Graceland's gates open in front of you, into the cemetery that holds the people who built Chicago. Established in 1860 on what was then the rural edge of town, Graceland was laid out as a landscaped garden of rolling lawns, lagoons, and great trees, a place for the living to stroll as much as for the dead to rest. Beneath its monuments lie the giants of the city's golden age: the architects Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; retailer Marshall Field; railcar magnate George Pullman, buried under tons of concrete to thwart vengeful strikers; and boxing champion Jack Johnson.
The sculptures are extraordinary, including Lorado Taft's haunting hooded figure called Eternal Silence. Walk the quiet paths and read the names on the stones; this is Chicago's architecture and history written in granite, the people who raised the skyline now resting beneath it.