• Graceland Cemetery (NRHP 2001)
• Graceland West Community Association (est. 1979)
• Victorian-era residential streets
• Warner Park

Graceland West takes its name simply from its position just west of Graceland Cemetery, the 121-acre garden cemetery Chicago businessman Thomas Barbour Bryan established in 1860 after growing disillusioned with the condition of the city's original burial grounds. Bryan hired landscape architect Swain Nelson to lay out the original 80 acres, and the cemetery grew into a place so admired for its rolling grounds and lake that it briefly had to restrict weekday access to keep it from becoming an informal park.

The residential streets that grew up alongside the cemetery filled in with Victorian-era homes, and today the neighborhood remains defined by its greenery as much as its address. Graceland Cemetery itself, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and known as the "Cemetery of Architects" for the design luminaries buried within its walls, still functions as the neighborhood's de facto park, and the Graceland West Community Association, active since 1979, keeps the block parties and garden walks coming.

MY-NHD's Graceland West collection is built for a neighborhood that took its identity from the quiet green space next door, and never looked for another one.