Christ the King & Trinity United Methodist

Posted on November 6, 2019 by admin

Our visits during the 2019 Open House Chicago event on October 19 weren’t only to churches — just mostly. The opportunity was there.

In the mid-afternoon, we headed down to the Beverly neighborhood on the Southwest Side. Next year, no long drives between neighborhoods — we spent too much time jammed on the Kennedy Expressway, then the Dan Ryan Expressway. I should have known better. But the sites were worth it.

Eventually, we got to Beverly. First stop, Christ the King.

Midcentury Modern, with distinctive brass and glass, completed in 1955. Design by Fox & Fox, who are still in business.
The King of Kings indeed. Painted to look like a mosaic from the floor.
Some blocks to the south is Trinity United Methodist, designed by Ralph E. Stotzel and Edward F. Jansen.
“The present building is its 5th location, begun with the construction of the community house — the northern portion of the current building — in 1924. Construction of the Gothic sanctuary was delayed by the Great Depression, but it was completed in 1940,” says Open House.

The church also has a fine organ.

We heard it in action. According to the church, it is a Möller Pipe Organ, opus 8240, with three manuals and 26 ranks, installed in 1951. Apparently the M.P. Möller Organ Co. of Hagerstown, Md., was a busy organ-maker in its day.

St. Benedict the African

Posted on November 5, 2019 by admin

As a saint, Benedict the African (1526-89), or Benedict the Moor, has enjoyed longstanding popularity in Italy, Spain and Latin America, and is also the patron saint of African-Americans. I didn’t know any of that before we visited St. Benedict the African, a church in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, as part of Open House Chicago on October 19, but I was going to learn.

The exterior looked unpromising. It’s a modernist design completed in 1989 by Belli & Belli. “Eight parishes were consolidated into St. Benedict the African in the 1980s, the building was designed specifically with and for its predominantly African-American community,” Open House says.
The exterior might be utilitarian, but inside is a whole other story. A whole other remarkable story. A welcoming St. Benedict is one of the first figures you see.
Fashioned from Ethiopian glass (there’s an industry there) by local artist David Csicsko to honor Benedict’s parents’ birthplace. The Sears Tower and the John Hancock building are in the background.

Not far from that window is an astonishingly large baptismal pool (too big to be called a font?). Open House claims that at 10,000 gallons, it’s one of the world’s largest.
The sanctuary is in the round.
“An inspired 200-pound, hand-woven tapestry adorns the wall behind the altar and depicts a dancing flame (the spirit of God), choppy waters (daily strife), and the broken body of Christ image as the Bread of Life,” the church says.

In wood, a depiction of St. Martin de Porres, another saint I knew nothing about before visiting the church.

More Csicsko glass. A Living Cross.
Elsewhere is another one of his windows, or a pair actually, depicting Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks and Sister Thea Bowman, the last of whom was new to me as well.

Our Lady of Victory & St. Edward (the Confessor)

Posted on November 4, 2019 by admin

According to Open House Chicago, Our Lady of Victory is in the Portage Park neighborhood of Chicago, though it isn’t that far south of the Copernicus Center in Jefferson Park. Other sources put the church in Jefferson Park.

Never mind, Our Lady of Victory was our first church of the day during Open House. Others would follow.

Underneath the main church is a chapel. According to a parishioner on hand to talk to visitors, the chapel was completed decades before the rest of the church — 1928, designed by E. Brielmaier & Sons. Then work stopped. First there were hard times, then there was a war.

“Work on the upper church was delayed until it was finally completed in 1954,” Open House says. “The tan stone of the Spanish-style exterior was selected specifically to complement the color of the ornate terra-cotta around the original entrance.”

By this time, different architects were on the job: Meyer & Cook.“The warmth of the exterior extends to the sanctuary’s lavish tan and pink marble and terrazzo. Polychromatic details throughout, particularly in the stained glass, wooden Stations of the Cross and other painted elements contribute to a colorful and welcoming space tied together with subtle Art Deco influences.”

East of Our Lady of Victory, and east of the Kennedy Expressway in the Irving Park neighborhood, is St. Edward. I don’t know that I’ve ever visited a church named for Edward the Confessor, but there it was.
And there he is.
Quite a view, looking straight up.
The church has a similar construction history as Our Lady of Victory, except the archdiocese managed to complete it before the war. “Plans to build the current St. Edward Church began around 1926,” Open House Chicago notes.

