Western Avenue Series

Mile 21: Foster-Peterson
This painting is a part of my Western Avenue Series, through which I'll be making 24 watercolor paintings, one to document each mile of Western Avenue, in Chicago.  I started this project because while it is not considered to be among the most “beautiful” of Chicago’s streets, Western Avenue is a perfect place to document the humanness of Chicago, the positive and the negative. In the words of Stuart Dybek, "Western, with apologies to State Street, is a great street,  Unlike State, it is a street that goes to the interior, the heart of the city, as it glides and glows through a United Nations of neighborhoods."  Check back next Monday to see a post about the next mile of Western.

The 350 acre Rosehill Cemetery was chartered in 1859 and is the oldest and largest non-sectarian cemetery in Chicago.  Rosehill contains the graves of over a dozen mayors of Chicago, four Illinois governors and 12 Civil War Generals.  In addition, it is the largest burial ground of Union Civil War soldiers in the Midwest.

The name of the cemetery is actually the result of an error, the area was previously called "Roe's Hill", named for nearby farmer Hiram Roe. He refused to sell his land to the city until it was promised that the cemetery be named in his honor.  The entrance gate was designed by William W. Boyington, the architect of the Chicago Water Tower.  


Click here to purchase this painting.

Have you visited the graves at Rosehill Cemetery?