In Chicago, they want to build 38 thousand graves on the site

15-year-old work on the construction of schools in the area of ​​Danning is conducted in an unusual way: the worker is trying not to hurt the human remains that may lie at depth.

Фото: Depositphotos

The $ 70 million school will be built on the former Cook County Home for the Poor and Disabled. Here, according to preliminary data, there were mass burials of about 38 thousand people. Among the dead were very poor residents who could not afford the costs of the funeral, and the bodies of patients.

“There were bodies found all over the place,” said Barry Flaig, a genealogist who began exploring the area in 1989. “It’s a creepy, scary place.”

Until April 27, workers must dig and clean the site, level the soil and move the existing sewer system. The school must open on time for the 2019-2020 school year.

It is not yet known what exactly the new school will be. At the construction site it is indicated that this will be a high school, but 38-year-old Nicholas Sposato said that he is confident that the new building will belong to either the four-year high school for the Dunning district or the Taft high school.

Photo: video frame

According to Sposato, the school will be able to accommodate around 1200 students.

In the Dunning area, patients from a hospital and a tuberculosis dispensary, victims of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and veterans of the Civil War are buried.

Photo: Public Building Commission of Chicago; Barry Fleig; Google earth

History of the area

In 1854, the county opened the House for the Disabled and Poor, after which it built a hospital, a psychiatric clinic and a department for tuberculosis patients. In this regard, thousands of people with tuberculosis, just the poor and patients were buried in the territory.

In 1912, the official institution was named the Chicago State Hospital. In 1970, the building was closed and all patients were moved west of Oak Park Avenue, where the Chicago Mental Health Center is now located.

In those years, when the Chicago State Hospital closed, the state sold most of the land to firms.

The bodies were found in the Dunning area by workers building single-family homes, installing sewer lines in 1989 and again in 1995.

No human remains were found when the city began exploring the school site in 2013, according to Bryant Payne, a spokesman for the city's public building commission.

In 2013, a New Jersey-based construction firm was hired to conduct “initial exploratory operations,” but did not find any human remains, graves, or cemeteries.

However, workers are advised to use plastic or rubber shovels during construction. They should have plastic bags for small bones and artifacts.

If they come across intact graves, officials will establish a perimeter with police tape, warning signs, and provide security. The architects will then remove the coffins and artifacts, place them in plastic storage containers, and move them to the staging area before resuming work.

The Illinois State Museum has jurisdiction over any human remains found in accordance with the Human Skeleton Act.

Fleig of Phoenix was chairman of the Chicago Genealogical Society's cemetery and has lived in the city for over 50 years. He created a database of about 7000 names of people who were buried in Dunning and published the project in 2014.

The database was built using Cook County records, two incomplete cemetery registers and several trips to Salt Lake City to transcribe death certificates and coroner reports on microfilms.

Fleig said he will continue to work until he identifies at least 10 000 from 38 000 people buried in the territory of Dunning.

“These people were forgotten in life, and they should not be forgotten in death,” he said.

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