Carl Sandburg

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4646 North Hermitage Avenue

The modest house you are looking at was an early home of the poet Carl Sandburg.

4646 N Hermitage, the former home Carl Sandburg.

4646 N Hermitage, the former home Carl Sandburg. Credit: Jane Rickard

Sandburg moved to Chicago in 1912, living in a second floor apartment in this building. He was a  reporter for the Chicago Daily News and a member of All Saints Episcopal Church. Here he composed among the best known of his poems, Chicago, published in 1915.
He lived here with his wife Lillian and his daughter Margaret, then two years old.
On locating the apartment Sandburg wrote Lillian he had found “our really, truly home.”
The Sandburgs moved to Maywood in 1914.
The building itself has been ‘marred,’ according to a 1994 writer, by poor choices in window replacement, aluminum siding and the removal of the front porch.

This undated photo from the Sulzer Library's Ravenswood Lake View Historical collection shows the Sandburg home some years ago.

This undated photo from the Sulzer Library’s Ravenswood Lake View Historical collection shows the Sandburg home some years ago.

It was built between 1891 and 1894.

Listen to Roy Trumbull read the poem Chicago

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
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WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to 4611 North Hermitage Avenue.

  1. Continue south along Hermitage for about 364′. The building will be on your left, across the street and before the next corner.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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4550 N Hermitage Ave

This 1883 church is an outstanding example of stick style architecture in which the vertical and horizontal protrude from the clapboard voids between them, and are painted differently from the clapboards to accentuate the structure of the building. It was stuccoed in the 1920’s, covering highly decorative clapboard and shingle work. Note the many diagonal elements still visible, which add a sense of vigor to the rest of the structure. The original entrance was at the northeast corner of the church, under the bell tower. This door has now been sealed and has a window in its place. Most windows are original.
The architect, John Cochrane (1835-1887), is best known for winning, at age 32, the design competition in 1867 for the new Illinois State Capitol Building in Springfield. Between winning the prize and signing the contract he formed a partnership with Alfred H. Piquenard. Cochrane & Piquenard are the architects of record for that building. He also designed a number of other important buildings, including parts of Cook County Hospital and Rush Medical College, as well as Jefferson Park Presbyterian Church. He died at the age of 52 only four years after designing All Saints.

An early photo of All Saints Church, Credit: The 1883 Project

An early photo of All Saints Church, Credit: The 1883 Project


The rectory was designed in a Tudor style by a parishioner, John Hulla, and built in either 1908 or 1905. The passageway connecting the rectory and the church was built in the 1920’s and detracts from the overall composition. The Parish Hall, on Wilson Avenue, was completed in 1936. The funds used for the parish house were collected in the 1920’s toward the goal of a new Gothic stone church on the site of the 1883 frame structure. Were it not for the 1929 crash, this wooden church would not exist.

HISTORICAL FEATURES

Former parishioners include Carl Sandburg, who lived nearby, and Grace Sulzer, granddaughter of the first European settlers of Lake View Township.

SOURCES

CCL Survey; Parish Records; Lane, George: Chicago Churches and Synagogues. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1981. Permits #11802 (8/12/1908) and 18222 (4/26/1905). No permit for original construction. Historical records.

WALKING DIRECTIONS TO NEXT LOCATION

Continue the tour to 4542 North Hermitage Avenue.

  1. The next building is across the street, about 121′ south along Hermitage.
  2. Click the ‘Continue the Tour’ button below when you’ve reached your destination.

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