Monthly Archives: December 2018

Twelve Pictures ’18

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Like last year and the year before, time to wind up December with a dozen previously unused pictures, one for each month. Back to posting on about January 6, 2019, Epiphany, or maybe January 7, President Millard Fillmore’s 219th birthday. One of these days, I need to visit Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo to pay my respects, but it won’t be in January.

January 2018

February 2018

New York City, March 2018

Marfa, Texas, April 2018

Bartlett, Illinois, May 2018

Arcola, Illinois, June 2018

Duluth, July 2018

DeKalb, Illinois, August 2018

Milwaukee, September 2018

San Antonio, October 2018

Chicago, November 2018

December 2018

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

The Last Days of the Heartland Cafe

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At the intersection of W. Lunt Ave. and N. Glenwood Ave., tucked in a corner of Chicago’s far north Rogers Park neighborhood, is the Heartland Cafe. A neighborhood institution.
Word is that the Heartland is closing on December 31. That was a surprise, since it’s been around a long time — opening during the last year of the Ford administration.

I first went there in 1987 with a friend of mine, Becky, who liked the Heartland because of its vegan options. She was a vegan and told me that suitable items on Chicago restaurant menus were hard to find. After that introduction, I went periodically in the ’80s and ’90s, not because of vegan or even non-meat offerings — widely available now — but because the place makes good food at reasonable prices.

When I learned of its closing, I knew I wanted to go one more time. So we went on Sunday. The drive to Rogers Park from Humboldt Park, where Yuriko takes her cake class, is a slog. Driving through the city is usually a slog. But I’m glad we went.

For lunch I had a very non-vegan Reuben sandwich, a good choice. Yuriko had a breakfast burrito, also good.

Google Maps, which has incorrect information sometimes, is wrong about the Heartland. Its thumbnail description for the place is “vegetarian eatery with a hippie vibe.” Meat is all over the regular menu, so no. And a hippie vibe? What does that even mean? Besides, hippies were passe even by 1976.

As restaurants go, the Heartland has more of a diner vibe. Simplicity.

The Hope poster shows more than mere political sympathies, though it does do that. Rather, the Heartland is one of the places that Barack Obama appeared during his run for the U.S. Senate in those seeming long-ago days of 2004.

Murals adorn the Glenwood embankment across from the restaurant.

They weren’t there the last time I went to the Heartland, whenever that was (ca. 2000 would be a good guess). They’re part of a Rogers Park-specific initiative, Mile of Murals, and were painted in 2010 by a variety of artists.

Among many other things, the Heartland makes an appearance on the wall.

Guess the image will be there longer than the restaurant itself.

The Boarded-Up St. Boniface and the Resplendent Holy Trinity

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At the intersection of Chicago Ave. and Noble St. in Chicago, you’ll find a word you don’t see that much: natatorium. It’s attached to the Ida Crown Natatorium, a unit of the Chicago Park District.
The facility has an entry in the Atlas Obscura, which notes that “its most arresting feature is the swooping, gently curved ‘barrel shell’ roof that arches over the pool, resembling in the words of one critic ‘a wave of concrete about to crash onto the shore of Chicago Avenue.’

“Mayor Richard J. Daley himself presided over the pool’s dedication in 1961, which was named for one of Chicago’s most prominent philanthropic families.” (Actually, Ida was a member of that family, the grandmother of this wealthy fellow.)

The natatorium is at the south end of the mid-sized Eckhart Park, which is otherwise an open area of playing fields. Rising over the north end of Eckhart Park, along W. Chestnut St., is the shuttered St. Boniface Church, originally built in the early 1900s for a primarily German Catholic congregation. Presumably they didn’t want to share a church with the surrounding Poles, and vice versa. St. Boniface, of course, led the effort to Christianize the Germans and is highly regarded in that country.
Given the Chicago Archdiocese’s history of knocking down splendid Chicago churches because money is tight (and these days, there are other bills to pay), I’m surprised that the shell of St. Boniface, which closed in 1990, is still standing.

This summer, the city approved plans to redevelop the structure into condominiums, including a new building as well as units in what used to be the sanctuary. That’s better than razing the grand old church. To the side of the boarded-up structure, I noticed a construction site in its early stages.

The redevelopment is slated for completion in 2020, but for now St. Boniface still has that abandoned look. Inside, even more.

While standing on Noble St. near the hulking St. Boniface, I noticed another church not far to the north. A large-looking structure. When I was looking around Google Maps a few days ahead of my walk, I hadn’t noticed it. But there it was. The church looked to be about five minutes away, so I went.

