Wall in Lincoln Park Created & Crafted by Photographer Victor Albert Grigas

What’s the Story Behind the Crazy Cool Wall in Lincoln Park?

Like hundreds of other residents of Lincoln Park, I walk past the crazy cool stone wall* that adorns 655 West Wrightwood Avenue every day. Last week I noted that a memorial honoring Victor Albert Grigas was posted to the wall. Photographer Victor Albert Grigas created and crafted this eye-catching wall!

According to his son and namesake:

Victor Albert Grigas (died June 10, 2017) was born Vytautas Grigas on October 30, 1919, in Bridgeport, Chicago to immigrant parents from Lithuania. Raised in a beer flat during alcohol prohibition, his first memory was syphoning beer from barrels under floorboards and being scared of the rats. From an early age, he learned to love reading. During World War Two, after he read ‘Mein Kampf’ and saw Hitler’s plans for world domination, he decided to join the army. He served two and a half years in the U.S. Army Combat Engineers despite having four deferments. After the war, he pursued a successful career as a photographer and used the funds to build a house in Willow Springs, Illinois. During the 1960s and 1970s he rehabbed three buildings in Old Town and Lincoln Park (in Chicago) by appropriating remnants of other buildings found in dumpsters and alleys. That work was profiled by the Chicago Tribune on January 22, 1967.

As a way to honor my dad's memory, we are looking for funds to digitize thousands of slides, negatives, films and prints that my dad took during decades of professional photo work, and then release the high-quality images for free under a cc-by-sa 4.0 license to Wikimedia Commons so his work can be used by anyone, anywhere forever.

Let’s all do what we can to preserve this photographic treasure.

https://www.gofundme.com/remember-my-dad-through-his-photos

For more information please contact Victor Grigas (victorgrigas@gmail.com)

* All attached photography was made by Kelly Mountain and published under CC0 public domain dedication - free to publish for any reason with or without attribution.