What to See in Berwyn - Top Sights and Attractions

Showmen's Rest in Forest Park, Illinois, is a 750 plot section of Woodlawn Cemetery mostly for circus performers owned by the Showmen's League of America The first performers and show workers that were buried there are in a mass grave from when between 56 and 61 employees of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus were interred. They were killed in the Hammond circus train wreck on June 22, 1918, at Hessville, Indiana, when an empty Michigan Central Railroad troop train from Detroit, Michigan, to Chicago, Illinois, plowed into their circus train. The engineer of the troop train, Alonzo Sargent, had fallen asleep. Among the dead were Arthur Dierckx and Max Nietzborn of the "Great Dierckx Brothers" strong man act and Jennie Ward Todd of "The Flying Wards".

The Showmen's League of America, formed in 1913 with Buffalo Bill Cody as its first president, had recently selected and purchased the burial land in Woodlawn Cemetery at the intersection of Cermak Road and Des Plaines Avenue in Forest Park, Illinois, for its members. Services were held five days after the train wreck. The identity of many victims of the wreck was unknown. Most of the markers note "unidentified male" (or female). One is marked "Smiley," another "Baldy," and "4 Horse Driver."

The Showmen's Rest section of Woodlawn Cemetery is still used for burials of deceased showmen who are said to be performing now at the biggest of the Big Tops. A Memorial Day service is held at Woodlawn Cemetery every year.

Other Showmen's Rests include one at Mount Olivet Cemetery, Hugo, Oklahoma. Hugo is a winter circus home which calls itself Circus City, USA. In Miami, Florida, the largest Showmen's Rest is at Southern Memorial Park where large elephant and lion statues flank hundreds of markers commemorating circus greats and not-so-greats. Tampa, Florida's Showmen's Rest is located close to the Greater Tampa Showmen's Association near downtown.^[1]

City government office in Berwyn, Illinois. The Berwyn Municipal Building, also known as Berwyn City Hall, is a historic public building located at 6700 26th Street in Berwyn, Illinois. The building was constructed in 1939 as a Public Works Administration project. The architecture firm of Burnham & Hammond designed the building in the PWA's characteristic PWA Moderne style; their design features square massing, a flat brick and limestone exterior, prism-shaped pilasters, and reeding above the entrance. While the pilasters are in keeping with Moderne design, their prism shape is unusual; they may have been influenced by Burnham's earlier work or by Czech Cubism, given Berwyn's substantial Czech-American population at the time.

The building originally housed Berwyn's city offices, its library, and its police and fire departments. The police department left in the 1960s, and the library closed its branch in the building in the 1980s; the city government and fire department still used the building as of 2001. An addition was placed on the building in 1991 to give it an elevator in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 8, 2001.^[5]

Historical place in Berwyn, Illinois. The Arthur J. Dunham House is a house located at 3131 S. Wisconsin Ave. in Berwyn, Illinois, USA. The Prairie School house, built circa 1907, was designed by the Chicago architectural firm Tallmadge and Watson. The house's features exemplify the design elements of the Prairie School, with an emphasis on horizontal lines and open planes; these elements can be seen in the house's lateral porch, low hipped roof and open floor plan. The house is the only house in Berwyn with such a design, and since the same family has owned it since its construction, its design is basically intact.

The Arthur J. Dunham House was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 11, 1982.^[6]