Graceland Cemetery: A Design History

Chapter 6. Final Expansion

109 six Final Expansion I n April 1879, after more than a decade of conflict, Bryan Lathrop at last resolved Graceland’s long-standing dispute with Lake View. In January, the cemetery’s decision to convert about 190 acres of its undeveloped land to burial sites had triggered a new episode in the adjoining town’s continuing opposition.1 The next month Lake View amended its charter to “forbid the use, save with the Town’s consent, for Cemetery purposes, of grounds not already enclosed and platted for such uses.”2 As we have seen, the town had similarly amended its charter in 1867 and 1869. Graceland, relying on the state-sanctioned charter that permitted it to expand to up to five hundred acres, now apparently threatened to challenge the town in the Illinois Supreme Court.3 Such legal action was likely to be protracted and costly, of course, and no less troubling for Graceland was that Lake View had very nearly won its 1873 Supreme Court case to block the expansion of Rosehill Cemetery. Breaking the stalemate with the town later that month, Lathrop initiated a series of conferences with a committee of “citizens taking a special interest in the matter,” including Graceland’s original opponent, the attorney James B. Waller.4 A compromise resulted in March.5 (Fig. 6.1) If the town permitted “some 35 acres, partly already owned and partly to be acquired” to be used for burials, Lathrop would agree to accept the extended boundaries “as the fixed limits of Graceland Cemetery, and relinquish absolutely all claim and intention to use or acquire for burial purposes any other land in the Town of Lake View.”6 At the same 110 Graceland Cemetery time, Graceland would sell its land located beyond the new limits. The cemetery also proposed to extend Stella Street (now Kenmore Avenue) north from Graceland Avenue (now Irving Park Road) and connect it with Sulzer Street (now Montrose Avenue). It would keep a fifty-foot margin along the western side of Stella Street “free from actual interments” and lined with “a hedge or row of trees.”7 In short, Lathrop offered to restrict the extension to 35 acres, rather than the original 190, and to forgo any future expansion. There was considerable financial incentive for Graceland to endorse the proposition, as they would be able to subdivide the extra land and sell it for residential development. The cemetery now acquiesced to the 1878 Supreme Court ruling and offered to “pay all taxes levied or assessed upon its lands, not now 6.1. Plat of Graceland’s final boundaries, the outcome of the cemetery’s compromise with adjoining Lake View (1879). Courtesy Trustees of the Graceland Cemetery Improvement Fund. Final Expansion 111 enclosed for Cemetery purposes, for the years 1875, 1876, 1877 and 1878.”8 That March, some seventy Lake View voters petitioned the board of trustees that was the town’s governing body to accept the compromise.9 Edwin H. Sheldon, identified not as a Graceland officer but only as affiliated with Ogden, Sheldon & Co., was among the signatories. John A. Cole, a civil engineer, was another petitioner; Cole would gain employment at the cemetery only months later, perhaps at Sheldon’s urging.10 Even the two owners of property immediately adjoining Graceland, James Waller and Frederick Sulzer—“the only individuals [who] could be claimed to be specially affected”—supported the compromise.11 Sulzer may have acted in part out of self-interest, however; his late father had earlier sold property to Graceland, and now, should the proposal be accepted, he hoped to do the same. After winning endorsement in a Lake View election, the compromise was officially approved on April 7, 1879.12 With its boundaries now fixed in their present location , the cemetery’s total area increased to 125 acres, as it remains today. In the coming years, the 150 acres of cemetery-owned land beyond the final limits, north of Sulzer Street (Montrose Avenue) and west of Green Bay Road (Clark Street), would be subdivided for residential development under the direction of Graceland’s O. C. Simonds.13 the sul zer tr act and John a. cole Now the cemetery made its final land acquisition, purchasing a property from Frederick Sulzer.14 Formerly known as the Sulzer Tract, it was located at the southeast corner of the intersection of Green Bay Road with Sulzer Street. Unlike Graceland’s earlier...