Suicide Bridge

This was called the “Suicide Bridge.” It was a four story bridge over Lincoln Park lagoon south of Fullerton and east of Lincoln Park Zoo. It was simply called the High Bridge, built in either 1892 or 1894 to be tall enough for sailboats to fit underneath (approximately 75 feet over the waters of the lagoon).  It connected Lincoln Park to the lakefront at the time when Lake Shore Drive was a carriage route rather than an expressway.

The bridge offered spectacular views of the lake, on a clear day, you could see the stockyards and Jackson park from the bridge.  Unfortunately it also became the choice location for people wishing to end their lives. There are dozens of accounts of people throughout the years leaping over the bridge. Soon, the press was widely calling this the “Suicide Bridge.”

In 1898, police officers who patrolled Lincoln Park at night had plenty of stories about running into ghosts while making their rounds. However, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to them to blame the fact that the park had been a cemetery in recent memory (and still had plenty of bodies buried below the ground). In fact, it was generally agreed that the ghosts were the unfortunates who had ended their life at Suicide Bridge.

In 1899 an ostrich got loose from the zoo and jumped off the bridge, it survived.

It attracted plenty of weirdos – one elderly woman was known to go there daily to get as drunk as humanly possible. Another man would often go to whistle at the moon in a strange, eerie tone that scared the crap out of the cops.

In 1916, amateur movie-makers shot a chase scene on the bridge. The characters were to fall from the bridge, but a stunt man they hired refused to jump, saying the water below was too shallow. The amateur actors decided to do it themselves and both survived.

The Park District became greatly concerned, and talked about fencing the bridge over or tearing it down. It survived until 1919, when it was finally torn down. By then, the bridge became so rusty that anyone going across it risked his life.

Nobody knows for sure how many people jumped to their deaths but conservative estimates place the number between 50-100 (the number who came intending the jump, but didn’t (or survived) was estimated as being in the hundreds).

For a while the rate of suicides was about one jumper per month in the 1910s. 

It was so popular a destination for suicide that even people NOT seeking to die by drowning came to the bridge – one man hanged himself from the edge, and another went there to shoot himself.

Newspapers came up with wild headlines about it, including:

Policeman Spoils a Suicide: Interferes When Fascinated Crowd in Lincoln Park is Waiting for Man to Kill Self. Patrolman Charles Wilson of the North Halsted street police station, however, immediately became active. He ran up to where Meyer was standing and seized him just as he seemed to have made up his mind to try drowning in preference to using the razor.

Doom High Suicide Bridge: Lincoln Park Commissioners to Spoil Convenience for Those Contemplating Self-Destruction (note: this was in 1909, and nothing appears to have come of it. When it was closed a decade later, it was due to poor condition).

Jumps from Bridge To Lagoon: Says he Tried Suicide for Fun

Woman Leaps Off High Bridge: Mrs. Eliza Raven Tries to Commit Suicide Because of Failing Eyesight. She Will Recover. Made desperate by the fear of blindness, Mrs. Eliza Haven. 30 years of age, jumped from the high bridge over the Lincoln Park lagoon yesterday

Girl Seeks Death In Lagoon, Ends in Cell In Station. Miss Alice Witt, 21 years old, had her mind all made up for suicide yesterday afternoon, but all she succeeded in doing was to get a good wetting and be locked up at the Hudson street station on a charge of disorderly conduct.

On December 8, 1897, a man named John Schwinen climbed onto the bridge and, in full view of about 100 children skating on the ice of the lagoon, jumped to his death. With a wild upward wave of his hands, he leapt far out into the air and fell head-first onto the ice. The newspapers stated that it was the fourth suicide from the bridge in three months. Several skaters were directly below Schwinen when he broke through the ice, but luckily all of them escaped plunging into the water with his body. When police officers reached the scene, nothing but the victim’s shoes were protruding above the water. Newspapers ironically noted that on the bottom of the shoes were the words “Warranted Waterproof.” Schwinen, 62, was a married man with 12 children, five of whom were married. He had recently lost his job as a house mover and it was believed that his worries about the future caused him to take his own life.

There was an old military man who lived at a soldier’s home in Milwaukee and he came to visit the bridge every time he got a furlough and would stand on the span and sing martial songs at the top of his voice. A young man used to come to the bridge almost every night and whistle at the moon in an eerie tone that sent shivers up the spines of police officers who patrolled the park. The bridge was almost like a magnet for the strange, weird and unusual.

“The fall and spring were suicide seasons,” said Charles Shaw, the head of the park’s police force. He mused that the bridge had been a trysting place for those who had a rendezvous with death. Disappointed old men and girls who were crossed in love, despondent youths and all the lurid ladies from the street – all of them sought the mysteries of the beyond from its heights.

By the time the bridge was closed, it was in poor shape and there had not been a suicide attempt in more than a year. Lieutenant Charles Thoren told a reporter, “For several years it was a fad. There used to be as many as two suicides a week. About 20 years ago, it got so bad that the newspapers suggested covering the bridge with a screen, like a bird cage, and there was even some talk about closing to the public.”

Finally the dismantling of the bridge began on November 1, 1919 by the American House Wrecking Company.