CHICAGO — The great thing about living in a city like Chicago is that you can discover something new about the city's neighborhoods every day.
In honor of Columbus Day, we rounded up some things we "discovered" over the years — even though they've been there all along (or at least longer than we have).
The s--- fountain
Every so often, we see a photo of this feces-focused fountain making the rounds on Instagram, but it's actually been around for more than a decade.
The fountain was created and installed in 2005 by famous Polish Chicago artist Jerzy S. Kenar, who also created the neighboring angel statue at Wolcott and Augusta avenues.
The message? Pick up after your dogs, y'all.
Sexy Abe Lincoln in Edgewater
A 13-foot bronze statue in Edgewater depicting a muscly, chest-baring young Abe Lincoln has some passersby swooning over the image of the 16th U.S. president.
While Lincoln is typically depicted as straight-faced and bearded, the sculpture shows a more casual side of the iconic leader sitting on a tree stump with a book in hand.
"Young Lincoln is more attractive than I've been imagining," one Instagrammer wrote.
The statue was installed at Senn Park at Ridge Avenue and Clark Street in 1997, the site of the Krantsz family's former Seven Mile House, where Lincoln was rumored to have visited while on the campaign trail in 1860 — though the Edgewater Historical Society argues the meeting was "highly unlikely."
Either way, this sexy Abe is appreciated by Edgewater residents young and old.
Chicago's last waterfall
Chicago's only "waterfall" won't be around much longer, but we're glad we realized it existed so we can say goodbye!
The "waterfall" on the west side of River Park in Albany Park is actually a concrete dam. It was built in 1910 by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and created a 4-foot drop where the North branch of the Chicago River flows into the North Shore Channel.
As part of a proposed habitat improvement project along the Chicago River, which was unveiled in March by the Army Corps of Engineers, the dam will be replaced by a series of man-made "riffle" pools — sections where the river will stream over rocks and create movement that mimics rapids.
Work could start as early as winter 2018 and continue through 2020.
A tuberculosis sanitarium-turned-nature center
North Park Village, former home to a tuberculosis sanitarium, has transformed over the course of its history from a much-loathed to a much-loved institution.
But the nearly 160-acre North Side campus, which now includes a popular nature preserve, wouldn't exist at all if neighbors had had their way 100 years ago.
At the turn of the previous century, tuberculosis — known as "the great white plague" — was one of the leading causes of death in the United States. In 1909, voters in Chicago overwhelmingly approved a tax to establish the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium by a vote of 167,230 to 39,410. But where to put the facility proved a far more divisive issue.
After years of fighting to raze the sanitarium, a brief plan to build condos there and much more drama, preservationists and the city in 1989 agreed to a contract that would protect about 100 acres of open land for 75 years.
A Cubs-themed burial site for the ultimate fans
Die-hard Cubs fan? This Bohemian National Cemetery burial site, "Beyond the Vines," offers Cubs fans the next best thing to a final resting place under Wrigley's center field bleachers.
Covered in ivy, with a "scoreboard" perpetually set to 1:20 p.m., Vines' 24-foot-high brick wall mimics Wrigley Field's but is actually a columbarium, which is similar to a mausoleum, only for urns, not caskets.
Beyond the Vines was the brainchild of Dennis Mascari, who's been interred there himself since 2011.
When the columbarium opened in 2009, Mascari told a reporter from ESPN.com that he'd been inspired to build the Cubs-themed crypt after yet another depressing visit to his father's grave.
To date, fewer than 20 Cubs fans have chosen to spend the afterlife in Beyond the Vines, accounting for fewer than 10 percent of the columbarium's 288 "niches."
"We have plenty of room," said caretaker Rob Charlemagne, who also conducts tours at the cemetery.
Chicago's only underwater property
There is a stretch of private land rarer in Chicago than a private beach, but it is almost impossible to see.
That's because it is entirely underwater — meaning its owners literally lay claim to a piece of Lake Michigan. The land is 300 feet from the shore, just south of the South Shore Cultural Center. It appears to be the only private property in Cook County that is completely underwater.
The odd private ownership happened after Lake Park Avenue — which was originally known as Lake Avenue and can be seen on maps of the South Shore subdivision dating to 1888 — was completely swallowed up in a 1917 storm.
The two privately owned beaches, which were just east of Lake Park Avenue and stretched from 71st to 79th streets, also were submerged.
The current owner bought the 29,250-square-foot property, that is at its widest about 15 feet, in 2010 for an undisclosed amount in a tax sale, according to Cook County Recorder of Deeds records.
The storied key box at Gold Star Bar
When creators of the "Wicker Park: Love, Loss & Booze" neighborhood tour app were doing some research, they came upon an odd antique at one of their favorite watering holes.
An antique key rack at the left of the front door of Gold Star Bar, 1755 W. Division St., remains from the 1920s, when men could grab a key and get cozy with a prostitute.
This 100-year-old tiny blue bungalow is the last North Side lakefront house
If you drove through the northern shores of Edgewater 100 years ago, you'd see an opulent lakeside community for the elite, spotted with mansions and beach homes imagined by the likes of a young Frank Lloyd Wright and George Maher.
But by the early 1960s, the detailed structures that had once housed some of the neighborhood's first settlers had been replaced by the skyscrapers of the Far North Side — high-rise condominiums.
And lots of them.
There was one exception: a small blue bungalow at 5965 N. Sheridan Road.
As recently discovered by the Chicago Architecture blog, the tiny house is one of just two single-family detached homes in Chicago with their own private slices of Lake Michigan. The other sits in a well-hidden bend of South Shore.
Priceless Vanderpoel art Collection tucked within Beverly's Ridge Park
Ridge Park is perhaps best known for its indoor swimming pool. Others visit the Chicago Park District facility to play basketball, volleyball and even dabble in theater.
But tucked within this aging public building is a priceless art collection.
The Vanderpoel Art Collection includes some 600 paintings, sketches and sculptures. The modest gallery on the second floor of the field house at 1817 W. 96th St. displays 186 of its most notable pieces, according to Sid Hamper, 83, president of the John H. Vanderpoel Art Association.
Hamper's wife, Grace Hamper, is the curator of the collection that dates to 1914. It was founded three years after the death of Vanderpoel, a Beverly resident and celebrated instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago.
The bulk of the artwork consists of oil paintings — about 400 pieces. The little-known art collection in Ridge Park has been described as one of the largest collections of American impressionism in the Midwest. The Vanderpoel Art Collection was brought to Ridge Park in 1930.
The Gold Coast, Lake Shore Drive used to be a giant cemetery (and bones remain)
When construction worker Gerardo Munoz was digging in the Gold Coast in 2013, he found a whole lot of bones. Turns out, the 1400 block of North Dearborn Street was once the Catholic Cemetery, stretching east from Dearborn to Astor streets, and north from Schiller Street to North Avenue.
Since the late 1800s, when the cemeteries became Lincoln Park, Lake Shore Drive and residential space, human bones have popped up regularly whenever there is construction.
A researcher estimates more than 35,000 people were buried in the area, and the bones of 10,000 to 12,000 bodies remain there to this day.
A flag football team practices near one of the six historical markers erected by Pamela Bannos, a Northwestern University researcher and artist who explored the history of Chicago's City Cemetery. Bannos estimates 12,000 people are still buried beneath Lincoln Park and the Gold Coast.
"It's almost safe to say that if you dig on Dearborn or State Street you'll find something," said Pamela Bannos, who compiled the most comprehensive history of the cemeteries on her website "Hidden Truths."
