Couch Tomb

This 50-ton mausoleum – designed in 1858 by John Van Osdel, Chicago's first professional architect, for Ira Couch, a successful hotelier – is the sole reminder of Lincoln Park’s pre-1864 use, when the area was a municipal cemetery. (Many of the graves contained dead soldiers from Camp Douglas, a horrific prisoner-of-war stockade on the city’s South Side during the Civil War.) The city eventually relocated the bodies – except for the Couch family tomb, which was considered far too costly to move.