Northwestern lecturer digs up the graveyard past of Lincoln Park

By Madeleine Wright
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
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In springtime, Lincoln Park is full of life above ground. But thousands of human remains, and their history, lie buried just underneath.

Art lecturer Pamela Bannos recently discovered that Lincoln Park is home to four former cemeteries. She estimates that 10,000 to 12,000 deceased are still buried in the southern portion of the park.

But just who’s responsible for leaving the bodies there?

"A popular question is whose fault is this, to try to blame some official, and it was not the officials’ responsibility to remove the bodies; it was the families’ responsibility," said Bannos, who teaches art theory and practice at Northwestern University.

The city began relocating the bodies in the mid-1800s. But many Chicago families did not comply with their request to remove the remains of their relatives. "Those families were probably gone or they literally died off," Bannos said.

The Great Chicago Fire burned the grave markers in 1871. As a result, park commissioners could no longer locate the graves, eventually giving up and leaving them in the park.

"The Chicago fire came through and ravaged it so it was awful-looking and expedited the process to incorporate the grounds into the park," Bannos said.

Rumors spread that the bacteria from the cholera victims buried in the grounds would seep into the nearby lake and pollute the city’s water, which hastened the process of relocating the bodies. The lake shore grounds were valuable property, which also prompted the park officials to condemn the cemetery lands into the park.

For about twenty years, Chicagoans witnessed bodies being dug up and transplanted from their graves until either it stopped happening or newspapers stopped reporting it, Bannos said. The story about the park’s past became buried and has only recently surfaced through Bannos’ extensive research.

The Couch Tomb was named for Ira Couch, a wealthy hotelier who lived in the Lincoln Park area. His mausoleum is one of the only visible remnants of the park's former cemeteries.

The answer to whether people will still keep coming to the park depends on the person. Indiana-native Leticia Diaz believes that fewer people would come to the park if they knew about the cemeteries. William Moxham, a resident of Lincoln Park, added, "I think it raises moral issues for them. Who wants to take a nap on a dead body? But I think people will just keep coming as normal."

"It’s kind of creepy, it’s unusual that they would not exhume all the bodies up and take 'em and put 'em somewhere else but just to build a park over it," said Toywa Curington, a resident of Bolingbrook, Illinois. "I think that’s kind of unusual."

But Bannos explained that Chicagoans in Victorian America encountered death on a regular basis, and had no problem with the cemeteries being in the park. She explained that contemporary society is so far removed from death that it believes it is somehow wrong to physically juxtapose a cemetery and a park.

"Thousands of graves came up. Once you see this so many times it stops being as alarming as it was the first time. I mean, it’s like 'There goes another coffin'… You can only imagine how common it became."

Bannos doesn’t think the park commissioners will ever remove the human remains. She prefers that they stay where they are, serving as reminders of Lincoln Park’s buried past. She has placed six historical markers throughout the city to inform park-goers about its history. These signs will remain up until November.

Bannos discovered the park’s past through researching newspaper archives and historical documents. She said it is her art project, and has compiled her research onto her website, http://hiddentruths.northwestern.edu/.