“Construction of the lower level was completed, but the work was halted because of the Depression. Worship took place in the lower church at basement level. The upper church was completed in 1940.”

The distinctive feature of St. Edward is in the narthex. Not too many churches you can say that about.

More specifically, all around the narthex ceiling is a painted replica of the first third of the Bayeux Tapestry, done in oils by an artist named Mae Connor-Anderson and completed in 2005. It’s about 75 feet long and you have to crane your neck to appreciate it, or — as I did for a few moments — lay on the floor.

Just inside the nave a parishioner, maybe only a shade older than I am, sat at a small table with some material about the church and especially the Tapestry, mostly some photocopied sheets. I took an interest and told him that I’d seen the Tapestry. He seemed a little excited at that — not only someone who knew what it was, but who had actually seen it. He told me that he wanted to see it himself, but hadn’t gotten around to it.

So we talked some more about the Tapestry and St. Edward’s replica, and just before I left, he told me to wait a second. From under the table, he produced a professionally made 12-page booklet about the St. Edward and the Tapestry and gave it to me. The cover:
The first third was reproduced on the ceiling for reasons of space, but also because it begins with King Edward meeting Harold II — perfidious Harold, according to Norman propaganda — and ends with Edward being interred at Westminster Abbey. Other adjustments were made as well, including leaving the Latin tituli out.

An example page of the booklet:
From my perch on the floor, I was determined to get at least one image of the ceiling painting.
Who else but good King Edward?

Jefferson Park, Chicago

Posted on November 3, 2019 by admin

The weekend after I returned from Virginia, where we encountered a number of statues of Thomas Jefferson, I found myself in front of a statue of Thomas Jefferson. In Chicago. In the neighborhood known as Jefferson Park on the Northwest Side.
Jefferson Park Jefferson statue He’s standing in front of an open-air CTA bus terminal. Actually, an intermodal station, since the Jefferson Park El stop is back there, too.

“The statue depicts Jefferson standing at a podium as he signed the Declaration of Independence,” says Chicago-L. “The statue stands on a circular granite base, divided into 13 wedges representing the 13 original colonies. One of Jefferson’s quotations — ‘The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government’ — is imprinted around the outer edge.

“A time capsule, which includes essays from the children from schools in the surrounding area, was buried at the statue’s feet. The statue was made possible through a fund drive organized by the Jefferson Park Chamber of Commerce.”

Elsewhere, I found that it’s the work of Edward Hlavka, erected in 2005.

As interesting as an eye-level bronze of a Founding Father might be, I hadn’t come to Jefferson Park for that. Rather, the area was our first stop during Open House Chicago 2019 on October 19. The fact that I just gotten back from a trip wasn’t going to keep me away. Besides, it was a pleasant fall day in Chicago.

First we went to the Copernicus Center on W. Lawrence Ave.
These days, the Copernicus Center is an event venue owned by the Copernicus Foundation, a Polish-American society, which holds events of interest to the local Polish population, but that’s not all. Looking at its list of upcoming events, I found a concert by Iranian pop singer Shadmehr Aghili; Praise Experience, “one of the biggest African gospel concerts in Chicago”; and a stage show called Cleopatra Metio la Pata, “Por fin llega a los Estados Unidos la sexy comedia musical!”

The building opened in 1930 as the Gateway Theatre, “designed in Atmospheric style with classical Roman-inspired flourishes; complete with a dark blue, starlit sky in the 2,092-seat auditorium, and classical statuary and vines on the side walls,” Cinema Treasures says. A movie palace, in other words. Mason Gerardi Rapp of Rapp & Rapp did the design.

Movies are still shown at the Copernicus — the Polish Film Festival in America is coming there soon — but mostly the stage holds live shows.

From there, we walked along Milwaukee Ave., passing the Jefferson statue, and soon arrived at the Jefferson Masonic Temple.
The main room was open.
A mason was on hand, the fellow wearing the tie, to talk about the temple and Masonry. The subject of the Anti-Masonic Party didn’t come up.

“The Jefferson Masonic Temple, completed in 1913, is one of a few remaining active Masonic Temples in the city limits of Chicago…” Open House Chicago notes. “The Providence Lodge, which built the structure, eventually merged with the King Oscar Lodge, and the space is now shared by several different Lodges and owned by the nonprofit Jefferson Masonic Temple Association.”

