Sunday, April 8, 2012

Everyday Sightseeing: Senn Park and the "Seven Mile House"






Now that the weather's starting to turn warm again in Chicago, I thought I'd start getting back into the habit of going to the gym and/or taking a bike ride almost every day, as well as starting to update this "I Am A Camera" blog more, which after all exists mostly just to post photo reports from various things I'm doing while out and about. So I thought I'd combine the two and start up my "Everyday Sightseeing" series again for 2012, in which I blog not necessarily about big tourist things here in the city but rather the small yet fascinating little things that I always seem to be coming across in various neighborhoods while on my bike rides. Today, Senn Park in the far north central area of the city (Clark and Thorndale, to be specific), which used to be famous for being the location of the so-called "Seven Mile House" of Nicholas Kransz and his family, called that because of being exactly seven miles from the Chicago Loop via the old Green Bay Road. Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln made a stop at this location during his 1860 Presidential campaign to talk to a gathering of neighborhood farmers, which is why Charles Keck's "Young Lincoln" statue is now located here. I find it hilarious that the teens from the massive Senn High School next door keep Lincoln's toes painted in elaborate colors all year round.



View "Everyday Sightseeing" Chicago 2012 in a larger map


And hey, since I've enjoyed doing this so much in the past, I decided to start up a "place-blog" version of this year's Everyday Sightseeing series, in reality a customized Google Map; that basically lets a person navigate all these blog entries in the future not by date but by location, which always ends up fascinating once you get to the end of a year and have several dozen placemarkers scattered around the city. I'll make sure to embed the latest version of the map in these blog entries all this year, like you're seeing above, so that you'll be able to explore the archives that way as well.