The Mystery:
Why is there a lone mausoleum in Lincoln Park?
Why is there a mausoleum in Chicago’s Lincoln Park? Geoffrey Baer explores with Adam Selzer.
Before there was a sprawling, beautiful lakefront park in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, there was something decidedly less recreational. In the 1840s when Chicago was still a brand-new, not-quite-yet-toddlin’ town, some of the land that is now Lincoln Park just north of North Avenue was the Chicago City Cemetery. According to Robert Loerzel in a Chicago Reader article, some 35,000 bodies were buried in the cemetery until burials were halted in the 1860s due to concerns about the high water table near the lakefront. “They started worrying eventually that dead bodies would get mixed into the drinking water. People who went there said that it was repulsive,” local historian and author Adam Selzer told Geoffrey Baer. “Sometimes the wind would blow and bones would be exposed.” Many of the bodies were relocated to other cemeteries, but it is possible that 12,000 unmarked bodies remain. One large mausoleum remains near the Chicago History Museum, too. It was built in 1858 for Tremont Hotel magnate Ira Couch and his relatives. Selzer said that it is still unclear whether or not there are any bodies in the mausoleum, but for whatever reason, the structure itself remains. “Some people say that the family objected, other people say it was just a matter of money,” Selzer said. “So they decided to leave this one.”