Soon I was in front of Holy Trinity Church.
Definitely built for a Polish congregation and still very much a Polish congregation. The church is run by the Society of Christ Fathers for Poles Living Abroad.
Polish Independence Day is the same as Armistice Day, incidentally. Same day, same year. The war was over and everything was up for grabs, including self-determination for formerly partitioned places.

Completed in 1906, Holy Trinity’s design is attributed to a Chicago architect named William Krieg, who (according to one source) mostly did more modest buildings in Chicago — a lot of them. Another source calls Krieg “little known” and a manufacturer of terra cotta as well.

I wasn’t expecting the interior to be quite so ornate. I gawked at the column-free space for a while, looking at the murals covering the walls and ceiling, the stained glass, the statues and other ornaments.
A baptism was in progress, but no mass, so I moved around the sanctuary. Here’s the baptism party in front of the altar.
Later, as I read about the church, I can across this bit of information at Wiki about the space underneath. The article calls it “catacombs,” but that seems like a misnomer. Rather, the space is “beneath the area formerly occupied by the lower church, and consist[s] of a winding path lined with niches containing saintly relics…”

A little like the space for relics found at St. Josaphat in Milwaukee, perhaps. Intriguing.

Holy Innocents Church, Chicago

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A block south of Chicago Ave. on N. Armour St. is Holy Innocents Church. Since I was already taking a walk on that part of Chicago Ave. in the city on Gaudete Sunday on a clear and practically warm day for December, I figured I’d take a look.

Holy Innocents is yet another of the city’s grand churches built in the early 20th century for Chicago’s enormous Polish population, and yet another design by Worthmann & Steinbach. Like St. Mary of the Angels, Covenant Presbyterian, First Lutheran of the Trinity and St. Barbara — all in Chicago.
Romanesque Revival with Byzantine elements, the building was completed in 1912 and renovated in 2005.

I arrived not long after the beginning of a mass in Polish. I sat in for part of it. The crowd wasn’t massive, but a number of congregants were scattered around the sizable interior of the church.
Unlike the Latin mass at St. John Cantius last year, I couldn’t pick out any words at all, so unfamiliar am I with the Polish language. No matter.

Besides Polish, the church offers masses in English and Spanish as well, which seems only fitting considering the modern population. Since the service was in progress, I wasn’t able to poke around the church, but I did notice — they’re hard to miss — a shrine devoted to Our Lady of Częstochowa on the left side of the church (as you face the altar) and another devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe on the right. Also fitting.

A December Walk Along Chicago Ave.

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While Yuriko attended a cooking class this morning, I had a few hours to kick around in Chicago. I also had the good luck of sunshine and temps in the upper 40s — about as good as you’re going to get this time of the year. So I decided to take a walk.

I parked my car on a small street in what Google Maps tells me is the East Village neighborhood. I’m not sure anyone who lives there calls it that, but since the name is on the map, I’m going to use it. Likewise Noble Square, which is directly to the east of East Village. I spent time there as well.

Much of my walk was along W. Chicago Ave. roughly between the 1800 and 1300 blocks west, or between N. Wolcott Ave. to N. Noble St.

The area has plenty of the markings of gentrification, such as this piece of equipment being used to build a condo development just off Chicago Ave. whose units begin at about twice what my pleasant suburban house would sell for.
Not far away, an event likely to appeal to those with some disposable income. Some pop-up experiential retail, to toss around some real estate argot. Untill Christmas?
 Part of the Chicago Ave. streetscape and some interesting buildings.

Older aspects of the neighborhood are still co-existing with the re-uses. Such as Mr. Taco’s, which ought to keep its weathered sign.
Loop Tavern has an old Chicago look about it. Beatnik, from what I could see the outside, is an expensive new cocktail bar. Or, as this review calls it — using a remarkably ugly word — “clubstaurant.”

Neither is my kind of place. On the other hand, a pie joint on Chicago Ave. attracted my attention. I was intrigued enough to go inside and might have ordered a slice of pie, but I noticed that they sold for $8 to $9. A slice. Really, now? I’ve paid less for pie during this decade in Manhattan. Good pie, too. My take on such a thing: It can’t be that good. Full stop.

Here’s a good adaptive re-use on Chicago Ave. Note that the building still says Goldblatt Bros.
The building is home to the West Town Branch of the Chicago Public Library. Goldblatt’s was a local chain of discount department stores whose heyday was from the early to the mid-20th century. The rest of the 20th century wasn’t kind to the chain. I remember visiting the Goldblatt’s location in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago in the late ’90s, and a sadder retail operation would be hard to imagine. They’re all gone now.