Colonial Williamsburg

Posted on October 29, 2019 by admin

Things to bring to Colonial Williamsburg: money, walking shoes, water (especially in summer) and — I can’t stress this enough — some historical imagination. Not everyone has much. I understand that. Still, if you can’t bring much historical imagination to your visit, best to go somewhere else.

A look at a few of the recent “terrible” reviews of Colonial Williamsburg on TripAdvisor illustrates the point (all sic).

Mrpetsaver: This place is like that fort or museum with old buildings common in some communities, but on a larger scale.

My kids got bored very quickly and so did I. Most of the staff are great and professional dressed up in costumes, but aren’t acting. Instead, they discuss how the original inhabitants did their different jobs etc.

Dewpayne: It has some very interesting sites but there so far away you get bored it’s more about the shops and selling water I wouldn’t recommend it.

zebra051819: This historical site was a huge disappointment and I would not recommend spending your time here. There must be more informative sites where one could gain an appreciation of Civil War history.

Mrpetsaver is right, though. Colonial Williamsburg is a larger version of an open-air museum. It is an open-air museum. One on a grand scale, the likes of which we’d only experienced — sort of — at Greenfield Village.

Colonial Williamsburg shouldn’t be confused with Williamsburg, Virginia, which is a town of around 14,500 on the lower reaches of the James River. As a 21st-century American town, it has the usual amenities, such as honky-tonks (maybe), Dairy Queens and 7-11s, where you can buy cherry pies, candy bars and chocolate-chip cookies.

Colonial Williamsburg, on the other hand, occupies 173 acres and includes 88 original buildings and more than 50 major reconstructions. All of Colonial Williamsburg is within modern Williamsburg, but not all of modern Williamsburg involves Colonial Williamsburg. A fair bit of it doesn’t, according to maps.

A hundred years ago, Williamsburg was a small college town with a history, namely as the second capital of Virginia when it was a prosperous tobacco colony. No doubt the story of how Colonial Williamsburg came to be in the early 20th century is fairly complicated, with a number of major players, but I’m going to oversimplify by saying that Money wanted it to happen, as persuaded by Preservationism.

Money in the form of Rockefeller scion John D. Rockefeller Jr., who had the deep pockets necessary to start the purchase and restoration of the historic sites, and Preservationism in the form of W.A.R. Goodwin (1869–1939), rector of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, who felt alarmed that the 20th century was eating away at the area’s historic structures.

Colonial Williamsburg is a odd hybrid of past and present, but also of museum and neighborhood. The foundation that runs the museum doesn’t play it up — and some of the disappointed TripAdvisor reviews note it ruefully — but it turns out that you don’t need a ticket to wander along the streets of Colonial Williamsburg.

Cars aren’t allowed on the streets during museum hours, but visitors are perfectly free to park a few blocks away and walk around. That’s because the town of Williamsburg still owns the streets and sidewalks, making them public thoroughfares.

Also — another thing the foundation doesn’t dwell on — people live in Colonial Williamsburg. “There are dozens of people — families, couples, college students — who live in some of the historic homes of Colonial Williamsburg,” says Local Scoop. “Many of the homes are original colonial-era buildings; others were rebuilt based on historical accounts to look like the homes they once were.

“It’s not a perk available to everyone. To live in the Historic Area, one has to work at Colonial Williamsburg or be an employee at the College of William & Mary. In all, there are 75 houses rented through the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation…”

I found this out when I was there, and pretty soon I started noticing that a fair number of the houses had small signs denoting them as private residences. I also noticed a few people doing neighborhood sorts of things, like jogging or walking their dogs, as opposed to tourist sorts of things.

So why buy a ticket? That’s so you can see the interiors of the many buildings flying the Grand Union flag. They mark the open-air museum’s buildings.
Also, your ticket gets you into some Colonial Williamsburg events, many of which involve reenactors. So we got tickets. At $45 each, and no student discount (grumble), that’s more than Henry Ford/Greenfield, in the same league as some theater tickets and some theme parks, and less than other theme parks (whose mascot is a Mouse).

At that price, I was determined to wear out my feet. So we did, spending October 14 from late morning to late afternoon at Colonial Williamsburg. At the end, I felt like I’d gotten my money’s worth. I’m a sucker for open-air museums, for one thing, but more than that, it is a special place with a lot to see and think about, if you add a dash of historical imagination.

