place for some of the city's best landscape design.
The severe concrete wall that surrounds Oak Woods
cemetery gives off a distinct impression: Don't come
in here unless you have to.
Too bad. Because the other side of that wall is worth
seeing. Oak Woods features 125 acres of some of
the city's best and most pristine landscapes. Yes,
there are mausoleums, monuments, tombs, grave
markers and the like. But there are also four lakes,
rolling topography, striking vistas and a variety of
trees, shrubs and other plantings. A vision of
heaven at 67th and Cottage Grove.
Oak Woods was designed by landscape architect
Adolph Strauch. The Prussian-born designer helped
revolutionize cemetery design in the 19th century by
using lawns, open space and ideal placement of
burial markers and monuments to create a sense of
peace and order.
The designs were also attempts at fashioning a
civilized response to death. Before Oak Woods and
other cemeteries of its age, the American dead were
often interred in church properties or squeezed in on
haphazard plots on family land. As landscape
architects such as Jens Jensen and Frederick Law
Olmsted brought nature's order to parks and cities,
Strauch did the same for the boneyard. His work
also includes Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati
and Lake View Cemetery in East Cleveland.
Walking through Oak Woods is like a stroll through
a Chicago history book. Mayor Harold Washington;
Cap Anson; Enrico Fermi, judge and baseball
commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis; Olympic
star Jesse Owens, are among the notables buried
there. Some are forgotten to history, such as Donald
Aldrich, a Marine Corps pilot who shot down 20
Japanese plans during World War II and was killed
in 1947 while landing a plane at airstrip (now gone)
at 84th and Cicero.
Six thousand Confederate soldiers who died at
Chicago's Camp Douglas are memorialized at Oak
Woods. So is mobster Big Jim Colisomo, but after a
visit I took there over a year ago, I'm not so sure he's
still around. But given the beauty of the
surroundings, who could blame him for wanting to
take a peek?