One more thing.
A bit of hyperlocal detail: a vernacular memorial to Stan Lee on Chicago Ave.

Le Corbusier & Ando

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The first-ever exhibit at Wrightwood 659 is called Tadao Ando and Le Corbusier: Masters of Architecture. You’d think the more alliterative Masters of Modernism would be the thing, but probably the organizers thought that would be too narrow. And Masters of Human Creativity would be too broad.
The Le Corbusier exhibit was on the second floor. Pictures and paintings and models and a lot to read.
Before I’d only had a casual acquaintance with his output. I didn’t know about his paintings, for instance. Such as Taureau VIII (Bull VIII), 1954.

Looks suspiciously Picassoesque to my unlearned eye, but I don’t doubt Le Corbusier’s creativity. The models for some of his buildings, built and unbuilt, show that well enough.

A house he designed in Argentina, 1949.
An unbuilt governor’s palace for Punjab State in India, 1950-65.
Still, when I looked at some of the models, I couldn’t help being reminded of every ugly modernist box I’ve ever seen, even if his own work — in this case Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille — had a bit more style.
Remarkably, the building now includes the Hôtel Le Corbusier on two floors, and some color seems to have been added to the exterior. Even more remarkably, according to the Telegraph: “Double rooms from €79 (£67) year-round, an incredibly reasonable rate for the opportunity to sleep within an architectural icon.”

Reasonable all right. If the hotel were in this country, its owner would brag about curating Le Corbusier’s legacy, tout its upscale amenities, and charge three or four times as much.

On floors three and four of Wrightwood 659 were the Ando exhibits. I believe Ando has some advantages over Le Corbusier. He’s alive, for example, and could visit the exhibit when it opened and draw on the walls. This doodle evokes the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, which he designed.
Also, Ando is a niche practitioner who does marvels in concrete, not someone inspiring a rash of urban renewal destruction and ugliness. Here’s a model of Ando’s Church of the Light near Osaka. I need to visit someday.

A lot of the third floor was taken up with a model of Naoshima, a small island in the Inland Sea that’s large enough to be home to a number of Ando-designed museums, developed over the last few decades.

Know where else I need to visit? Naoshima. There are just too many interesting places in the world.

Wrightwood 659

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Saint Clement and a stroll in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood were nice, but we’d come to the city last Saturday morning to see Wrightwood 659, a new exhibition space designed by architect Tadao Ando. Yuriko has a fondness for him, and not just because he’s Japanese, or even that he’s from Osaka, though those help. A few years ago, she was impressed by the Church of the Light in Ibaraki in Osaka Prefecture, one of his works.

I have a sneaking admiration for him too. The man has a way with concrete.

You wouldn’t know that looking at the front elevation of Wrightwood 659, which happens to be at 659 W. Wrightwood Ave.
The space, opened only in October, is the redevelopment of an ordinary Lincoln Park apartment building dating from the late 1920s.

“The building greets the visitor with a refurbished facade adorned with arches, festoons and other Beaux-Arts details,” Blair Kamin wrote in the Tribune. “But the decorous facade turns out to be a mask. Like a ship in a bottle, the project inserts a new steel and concrete frame inside the brick walls; the frame braces the old walls and turns the original four floors into three. A concrete slab that floats building’s new identity.

“Ando gives us that kind of space in Wrightwood 659’s lobby, an unexpected, four-story burst of space that’s energized by the rhythmic treads and risers of an exposed concrete stair that corkscrews upward. Common brick recycled from the original building’s corridor lines the walls, its mottled texture in counterpoint with finely honed stairs.”

The staircase is signature Ando.
This image is untinted, reflecting the true color of the walls.
I understand that the dog’s name was “Corbusier.”
Gallery space on the second floor, at least until this Saturday, features an exhibit about Le Corbusier, and the third- and fourth-floor galleries are devoted to Ando. The fourth floor west-facing wall, which is floor-to-ceiling glass and steel, has a terrific view of the neighborhood.
The view also looks down on the Ando-designed, 665 W. Wrightwood Ave., a 1998-vintage private house owned by Fred Eychaner, a Chicago media mogul. Eychaner must like Ando’s work, since he was the moving force — and probably most of the money — behind the establishment of Wrightwood 659.