You walk from the visitor center along a wooded path until you come to the historic buildings. The first one of any heft is the Governor’s Palace.
Maybe no grand thing back in England, but for colonial Virginia, a worthy residence for the gov. What you see now is a reconstruction from plans and, according to the guide on the interior tour that we joined, archaeological investigation of the materials left when the building collapsed in a fire in 1781, not long after Gov. Jefferson had decamped to Richmond.

When it burned, the structure was being used as a hospital for men wounded at the Battle of Yorktown. All of them but one escaped the fire, the guide said. I told Ann we should listen for that unfortunate fellow’s ghost. She told me to shush.

From there we wandered down the Palace Green to Duke of Gloucester St., pretty much the main street of the historic area. The view from the other end of the Palace Green.
Nearby is the Bruton Parish Church. It isn’t one of the Colonial Williamsburg buildings, but people go in as if it were. We did. A couple of parishioners were on hand to tell visitors about the church.
The building dates from the 1710s, but according to this history, it didn’t look much like the original by the mid-1800s, after various alterations and modernizations. Like Colonial Williamsburg, the church was restored to its 18th-century appearance only in the early 20th century.

The church’s graveyard was fenced in, but you could get a pretty good look at it anyway.
Some of the stones were close to the church itself.
The stone of Letitia Tyler Semple, one of President Tyler’s many children. A handful of stones were inside, flush with the floor of the church, as you see in old English churches. W.A.R. Goodwin has one of those.

We spent the rest of the day looking at and entering various structures on or near Duke of Glouchester St., such as the Geddy Foundry, the Courthouse, the Market Square, the Magazine, the Printing Office, the Silversmith, Bakery, Apothecary, and Raleigh Tavern, where we saw two reenactors: one playing Marquis de Lafayette and other James Armistead Lafayette, who spied for the Patriots at the Marquis’ request, and, after some inexcusable delays by the state of Virginia, finally won his freedom for his service.

Duke of Glouchester St.
The Magazine and its arms.
The Courthouse and nearby stocks. No rotten tomatoes on hand for tossing.
Duke of Glouchester St. Courthouse

Botetourt St.
The reconstructed Capitol was the second-to-last place we visited, taking a late-afternoon tour. Nicely done, I thought, though the authenticity of the redesign has been questioned.
The last place was Charlton’s Coffeehouse, where a foundation employee (“costumed interpreter”) in 18th-century garb showed us around and served visitors either coffee, tea or hot chocolate. Most of us tried the chocolate, as Ann and I did. Colonial hot chocolate included a variety of flavors not usually associated with modern hot chocolate. If I remember right, almonds, cinnamon and nutmeg in our case, but no rum. Our time is decidedly more abstemious than Colonial days when it comes to alcohol. Tasty anyway.

Some people expect the costumed interpreters to be actors (see above). To varying degrees they were in character, but mostly their job was to explain what went on in a particular building, and in the places like the foundry and silversmith and printing office, demonstrate some of the 18th-century work techniques. I had no complaints.

The fellow in the foundry turned out pewterware before our eyes and the young woman who showed us around the coffeeshop was informative and entertaining, telling us for instance the story of the tax collector (under the Stamp Act, I believe) who was greeted at the coffeehouse by a committee (mob) of citizens who suggested he find other work for himself. Wisely, he did.

There are restaurants at Colonial Williamsburg in some of the “taverns,” but I didn’t want to spend time at a sit-down restaurant when there were other things to see. So we subsisted on snacks during the visit, which are available in Colonial-themed small stores here and there on the grounds.

The 21st-century snacks were good.

UVA, Part 2: Nap at the Rotunda, the Lawn Obscured & Homer the Fundraiser

Posted on October 28, 2019 by admin

From the street, the approach to the Rotunda, the Thomas Jefferson-designed signature building of the University of Virginia in Charlottesburg, is up a series of steps overlooked by a bronze of Jefferson.
UVA Rotunda The Rotunda’s entrance is on the other side, facing the wide expanse of the Lawn, which is a quadrangle lawn surrounded by buildings, the likes of which you see at other American college campuses. Though the UVA Lawn had antecedents, its Lawn likely inspired the others.

“Standing at the north end of the University’s Lawn with its flanking faculty pavilions and student rooms, the Rotunda is based on the Pantheon in Rome,” says a NPS site on World Heritage Sites in the United States.

