Katherine Legge park

[Barek Halfhand]

 

“3 miles away: At Katherine Legge Memorial Park, the main building (not the lodge) used to be a woman's dorm. Supposedly if you are there alone at night on the first floor, you can hear footsteps on the second floor...”
Source:
http://www.ghostsofamerica.com/6/Illinois_Western_Springs_ghost_sig...

Katherine Legge Park
By Barek Halfhand

There are a few interesting parallels between K.L Park and the Peabody Estate such as both Alexander Legge and Francis Stuyvesant Peabody dying of a heart attack on their respective properties…both survived the death of a wife (or first wife) and erected memorials on the grounds …both were well to do executives and while Katherine and Alexander Legge were perhaps the more philanthropically and humanitarianism oriented Mr. Peabody was known to be a kind and generous man …

The similarities end at F.S. Peabody’s evident disdain for his beloved ground being traipsed by the general public as a sort of contemporary museum/dog-park/civic event center/ bike trail/favorite fishing spot…the austere Mr Peabody grimaced at my mention of the new “Dog Park” from his spectral horse before galloping off and away from my mind’s eye...

The Legge’s on the other hand seem delighted by the dog walkers, strollers, swing set playground swingers and reveling party attendees enjoying a private booked affair that spilled out onto the lodge patio complete with a DJ and black –tied bar tenders …

Alexander was devastated by the loss of Katherine as the result of typhoid fever and while he was taken aback by the arrival of the painted portraits of the two if them Katherine had rendered surreptitiously based on photos photographs …Alexander being a man that was born of modest means felt posing for a portrait to be the epitome of vanity and self-aggrandizement but fulfilled the wishes of his late betrothed by vowing to prominently display the painting at her memorial ( now hanging in “The Lodge”…a side note; his cheeks still redden at the mention of these paintings even in the afterlife …

The headstone memorial cordoned off by an oxidizing iron spiked fence and flanked by neatly pruned evergreens seems oddly out of place off a sidewalk between the Lodge patio and the Arts Building and my impression is that this is Mrs Legge’s least favorite aspect of the park …

The 2nd floor old main building is not devoid of furnishing or occupant but a single light in the hallway provides an ambient glow when viewed through the windows from below …It is rumored the mellifluous, dulcet voice of a woman singing can be faintly heard emanating from the building…an unofficial source has relayed that one particularly Rubenesque dorm mothers used to sing a certain sonnet to signify that “lights out” time was rapidly approaching… Though loved, this stern matron had little tolerance for insolence and occasionally “lowered the boom” on the at times petulant young ladies, but these incidents were rare at best...on those rare occasions where the girls were a bit more boisterous before lights out, the normal serene sonnet the woman would sing was replaced by a melancholy melody about a bereft widow lamenting the loss of her husband in WW1…at least this is the most I could decipher as I made my way up the rickety outer wooden staircase…

Here's the Youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbYK3cszk_0

Here are the (compressed to 1MB) photos...some have been slightly sharpened or color enhanced (06-2012) 70 total....b
http://s790.photobucket.com/albums/yy188/TheNotoriousMrhalfhand/Kat...

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