Commemoration
Carl Sandburg's boyhood home in Galesburg is now operated by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency as the Carl Sandburg State Historic Site. The site contains the cottage Sandburg was born in, a modern visitor's center, and small garden with a large stone called Remembrance Rock, under which his and his wife's ashes are buried.[28] Sandburg's home of 22 years in Flat Rock, Henderson County, North Carolina, is preserved by the National Park Service as the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. Carl Sandburg College is located in Sandburg's birthplace of Galesburg, Illinois. During the Spanish-American War, Sandburg was stationed at Camp Alger in Fairfax County, Virginia and so the county has both a Sandburg Road, near the spot where the camp was located, and a Carl Sandburg Middle School.
Sandburg on historical roots, displayed at Deaf Smith County Museum, Hereford, TXOn January 6, 1978, the 100th anniversary of his birth, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Sandburg. The spare design consists of a profile originally drawn by his friend William A. Smith in 1952, along with Sandburg's own distinctive autograph.[29]
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) (RBML)[30] houses the Carl Sandburg Papers. The bulk of the collection was purchased directly from Carl Sandburg and his family. In total, the RBML owns over 600 cubic feet of Sandburg's papers, including photographs, correspondence, and manuscripts.[31][32]
In 2011, Sandburg was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.[33]
Namesakes
Carl Sandburg Village was a 1960s urban renewal project in the Near North Side, Chicago. Financed by the city, it is located between Clark and LaSalle St. between Division Street and North Ave. Solomon & Cordwell, architects. In 1979, Carl Sandburg Village was converted to condominium ownership.
Numerous schools are named for Sandburg throughout the United States, and he was present at some of these schools' dedications. (Some years after attending the 1954 dedication of Carl Sandburg High School in Orland Park, Illinois, Sandburg returned for an unannounced visit; the school's principal at first mistook him for a hobo.) Sandburg Halls, a student residence hall at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, carries a plaque commemorating Sandburg's roles as an organizer for the Social Democratic Party and as personal secretary to Emil Seidel, Milwaukee's first Socialist mayor.
Carl Sandburg Library opened in Livonia, Michigan, in 1961. The name was recommended by the Library Commission as an example of an American author representing the best of literature of the Midwest. Carl Sandburg had taught at the University of Michigan for a time.[34]
Galesburg opened Sandburg Mall in 1975, named in honor of Sandburg. The Chicago Public Library installed the Carl Sandburg Award, annually awarded for contributions to literature.[35]
A subdivision in a suburbs of Atlanta Georgia is named after Carl Sandburg and his life. Connemara HOA in Lawrenceville (GA) includes the namesake of Connemara, his home in NC. Street names include Galesburg Dr (his birthplace), Windflower Way (named after the poem Windflower Leaf), Remembrance Trace (named after his only novel of Remembrance Rock), Flat Rock Dr (his home of Connemara in Flat Rock, NC), and Lombard Dr (the college he attended).
Amtrak added the Carl Sandburg train in 2006 to supplement the Illinois Zephyr on the Chicago–Quincy route.[36]
In other media
- William Saroyan wrote a short story about Sandburg in his 1971 book Letters from 74 rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody.
- Sandburg's "Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come" from The People, Yes was a slogan of the German peace movement ("Stell dir vor, es ist Krieg, und keiner geht hin"); however, it is often falsely attributed to Bertolt Brecht.[37]
- Daniel Steven Crafts' The Song and The Slogan is an orchestral composition built around recited passages from Sandburg's "Prairie".
- Peter Louis van Dijk's "Windy City Songs", based on the Chicago poems, was performed by the Chicago Children's Choir and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Choir in 2007.[38]
- Bob Gibson's "The Courtship of Carl Sandburg", starring Tom Amandes as Sandburg[39]
- In Jonathan Lethem's novel Dissident Gardens the main character Rose Zimmer became an Abraham Lincoln devotee after reading Sandburg's biography. Her copy of the six volumes became the centerpiece of her shrine to Lincoln.
- Sufjan Stevens's "Come on! Feel the Illinoise! Part I: The World's Columbian Exposition Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream" (from Illinois).
- Composer Phyllis Zimmerman set Sandburg's poems to music in her choral composition Fog, which was recorded and produced on CD.[40]