“Its Lawn continues to serve as a model for centralized green areas on university campuses. Reconstructed in 1899, after being severely damaged in a fire, the Rotunda retains many of its original Jeffersonian design elements and remains a physical embodiment of his illustrious legacy.”

I’d read a bit about the Jeffersonian UVA buildings — collectively the Academical Village — and wanted to look down from the Rotunda balcony at the sweep of the Lawn, as generations have before me. I expected a fine view.

Well, almost.
Some kind of event in preparation. Eventually, I would find out what.

We’d arrived about an hour before the Rotunda closed, so in we went, to see the stately rooms and artwork. The stateliest space is a floor up, under the dome.
However stately the Rotunda might appear at this moment, it has had a bumpy history, especially the 1895 fire.

An oculus is at the tip-top of the dome. Apparently it has a long history of leaking.

Students were tucked away at tables and alcoves in the Rotunda, attending to books and papers but mostly electronics. Besides being a masterpiece of neoclassical design, the brainchild of Thomas Jefferson and part of a World Heritage site, the Rotunda is also a place where students hang out. We too sat down for a few minutes.

When I wanted to go, Ann wanted to stay, relaxing in one of the Rotunda’s comfy chains. So she did, while I headed out into the rest of the Academical Village for the next hour. Maybe she took a light nap while I was gone.

Heading out, I noticed this structure. Not actually part of the Academical Village, but pretty close by.
The University Chapel. “The Gothic Revival building was designed by Charles Emmett Cassell of Baltimore, the chapel’s cornerstone was laid in 1885, and the chapel was dedicated in 1889… The University Chapel no longer holds regular religious services, but weddings and memorial services still take place inside.”
Some kind of meeting was going on inside when I stopped by, so I didn’t linger too long. From there, I happened on one of the Academical Village’s 10 walled gardens, which are behind the row of buildings that flank the Lawn. Nice, but I suppose spring or summer would be the best time to wander through the gardens.

I made my way along the Lawn’s side buildings. I hadn’t read enough about the Academical Village to realize that some of the buildings still include student rooms; originally they were the school’s only housing. A few doors were open and even a few Sunday-afternoon student get-togethers were visible inside. Must be special rooms in the scheme of UVA student housing. What do you have to do to be assigned one of them? (The polite way to ask that question.)

Further down the Lawn, I was hoping for a good look at the Rotunda. Well, almost.
At the south end of the Lawn is the impressive Old Cabell Hall.
Topped by a Greek inscription dating from a time when students studied Greek. Also, a time when optimistic inscriptions were carved on prominent buildings. The Greek is John 8:32, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

“A bookend to the University’s Rotunda, Cabell Hall was one of three buildings designed for the south end of the Lawn by architect Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White,” UVA says. “Completed and dedicated in 1898, the building was named in honor of Joseph C. Cabell, a member of both the Virginia legislature and the UVA Board of Visitors, and a steadfast ally of Mr. Jefferson as he sought to win state approval and funding for the University.

“Since 1951, Cabell Hall has housed the McIntire Department of Music and the Music Library as well as the University’s principal lecture and concert hall. Its auditorium has a seating capacity of 851 and hosts more than 200 public performances and events each year.”

Including a performance on October 13. I wandered in and heard music coming from the auditorium. No admission, so I sat in for a few minutes, and was treated to a bit of a Anyango Yarbo-Davenport violin recital (I don’t know what she was playing; but here’s a recording of her work.)

I would have stayed longer, but I wanted to get back to the Rotunda to meet Ann at closing time. Just outside Old Cabell, workers were erecting a large temporary pavilion — which is why I didn’t get a broader view of Old Cabell. What was all the hubbub on the Lawn, anyway?

Then I saw a sign that explained all: a coming fundraising event. Learning is fine and all, but fundraising — that’s job one for today’s Academical Village.

The university also notes: “Directly in front of Cabell Hall stands a 1907 bronze sculpture, created by Moses J. Ezekiel, of blind Homer and his guide.”

Homer was inside the temporary pavilion, which was a work site, so I didn’t go in. I could see the shadow of the statue from outside.
Another sign called the upcoming event Brunch With Homer. The idea amused me. I’d pony up a few dollars for UVA if I thought I could see a Homer reenactor reciting one of his epics over a sumptuous brunch. Abbreviated and in English, of course, to resonate with a modern North American audience. But I don’t think that’s what the event planners had in mind.