Eychaner is inevitably described as “reclusive.” As we were leaving, I took a look at the front of 665 W. Wrightwood, nestled as it is among ’20s-vintage apartments.
Yep, that wall pretty much says, Go away, leave me alone.

Saint Clement Church, Chicago

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At noon on Saturday, we’d just emerged onto the street in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago when we heard church bells nearby. A robust peeling that commanded our attention.

We soon figured out that they were the bells of Saint Clement. What do the bells of Saint Clement say? Oranges and lemons. A different church, but never mind. I might not know that if I’d never read 1984, but what kind of person would I be if I’d never read 1984?

Naturally, I wanted to see if the church was open. The bells gave us extra incentive to take a look. Saint Clement is at N. Orchard St. and W. Deming Pl.
Not long before, we’d seen the striking dome of the church from a fourth-floor view, more about which later.
Saint Clement in Chicago is 100 years old, originally built by German Catholics. St. Louis architect Thomas Barnett designed the church. He also did the Byzantine-style Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, and Saint Clement reminded me of that place of worship, though without the mosaics.

The interior was dark when we visited. It must be expensive to light such a large place. Besides, I imagine that most large churches in most places during all the pre-electric centuries were dark most of the time. Here are some pics with all the electric light blazing and it must be quite a sight. But even dark, the place was impressive (and it would be fine to see it lighted by candle).

On an overcast day, the stained glass was well illuminated.

Of course I had to look up St. Clement. I might have learned about him in passing in New Testament class, but that was a good many years ago. Anyway, he was the fourth bishop of Rome and, according to legend, found martyrdom ca. AD 101 in a distinctive way: tossed into the Black Sea tied to an anchor.

That would account for the anchor motif I saw on the exterior of Saint Clement School, which is across the street from the church. If I’d had a bit more light, I might have found that in the church as well.

W. Deming Place, Chicago

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Among Chicago streets, W. Deming Pl. seems to be a two-block runt. Or five very short blocks, if you count every minor cross street. Deming’s west end is at N. Orchard St. and its east end is at Lakeview Ave., which is the edge of Lincoln Park at that point — the actual park, not the neighborhood of that name.

Fairly early on Saturday, we took a short stroll down Deming, from N. Orchard to N. Clark St., a major commercial artery. Temps were below freezing, but not by much, so a brisk walk wasn’t bad.

No doubt about it, Deming’s a nice street in the mostly posh Lincoln Park neighborhood.

One thing about being a posh neighborhood in a dense urban setting: legal parking is hard to find.
We’d avoided that particular problem by driving most of the way to Lincoln Park, parking the car in a less posh but still pleasant enough Chicago neighborhood — one with much more street parking — and taking the El on a short ride to where we wanted to be.

Do urban planners take car-mass transit combinations seriously? From our vantage in the suburbs, it’s often the best choice for arriving at a particular point in the city. I’m no authority on urban planning, but somehow I get the impression that it’s either/or: massive transit vs. private cars.

94 Gordon Road, Ealing, London

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December 1994 was a good month. We were lucky to have it. After being on the move since April, it was time to take a rest but not quite time to go home. Or rather, go make a new home in the United States. So we spent most of the month in London.

I can’t remember how we found Ealing Tourist Flats. There was no Internet to consult, but there was a short-term rental industry, and we rented one of its units for four weeks. The property was a half-mile or so beyond the North Ealing Underground Station, which was on the Piccadilly Line, but it was much closer to a commuter rail station, Ealing Broadway, which is where we usually went if we wanted to go into the city center.

The neighborhood is part of the sprawl of greater London, with suburbization happening in the early 20th century. It still had a pleasant suburban character in the ’90s. Ealing Tourist Flats was at 94 Gordon Road.

I didn’t notice till I looked closely, but I’m in the picture, barely visible. I’m pretty sure the sign to the right of the main entrance, with the blue stripe, said Ealing Tourist Flats. Our flat was on the second floor, behind the windows on the left. It was a large studio with a foldout bed, table, television, and small food preparation area. Simple but all we needed for a few weeks.

In our time, I can look it up in detail. The tree’s gone and so is the sign on the front, but otherwise it looks about the same. I suspect it’s an ordinary apartment building these days.

Google Maps would have been a good thing to have, but of course in those days google would have just been a misspelling of 10100. If we’d had it, we might have noticed that Ealing Studios was actually nearby. We walked at least once to Walpole Park, which is next to the studios, though December wasn’t the best time for strolling in English parks, and I don’t think we realized it was close.