Chicago's freethinker cemetery became its most transfixing concert ground. Bohemian National Cemetery at 5255 North Pulaski Road was founded in 1877 by the city's Czech community after a Catholic priest refused burial to Marie Silhanek, a Czech woman deemed insufficiently observant - an outrage that drove eight Bohemian benevolent societies to buy fifty acres in what was then Jefferson Township and create a burial ground free of religious restrictions, open within a decade to all nationalities and faiths. The grounds grew to some 124 acres of landscape history: an 1893 Gothic Revival gatehouse, a 1919 Renaissance Revival crematorium and columbarium decorated by John A. Mallin, curving sections laid out in 1902 by August Petrtyl and sixty northern acres designed in 1906 by the acclaimed landscape architect Jens Jensen. The cemetery holds Chicago's layered griefs and eccentricities alike - the largest number of victims of the 1915 Eastland disaster buried in any cemetery, memorials to veterans of every war since the Civil War, Mayor Anton Cermak's tomb, and the beloved Beyond the Vines columbarium for Chicago Cubs fans, built with Wrigley Field seats at its base and stained glass in team colours. The National Register of Historic Places listed the grounds in 2006. Since June 2013, the modernist mausoleum lawns near the northwest corner have hosted Beyond the Gate, a concert series run by Empty Bottle Presents that has brought Kim Gordon, Body/Head, Wrekmeister Harmonies and a decade of experimental, noise and rock acts to play among the monuments at dusk - proceeds helping maintain the grounds. The freethinkers of 1877 would likely approve: a cemetery founded on openness, still finding new ways to serve the living. Visitors come for more than the concerts: architecture and history tours walk the Jensen landscape and the Mallin-decorated columbarium, the gatehouse anchors photography pilgrimages, and the grounds' newer sections serve the Bosnian, Latino and Hindu communities that succeeded the Czechs - the cemetery's chapel now hosts more Hindu services than any other kind. Grounds hours run daily, and the Foster Avenue edge connects to the river trail network along the North Branch.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: 5255 N Pulaski Road, Chicago, IL, United States, 60630

Website: https://www.bohemiannationalcemeterychicago.org

Opening Date: 02/09/1877

Outdoor Area