Monticello

Posted on October 24, 2019 by admin

Here I am again, I thought as I stood on the west lawn of Monticello, a place of such enormous resonance, in the early afternoon of October 13, 2019. The nickel view.
Yet I had a hard time remembering much about my first visit, which was on September 4, 1988. Maybe that’s because 31 years is a long time. Or because the view of Monticello from the west lawn, which I’ve known as long as I’ve known Jefferson nickels — all my life, for all practical purposes — is as close as anything gets to changeless.

I do know that the first time I saw the building in person, I realized that the nickel has a uninspired representation of Monticello. Flat. In person, you see that it’s a place to gaze at from more than one angle.
I’m holding a nickel in this picture, by the way.
A look at the eastern elevation. I’m glad to say that the house sports lightning rods, unlike a hilltop structure in Wisconsin that’s going to burn down after a strike someday.
The east entrance is where the interior tours start. Actually, no. You’re not getting in the building without starting at the David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center, which is down the hill from Jefferson’s home. That’s something different from 1988. The 42,000-square-foot visitors center has only been there for about 10 years.

Exactly where we bought tickets back then, I don’t remember, but I suspect it was simpler facility — not like the five pavilion-complex of the Rubenstein. Also, there were no timed tickets the first time around. I even think our tour was self-guided. Nor did I experience the warren of interconnected parking lots next to the visitors center, which was largely full. There must have been parking in 1988, and it too must have been simpler, but who remembers things like that?
Also: this interesting chronology tells me that I paid $7 in 1988 for my ticket. That’s just over $15 in current dollars. Note the 2019 ticket price: $26.95. Guess that extra $12 is going to pay for ever-fancier guest infrastructure.

In 1925, not long after the house was opened to paying visitors, admission was 50 cents — the equivalent of $3.88 in 1988 and $7.34 now, so I suppose ticket inflation has been an ongoing thing at Monticello.

I originally bought tickets online for the 10:45 am tour, but jammed traffic on I-64 just outside Charlottesville put us at the visitor center at 10:50. The helpful clerk didn’t bat an eye at that, and put us on a 12:30 pm tour (meeting at 12:25).

What that meant was that we had time to walk up the high hill to Monticello, as opposed to taking a shuttle bus, and stop roughly halfway up to see the Jefferson family graveyard, so it worked out for the best. Climbing gives you a sense of just how high the hill is. Besides, it’s a lovely path.
The burial ground is behind an ornate iron fence.
There are a lot of Randolphs. Jefferson’s daughter Martha married a Randolph, and they were the fecund parents of 13 children, 11 of whom survived childhood.
President Jefferson himself.
The path from the burial ground to Monticello proper takes you past the re-created garden, planted on a long terrace dug out of the side of the hill. In October, most of the vegetables have been harvested already, but some still linger.

The house tour, lead by a lively gray-haired gentleman who was probably a retired teacher, took us through the first floor, beginning with the entrance hall and its displays of Indian artifacts and animal horns and paintings and maps and such. Museums as such didn’t much exist in early Republic Virginia, so Jefferson created one for himself.

Then I remembered the Great Clock, hanging over the main entrance, from last time. A favorite of mine.

Other rooms feature books, furniture, paintings — including a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Jefferson probably painted when he was president — more books, oddly placed beds, scientific instruments, papers, clocks, busts, yet more books, and the dumbwaiter that he had installed to fetch wine from the cellar below, something else I remembered from 30 years ago. It’s an admirable clutter.

After Jefferson sold much of his library to the U.S. government to form the nucleus of the revived Library of Congress after the British burned the original one in 1814, he started accumulating books again. The only reasonable thing to do, and hang the cost. Libraries as such didn’t much exist in early Republic Virginia, so Jefferson created one for himself. Twice.

From Monticello’s FAQ:

Who built the house?

Local white masons and their apprentices did the stone and brickwork. Local carpenters, assisted by several Monticello slave carpenters, provided the rough structural woodwork. The fine woodwork (floors, cornices, and other moldings) was the work of several skilled white joiners, hired from as far away as Philadelphia. One Monticello slave, John Hemmings, who trained under the white workman James Dinsmore, became a very able joiner and carpenter.

How much did the house cost?

No one so far has managed to calculate the cost of Monticello with any degree of accuracy.

That is, the house was a money pit for the third president.

