Chicago and Cook County Cemeteries

Beating Chicago’s Heat- Summer Gardens, Picnic Groves and even in cemeteries

They were everywhere! As Early as 1859 In Chicago they were a welcome refuge for Chicagoans coping with a hot summer. only to become less important with the advent of home air conditioning. In the 1920s there were more than 500 festive places in the Chicago area to escape the heat, eat, dance and drink. They were largely an old-world tradition brought to Chicago by German, Polish, and Irish immigrants.

Most summer gardens with names like Edelweiss, Germania, Heidelberg, Bismarck Gardens, or Rienzi.began by German-Americans. Wherever you went on a hot summer day you would find steins of beer, wine, music, dancing and a wide variety of activities.

Summer gardens were more commercial and elaborate, patterned after the old world European beer gardens. There you might find tables and chairs, food service, electric lighting, a stage, or even parking for your horse in a covered buggy shed. Some like Riverview evolved into amusement parks. and more. An orchestra of 12 to 20 pieces were common. Many but not all were on the north side catering to the German population. Back in the day newspapers describe the summer gardens as study of mosquitoes.

Although there was a fuzzy line between a picnic grove and a summer garden. picnic groves were more often a mom and pop operation. Many were simply behind a tavern with picnic benches and an outdoor bar. Larger ones could include a beer hall, dance pavilion, a bowling alley, rides or games.. They could be found just about anywhere there was a vacant piece of land. They could be found all over the city and it’s suburbs.

All was not perfect because summer gardens had to deal with noise, anti-German sentiment, labor strikes, and of course the prohibition act of 1919.

The most popular of course was Schutzen (Sharpshooters Park) which of course became the famous Riverview amusement park at Belmont and Western . There were two large picnic groves , refreshment stands and a ballroom . The groves could hold as many as 20,000 people in one day and were popular for organizations holding huge picnics and special events.

Other picnic groves were somewhat of a cousin to cemeteries but catering the mourners who made a long trip to bury their loved ones.

After a funeral and not wasting the rest of the day, there were picnic groves in close proximity to cemeteries where people could eat and drink and dance before the long buggy ride home.

And well after a funeral, death continued to be a constant visitor for many families, so family and friends would return to cemeteries often to “talk” and break bread with the deceased. Often it was simply a pleasant Sunday afternoon picnic among the tombstones remembering the deceased..

Read more as we visit many of them and learn of some of their oddities

13 year old Laura Elfring-buried in the middle of O’Hare Airport!

Her name was Laura Theodora Katharine Elfring, born August 18, 1885, in Barrington Illinois, the first born of Friedrich Johann Gerhard Carl “Fred” Elfring (1858-1930) and Mary Landwehr Elfring (1861-1952)

Thirteen-year-old Laura was killed on the morning of April 10, 1898 on the Milwaukee Road railroad tracks at Bensenville, struck by a morning milk train heading to Chicago.

Dear Dad: Your Chicago has changed!

If you could come back to life for just a day, I would love to tell you about today’s Chicago, the way we travel, shop and communicate. You died in 1959 at the early age of 54 when I was only 14. If you could come back to us and your Chicago for just one day, here is what I would love to tell you.

Back then you only knew propeller driven airplanes out of Midway Airport

To reach others, your Bell System dial telephone was connected to the wall by a wire. You put a three cent stamp on a letter.

At work you typed that letter in duplicate using a typewriter and a sheet of carbon paper. You added and subtracted on a mechanical adding machine.

You shopped at bakeries and dime stores on Devon Avenue. There was Crawfords and Abrams, Hobbymodels and Hillman’s.

Closer to home there was Pete’s grocery store, a butcher shop, and Sanders drugstore on Pratt. Helga’s delicatessen was just a block north on Western .

If you drove a bit farther to Lincoln Village or Wieboldt’s at Lincoln and Belmont, gas was only about $.16 a gallon. a fill-up could be as low as $2!

Your first car was a 1928 used Chevrolet, you are last was a used 1954 model. Your mother called them “machines”. And you rode the old red street cars and later the Green Hornet, which ended on June 21, 1958.

the Chicago typewriter – February 14, 1929

Today, your computer keyboard uses the QWERTY system, (the first six letters on the top line of your keyboard). It is a carryover from the mechanical typewriter that most of us older folk remember. The first commercially successful typewriter was invented and patented by four Milwaukee Wisconsin men in 1868 . It was produced by E. Remington and sons.

The “Chicago typewriter” however was quite different, something never needing paper or an ink ribbon . Its use on Valentine’s Day February 14, 1929 is legend. It. Like a mechanical typewriter, it was well used to send a message. The Chicago typewriter is a slang term for the Thompson submachine gun which from a distance sound somewhat like a typewriter.