Chicago Route 66's Lincoln Connection

Mr. Chicago Route 66, David Clark, had an article in the Spring Illinois 66 News about "The Lincoln's in Chicago."

This, of course, in honor of the 200th anniversary of his birth.

After Lincoln's death, Mary Todd Lincoln and her sons Robert and Tad moved to Chicago and lived in several different places. Mary traveled after Tad's death of pleurisy in 1871, but returned to Chicago in 1875. She didn't get along with Robert's wife, so she took a room at the Grand Pacific Hotel on Jackson Blvd between LaSalle and Clark streets. This site eventually became part of Route 66.

Robert became concerned about his mother's mental health and a trial led to a verdict of her insanity and she was to be committed to a sanitorium. The evening after the trial, Mary went to the druggist at the Grand Pacific and asked for a mixture of laudanum and camphor to ease the pain in her arm. The druggist knew of the trial and gave her caramelized sugar and water instead. Mary drank the entire bottle in what probably was a suicide attempt as the stuff she requested would have killed her. The next morning, Robert took her to Bellevue Place Sanitarium in Batavia, Illinois (on what later became the Lincoln Highway).

In 1893, Robert Lincoln became the general counsel of the Pullman Palace Car Company and then president when George Pullman died in 1897. His office was at the Pullman Building at the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street. In 1953, Adams became the westbound lanes of Route 66.

Pictures of the two buildings accompanied the article.

I understand from a trip through the Lincoln Home in Springfield, that many of the household items from there were lost in the Great Chicago Fire.

It's a Lincoln Thing. --RoadDog