We also spent some time looking around the exhibits in the North and South Pavilions, which are structures that branch away from the main house, though they don’t seem directly connected. We poked around such places as the wine cellar and the beer cellar next to it, plus the elaborate kitchen, which naturally wasn’t part of the main house. When you dined with Thomas Jefferson, the feast must have been sumptuous.

There are a few outbuildings. Such as this slave cabin replica, built since I visited last time.
I don’t remember exactly how much emphasis Monticello put on slavery during my first visit. I suspect it was a matter not of denying it, but not talking much about it either.
I can report that in 2019, not only does Monticello not deny the importance of enslaved labor at the house and farm, or the humanity of the enslaved, the official texts talk about it quite a lot. Including the Sally Hemings and Hemings family story — which rates a room of its own in one of the pavilions and a video. That pendulum has swung.

The American Civil War Museum

Posted on October 22, 2019 by admin

I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when we got to the American Civil War Museum in Richmond on October 12. I expected an easy drive from where we parked, near the capitol, to the museum, which is at the site of the former Tredegar Iron Works on the James River.

No such luck. The Richmond Folk Festival had gummed up everything along the river, blocking all vehicular access, so after some time in sluggish traffic, we went back to the same parking lot near the capitol — luckily my receipt was good for the whole day — and walked the half mile or so to the museum. Not a bad walk, but it made me tired ahead of a walk through a museum. Such is the tourist experience, sometimes.

At first I thought the museum was in the multistory brick building.
Wrong again. That building houses the visitors center and a Civil War museum associated with the Richmond National Battlefield Park, a NPS entity that encompasses that part of Tredegar along with a dozen Civil War sites around Richmond.

The new building for the American Civil War Museum — opened just this year — is the modernist structure next to the brick building, though it incorporates some of the other Tredegar ruins. Designed by a local architectural firm, 3North, the museum isn’t overly large, coming in at 28,000 square feet.

We spent a couple of hours at the museum. Though a little frazzled when I got there, I soon got into the groove of the place and mostly enjoyed my time there. Ann did too. The permanent exhibits wind through the first floor, featuring things you’d expect in a museum devoted to the history of a war: military and civilian artifacts, photos, maps (though not enough), things to read, a few interactive kiosks, audio narratives and videos and so on.

Perhaps the most striking features are the large-scale photographic images placed on various walls or hanging over display cases. They are images of people alive during the conflict, and are all colorized. Only a few years ago, the colorization might have bothered me, but since seeing They Shall Not Grow Old, I appreciate artful colorization, which the museum manages to do.

Some of the artifacts were particularly intriguing, such as the carvings that prisoners of war made from whatever material they had at hand, some of them exceptionally fine — that they then traded for food or tobacco or whatever else they badly needed. Other artifacts edged into the realm of oddities, such as a fossilized biscuit from the siege of Vicksburg and a luckless soldier’s a pocket journal, split by the bullet that killed him.

As at a number of other museums I’ve seen focusing on the 19th century, the most unnerving artifacts are the medical tools. The American Civil War Museum has a collection on display, along with a some poor bastard’s primitive prosthetic arm.

I also encountered some incidents and stories about the war that I’d never heard. Of course, the Civil War is a sprawling subject, with countless untold or undertold narratives. The museum has a knack for illustrating some of them. For instance, the New York Draft Riot is covered in some detail. No surprise there. But so is the lesser-known Richmond Bread Riot of 1863. Always good to learn about something like that.

As interesting and informative as the museum was, I came away feeling a little unsatisfied. I wasn’t sure why. On later reflection, I worked it out. It isn’t that the museum eschews glorifying the Lost Cause, which I’m sure bothers some people. I wouldn’t have expected anything else from a museum created by serious historians.

Rather, I missed the generals ‘n’ battles approach to the story of the war. Though not as pernicious as the Lost Cause, modern historians usually shy away from that too.

The museum mentions many of the military engagements of the war, sometimes in some detail, but that isn’t the thrust of most of the exhibits. Rather, the American Civil War Museum takes an almost sociological approach to the war.

That is, how the war affected all of 19th-century American society. Soldiers, naturally, but also white civilians, male and female, blacks, free and enslaved, immigrants and others. Is that a good way to organize a civil war museum? Probably yes. Still —

That I felt the absence of generals ‘n’ battles says more about me, and how I’ve conditioned myself with the books I’ve read and the movies I’ve watched and the battlefields I’ve visited over the years, than it does any historic study of the period. Even so, that’s how I felt.

