the killers vanished intothe shadows.
Investigations dragged on foryears.
(32:31):
Indictments were ignored, andwitnesses offered conflicting
accounts.
Names Fred Burkett, Gus Winkler,Fred Goates, Ray Nugent, Bob
Carey surfaced, but justiceremained elusive.
Capone was never convicted, andthe city was left with an
enduring stain of violence.
The echoes of gunfire frozen intime.
(32:51):
The garage was demolished in1967, leaving only a lawn where
the seven men had been executed.
Bricks on the north wall, pockedand riddled with bullet holes,
were salvaged and sold asrelics, grim souvenirs of
another dark day in Chicago.
Three of the murdered men nowrest within Rose Hill Cemetery,
their graves only known to thekeepers of the grounds, with
(33:12):
help from public record.
The massacre endures as atestament to the cruelty of
ambition, the mercilessmachinery of organized crime,
and the human lives crushedbeneath its cold and different
weight.
But beyond stories, marble andgranite, lies a deeper, darker
legacy.
The stories of spirits of thelinger long after death.
One of Rosehill's most famousand tragic tales begins with
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Frances Pierce Stone.
She married at 17, becamepregnant shortly after, and died
at 20, only four months afterher ten-month-old daughter.
A sculpted likeness of themother and child was created,
placed beneath a glass case, andeventually moved to Rosehill.
Visitors leave coins at thebase, playing quiet homage.
(33:55):
Legends whisper though that onthe anniversary of France's
death, a ghostly mist rises fromthe glass, as if the love of the
mother and her child refuses tobe contained.
Some say the mist takes on thefaint shape of a pear, fleeting,
but unmistakable to the faithfulobserver.
Within the grounds also sits thememorial of Lulu E.
(34:16):
Fellows, a young woman who diedof typhoid fever at just 16 in
1883.
Her marble likeness, seated witha book in her lap in the
inscription, Many Hopes LieBuried Here, is protected behind
a glass case, placed to shieldthe statue from weather damage.
Unlike many other graves, Lulu'smemorial has become the focus of
(34:37):
legend and visitor tradition.
People leave coins, flowers,small toys, and trinkets inside
its glass enclosure, slippingofferings through the vents at
the top.
In local lore, Lulu's memorialcarries its own eerie
reputation.
Some visitors report hearingcries or voices near the statue,
especially on quiet evenings, ornoticing the scent of flowers
(34:59):
lingering in the winter airaround her grave.
Details suggest of a lingeringpresence or an attention from
the unseen.
While these experiences areanecdotal and not verified by
documented investigation, theybecome part of Roshell's haunted
atmosphere in storytelling andghost tours.
Whether viewed as paranormal ordeeply symbolic of human loss,
(35:21):
Lulu's statue, like aglass-enclosed memorial of
Francis Pierce Stone, embodiesthe way grief, memory, and
imagination converge in a placewhere lives were cut short and
remembered.
In the elaborate Rose HillMausoleum, Richard W.
Sears, founder of Sears Roebook⁇ Co., is said to haunt his
private family room.
(35:41):
Locked in marble, his spiritreportedly roams the halls.
Angered by the proximity of hisarrival, Aaron Montgomery Ward,
witnesses have claimed to see atall figure in a top head,
pacing along the corridor, thenvanishing suddenly, leaving
behind only the echo offootsteps and the chill of
unresolved rivalry.
It's a reminder that even titansof industry cannot always leave
(36:04):
their grudges behind.
Elsewhere in the cemetery,visitors report fleeting visions
of floating women alongPearson's Avenue, drifting
silently into the fog whenapproach.
These whispers of movementsuggest the dead at Rosehill
remain in some way conscious ofthe living world.
Charles Hopkinson, a wealthyreal estate magnet, rests in the
(36:25):
cathedral like Mausoleum.
Some say resonates with strangesounds.
Chains rattle in the stillness,and distant moans echo through
the stone halls, particularly onthe anniversary of his death.
Some claim the noises are echoesof a life unwilling to release
its hold on the world.
Others simply say the stonesthemselves remember the ambition
(36:45):
and hubris of the man within.
Roselle is not only home to thepowerful and infamous, it also
holds the spirits of itsyoungest residents.
The gatehouse, designed byWillem Boyington, is rumored to
host the ghost of hisgranddaughter, Philomena, who
died in childhood.
At dust she is said to wanderthe grounds, glimpse briefly
through windows beforedisappearing into the gathering
(37:08):
mist, and the grave of BobbyFranks, the young victim of
Leopold and Leb, remains a siteof quiet sorrow, where whispers
of tragedy seem to hang in theair like the morning fog.
Rose Hill's history isintertwined with the stories of
the living and the dead.
Victims of Chicago's famouscrimes, civil war and
revolutionary soldiers also liewithin, and the city leaders
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share the grounds with legendsof apparitions, glowing figures,
and mournful sounds.
Footsteps echo along the emptypaths, mists rise from the
crypts, and the shadows twistwhere none should exist.
For those who walk Rosehill atnight, the ordinary becomes
extraordinary.
Each monument holds a story,each path carries the weight of
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lives once lived.
Some spirits linger for love,others for revenge, and simply
because the world will not letthem go.
Each year around Halloween, acandlelit 5K winds through the
cemetery, tracing the graves ofsoldiers, mares, and tycoons
alike.
The flickering lights stretchlong, trembling shadows across
moss-covered monuments, and fora fleeting moment, the living
(38:14):
and the dead seem to share thesame space.
Rosehill is an active graveyardwith the average of 460 burials
each year, spanning the 19th,20th, and now the 21st
centuries.
Over the years, groundskeepershave overseen more than 193,000
traditional burials, with roomfor countless more, each adding
(38:34):
to the silent enduring story ofRosehill.
Gravestones range from theinnate Victorian Gothic markers
to modern slabs of stone, eachtelling a story to those who
wander the grounds.
As graveyards of Chicago, ThePeople, History, Art, and the
Lore of Cook County by MattHuckey and Ursula Bilski notes,
it offers the single mostimpressive cemetery experience
(38:57):
to be had in the Chicagometropolitan area.
Designed in 1914 by SydneyLovell, the massive structure is
a multi-level maze ofmarble-lined passageways,
stacked to the ceilings withthousands of the dearly
departed.
And in December, when the snowdrifts along the winding paths,
and wreaths hang on to thewrought iron gates, Rosehill
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seems to pause in quietreverence.
The cold air carries the weightof memory, the whisper of the
past, and the soft shimmer ofcandlelight from distant homes,
as if the spirits of thecemetery themselves are keeping
a Christmas vigil.
In this season, the dead ofRosehill and the living who
remember them meet, if only forher fleeting, frost-touched
(39:40):
moment.
And for now, the stories ofRosehill slid back into stone,
and the dead return to theiruneasy rest.
Yet they're never silent forlong.
Thank you for walking with usthrough the veil into Rosehill
Cemetery, descending once moreinto the hauntings of history.
The gate is sealed, the veildrawn, yet death.
(40:00):
Keeps no calendar, and so weshall return, as we always do,
on the grim.
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