(the following is cross-posted from the Cemetery Mixtape page, which also includes a podcast!) Every year, thousands of people walk past the landmark Getty tomb in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery to admire the architecture. Designed by Louis Sullivan, it’s perhaps the most perfect example of Sullivan’s style. Almost no one who sees it realizes that inside…
Tag: notable chicagoans
The Wild Adventures of “Sensational Viola”
I was researching a whole other story in the old Chicago Post 1903 microfilms when I came across an article about Viola Larsen, a 17 year old girl who was on trial for plotting to kidnap one of her neighbors. She told the judge that she was just looking for material to work into the books…
Finding The Very Punny Civil War Dispatches of Irving W. Carson
The life and works of Irving Carson, the first journalist killed in the Civil War (and a bit of Han Solo-type).
The “Widow in Green” Blackmail Mystery
“Does anybody know the woman in green?” asked the Tribune in November of 1908. “Can anybody tell the name of the mysterious woman motorist who for the last month has been an unfailing topic of conversation for those who have time to observe humanity as seen in Chicago’s streets? Who is she?” For a month, Chicagoans…
The Strange Case of Baron von Biedenfeld
While doing research for the new Architecture of Mysterious Chicago tour, I ran into some fascinating data about Baron Cut von Biedenfeld, one of the late 19th century Chicago’s more colorful characters, who is all but forgotten today. Look him up online, and you’ll mostly find references to his father writing letters back and forth…
Podcast: Charles Volney Dyer, Chicago Badass
Podcast Edition! Listen right here, or subscribe on iTunes Of the many fascinating characters who grace Chicago history, but didn’t really make the history books, few had quite as storied or interesting a career as Dr. Charles Volney Dyer, an Underground Railroad Conductor, vampire witness, anatomist, cemetery founder, comic, and all around ass-kicker. He’s one…
Kate Kane, Chicago Lawyer, and her Fists of Fury
In the 1885 “trunk murder” case, three Italian men were charged with killing a man, stuffing his body in a trunk, and mailing him to Pittsburgh. One thing stands out in notes about their high-profile trial that diffrentiates it considerably from other such trials of the day: two of the men were represented in court…
Detective John W. Norton: From H.H. Holmes to Al Capone
Back when Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his second term as president, an old pickpocket named George Summers spoke to the Tribune about the old days. “You know what’s the matter with the cannon (pocket picking) racket today?” he asked. “Stickups! These young punks ain’t willing to go through a long apprenticeship anymore, like we…