54-foot-tall blue spruce to become Chicago's official Christmas tree for 2024
If the tree that's been selected to be the city's official Christmas tree this year was any more Chicago it would have an accent and maybe say "tree" instead of three.
The 54-foot tree will be plucked from the front yard of a Logan Square home on the 2500 block of North Kimball Avenue that has a new family moving in.
Sarah Holden and her husband, Dave Shaddick, their daughters, Hazel and Pearl, as well as three cats and three lizards, are about to move a few blocks from their current home and into the historic Victorian — their dream home — after three years of renovations.
The tree, a blue spruce, was planted when the previous owner, Jim Mulligan, moved into the home in 1976. Mulligan, whose family came to the U.S. from Ireland, worked for the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation, and hosted near-weekly summer yard sales — more for conversation than commerce.
After Mulligan sold the home, he got to know Holden and Shaddick and their girls a bit before he died in October of 2022.
He was part of a succession of home owners who were all known by a single name. Before it was the Mulligan house, it was the Thornton house and belonged to longtime neighborhood physician Francis E. Thornton.
Before him, it was occupied by the man who built the home in 1899, Spencer Kimbell, whose father, Martin Kimbell, was a pioneer when he moved to the area now known as Logan Square from New York in the 1830s. Back then it was part of Jefferson Township, before becoming part of Chicago in the late 1800s.
City officials gave the Kimbell family a nod by naming a street in their honor, but when street signs went up, the name was misspelled as Kimball.
"The story goes that one of Martin Kimbell's sons went around with a bucket of paint and painted an E over all the A's," said Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago.
But the wrong name remains, and in the coming days the tall pine tree on Kimball will no longer be a geographic marker for folks in the neighborhood, but the beautifully restored Victorian home behind it will surely become one.
"The tree is quite large and pretty close to our house," said Holden, 43, who teaches steel fabrication at the Chicago Industrial Design Center in Rogers Park. "It's costly to maintain," she said.
Offering it to the the city seemed a natural fit. She wrote to the city as part of an annual contest in which residents pitch their trees for consideration. Her letter explained how Mulligan planted it and how he was a beloved character. She was surprised when she got a call saying the tree had been chosen.
She has been given VIP seats for the tree-lighting ceremony Nov. 22 in Millennium Park and has offered a number of them to the Mulligan family.
"My dad got that tree when it was just a little shrub in a pot as a gift from my grandmother," said Mulligan's daughter, Gerrie Mulligan, a school bus driver who lives in Romeoville.
"As it got bigger, we'd hide behind it when me and my brother and all our neighborhood friends would be playing," she said.
For years Gerrie encouraged her dad to offer the tree to the city to use as its official Christmas tree.
"He wasn't opposed to the idea, but he was very particular about his grass and flowers, and I think he figured removing the tree might damage his manicured landscaping," she said. "Everyone always called his lawn the 'Wrigley Field lawn' because it was just perfect."
Her father grew up in the neighborhood and attended St. Sylvester Catholic school.
"He was just straight-up Chicago, and to me this means so much, and it would have for him too," she said.
An honorary street sign honoring Mulligan is set to go up later this year in the 2500 block of North Kimball.
In a case of history nearly repeating itself, the city almost put in on the wrong block, Gerrie Mulligan said with a laugh.