The gallery on this page displays the handful of rock carvings along the Chicago lakefront whose location I’ve been unable to determine. These were shot on film before the days of GPS and reflect a record-keeping fail. However, I suspect most were from south of Montrose Harbor or the Belmont Rocks. All were lost when the old limestone revetments were torn out. Find lakefront carvings by location.
Continue readingLakefront Rock Carvings – Other Locations
Most of the roughly 6,300 rock carvings along Chicago’s 26 miles of lakefront parks are clustered in eight main locations, from Calumet Park on the south to Osterman Beach on the north. About 200, however, can be found scattered in other spots. These include four locations where the rocks are still part of the old limestone revetments protecting the Lake Michigan shoreline — Olive Park and the 12th Street, 57th Street and 63rd Street Beaches. Elsewhere the rocks that once lined the shore have been relocated, serving now mostly as decorative elements for lakefront parks. These sites may be scattered,
Continue readingThe “Mystery” Mermaid
It’s mostly a mystery who created the rock carvings up and down Chicago’s Lake Michigan shore. But there are exceptions, most notably the life-size mermaid that now resides south of Oakwood Beach around 41st Street. This accomplished but long-anonymous piece of stone carving eventually won recognition for its creators, with the Chicago Sun-Times unraveling its mystery in 2000. She was originally carved a couple blocks north of her current location, in an out-of-the-way spot right on the shoreline at 39th Street. Out of the way was the point: “We were trespassing,” said one of her creators, Roman Villareal, a self-taught
Continue readingThe Calumet Park Rock Carvings
Calumet Park, just north of the Indiana border, is lined with around half a mile of limestone blocks bearing more than 1,200 rock carvings. That’s the largest concentration of carvings anywhere along the Chicago lakefront, where more than 6,000 carvings survive, most made by anonymous creators starting around 1930. The abundance of Coast Guard sailers stationed at the southern end of the park and the many fisherman who work the shoreline just to the north must have contributed their fair share. In both cases they are likely to be folks with time on their hands. Another factor is the high
Continue readingArt On The Belmont Rocks
More than 250 works of art survive on a row of blocks preserved when the limestone steps north of Diversey Harbor in Chicago were replaced with a new concrete-and-steel revetment. The other blocks — there had to be thousands ripped out — hosted a treasure trove of art that is now gone forever. Those same blocks helped form the heart of Chicago’s gay community. I’ll leave it to Owen Keehnen, historian of the Rocks, to explain more in this passage from the Facebook group he manages. Although the gay scene at the Belmont Rocks did not survive the reconstruction, about
Continue readingThe Rainbow Beach Rock Carvings
The limestone blocks that define the west and east ends of Rainbow beach are dense with stone carvings, mostly executed in the decades following World War II. The beach itself dates as far back as 1908, but the limestone structures were installed later. The carvings include some first-rate figurative images alongside hundreds of names and initials, many of them left by lifeguards working at the beach. According to Buzz Zingaro, who made at least three carvings himself, the lifeguards would pass around hammers and chisels and carve their names during down time. Accompanying the name would be the years they
Continue readingChicago’s Lakefront Rock Carvings By Location
Chicago’s Lake Michigan shoreline hosts an amazing collective work of art, engraved on the limestone blocks that run down in steps to the water along several miles of its length. The thousands of rock carvings made by mostly anonymous creators starting in the first half of the 20th century represent an efflorescence of public art that is unique in the world, and barely acknowledged in Chicago. The carvings start at Calumet Beach Park near the Indiana state line and end 22 miles north, just south of Osterman Beach at Hollywood Avenue. More than 6,000 of these carvings have survived into
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