Another picture of the Garfield Park Conservatory: The Fern Room.

According to a sign at the entrance, the room was Jen Jensen’s “imaginative tribute to prehistoric Illinois. So natural looking was the result that when the Conservatory first opened, visitors thought it has been erected over an existing lagoon… Many of the plants in this room date to the time of the dinosaurs. They have changed little from their ancestors over the last 200 million years. Our plants, of course, are not that old. The oldest are about 300 years of age.”

At the entrance to the Fern Room, another Chicago talent of yore left his mark: sculptor Lorado Taft. Seen a few of his things before.

He called this piece “Idyl,” and it dates from 1913.

This one is “Pastoral,” of the same vintage.