Graceland Cemetery is of the style known as a “rural” or “garden cemetery.” Garden cemeteries incorporate naturalistic elements like trees, lakes and ponds, terraced lawns, and weaving paths and plots to create a park-like atmosphere.

Graceland Cemetery and Hebrew Benevolent Cemetery
Chicago, IL
January 2021

Getty Tomb by Paul Sager, on Flickr


Peter Schoenhofen (1827-1893) was a well-known Chicago brewer and owner of Schoenhofen Brewing, one of the largest of Chicago's 60+ breweries in the 1880s. The Egyptian Revival is an architectural style of motifs and imagery generally attributed to the public awareness of ancient Egyptian monuments generated by Napoleon's conquest of Egypt.

Schoenhofen Pyramid Mausoleum


Film: Kodak T400 CN (expired June 2005) and Ilford Delta 400 (expired March 2003)
Camera: Canon EOS 1v
Lens: Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM

Both expired film rolls loaded as ISO-100 and shot with EC +1/3, an effective ISO-80. The scanned JPEGs loaded to Adobe Lightroom 6 and processed further.

Graceland in winter


The William McKibben Sanger (1844-1877) Monument features a bronze female figure in a gesture of prayer who leans forward from a Celtic cross across the front of the dark granite Egyptian pyramidal base. The monument shows characteristics of the Arts & Crafts Movement which was popular at the end of the 19th century in Chicago.

William McKibben Sanger Monument


Originally four independent cemeteries were established on land purchased by the Hebrew Benevolent Society and Congregation B’nai Sholom, the plots popularly known as Jewish Graceland form the oldest surviving Jewish Cemetery in Chicago, dating to 1851. Hebrew Benevolent Cemetery is directly across the street from Graceland Cemetery on North Clark Street in Chicago.

Hebrew Benevolent Cemetery


At one time the wealthiest man in Chicago, Marshall Field started out as a store clerk. He became a partner in Potter Palmer’s dry-goods store in 1865. The female personification of “Memory” emanates an air of melancholic solemnity and strength. Marshall Field (1835-1906) is not named on the monument itself but he, his family and his descendants are identified with a row of simple headstones placed in front of the statue.

Graceland in winter


Martin L. Ryerson (1818–1887) was a wealthy Chicago lumber baron and real estate speculator. The mausoleum is constructed from large blocks of highly polished Quincy granite, and was inspired by Egyptian funerary traditions and the Egyptian Revival style.

Ryerson Tomb


Dr. Christopher D. Manuel (1964-2005) was a professor and an attending anesthesiologist at Chicago' Rush University Medical Center. The inscription below the flute player reads:

For all we know this may only be a dream
We come and go like ripples on a stream
For all we know tomorrow may never come
For all we know.

Graceland in winter


Tobias Allmendinger (1832-1889) had the vision and connections to invest in the early north side of Chicago. Beginning in the 1870s and into the 1880s, he purchased the land north and east of the Chicago River, locations now of the Hancock Tower, the Water Tower Plaza and the former Playboy Building. Mr. Allmendinger also owned real estate along Lake Michigan that became Chicago's Gold Coast.

Tobias Allmendinger Mausoleum


A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person, and many times, their close family members.

Mausoleum Row


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