Queen of Heaven Cemetery


Queen of Heaven Cemetery is a Roman Catholic cemetery in Hillside, Illinois, a suburban community near Chicago. The cemetery is operated by the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Queen of Heaven is located at Wolf and Roosevelt Roads, near the Eisenhower Expressway, and is adjacent to two other cemeteries. One is another Catholic cemetery named Mount Carmel Cemetery, and the other is the secular Oakridge Glen Oaks Cemetery.

History

Queen of Heaven was consecrated in 1947. The cemetery maintained its own office until 1965, when operations were combined with neighboring Mount Carmel Cemetery. Currently, the cemetery is in size, and there are currently over 122,451 people buried there. There are approximately 3,215 annual interments at Queen of Heaven.
In addition to regular graves, Queen of Heaven was the first area cemetery to have religious shrine sections. One of these is the "Shrine of the Holy Innocents," where young victims of the 1958 Our Lady of the Angels School Fire are interred. In these sections families could purchase plots for all its members all at once, and not incur future charges.
Queen of Heaven Mausoleum, adjacent to the cemetery, has 30,000 crypts and 64 columbarium niches. There is also a garden crypt complex, with 25,729 crypts and 720 columbarium niches.
The Queen of Heaven mausoleum complex has room for over 33,000 bodies and was as of 2009 about 75 percent filled. Present is huge gallery of stained glass, statuary and carved wood and statuary in marble, bronze and mosaic. The art in the west wing of the main building was carried out mostly by DaPrato Studios of Chicago, with an international array of artists/architectural designers, artists such as : Italo Botti, Angelo Gherardi, Urano Bottari, Laurence Campbell, Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo, and a number of others.

Notable interments