The Richmond National Battlefield Park facility next door, which we also visited (though for a much shorter time), seemed more traditional in that regard, if only because it focuses on the fighting around Richmond. There you can see large maps depicting the movements of armies, for instance.

I can’t be the only one who feels this way. Oddly enough, the American Civil War Museum acknowledges that, perhaps unconsciously, in its gift shop. Generals ‘n’ battles is alive and well there.

In the form of Lee and Grant bobbleheads, for one thing.

Models of the submarine boat Hunley and the ironclad Virginia.
Generals of the Civil War playing cards, but also Joshua Chamberlain playing cards.
The Chamberlain cards struck me as oddly specific. Wonder if the same card maker has a line of, say, Jubal Early playing cards?

The shop also had a nice collection of flags. Such as this one, which you don’t see too often. I had to look it up.
The Battle Flag of the First Corps, Army of Tennessee.

The Virginia State Capitol

Posted on October 21, 2019 by admin

The Commonwealth of Virginia certainly doesn’t care what I think, but I’m going to offer it my opinion anyway, about what it calls part of its legislature. The modern name for the lower chamber of the Virginia legislature is the House of Delegates — modern, as in after 1776. Nice, but a little blah.

Before that, the chamber was the House of Burgesses. That’s a spiffier name. Virginia’s lower house ought to go back to using it. The House of Burgesses had a long and honorable history before the change. “Burgesses” must have been trashed in a fit of revolutionary ardor for new names, but that was more than two centuries ago. Even better, no other state uses it. By contrast, Maryland and West Virginia both use “House of Delegates.”

State legislature names are mostly uninspired anyway, except maybe for the formal title of the Massachusetts legislature, which is the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Nearby, there’s also the the General Court of New Hampshire, which (incidentally) Ballotpedia tells us is the fourth-largest English-speaking legislative body in the world (at 424 members), behind only the Parliament of the UK, the US Congress, and the Parliament of India.

On the morning of October 12, Ann and I made our way to Capitol Square in Richmond. The Thomas Jefferson-designed state capitol is its handsome centerpiece.

The capitol has a distinctive look among those of the several states, taking its inspiration from a Roman temple in France, the Maison Carrée.

Just outside the capitol building is an embedded Virginia seal, with Tyranny lying slain beneath the foot of Virtus.
I told Ann what the Latin meant, and she seemed amused that a state would put something so badass on its formal seal. Compared to the anodyne figures on most state seals, she has a point.

It looks like you walk up the hillside steps to enter the capitol, but in fact you walk down them. Since a redevelopment in the early years of this century, visitors enter the Virginia State Capitol via an underground passage that runs underneath the hillside steps.
We took a guided tour starting there. One of the first things you see in the underground annex — and it’s a large space, at 27,000 square feet — is the architect himself in bronze.
“The statue represents Jefferson around the age of 42 — about the time he was designing the building — and he is holding an architectural drawing of the Capitol,” says the Richmond Times-Dispatch…

“Ivan Schwartz, co-founder of StudioEIS, created the statue… The statue weighs 800 pounds and stands nearly 8 feet tall, representing a larger-than-life Jefferson. Its pedestal is made of EW Gold, a dolomitic limestone quarried in Missouri.”

The passage leads to the capitol proper. Though there’s no exterior dome, there is an interior one. Underneath it is another figure of the Revolution in stone. The figure of the Revolution.
Tracy L. Kamerer and Scott W. Nolley, writing for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, praise it highly: “In Richmond stands a marble statue of George Washington that is among the most notable pieces of eighteenth-century art, one of the most important works in the nation, and, some think, the truest likeness of perhaps the first American to become himself an icon.

“A life-sized representation sculpted by France’s Jean-Antoine Houdon between 1785 and 1791 on a commission from Virginia’s legislature, it was raised in the capitol rotunda in 1796…

“Houdon’s careful recording of Washington’s image and personality yielded a sensitive and lifelike portrait. When the Marquis de Lafayette, Washington’s friend and compatriot, saw the statue for the first time, he said: ‘That is the man himself. I can almost realize he is going to move.’ ”

The Houdon Washington spawned many copies in the 19th and 20th centuries, some of which are in other state capitols and cities, and one that I’ve seen that stands in Chicago City Hall. Others are as far away as the UK and Peru.

Jefferson and Washington are only the beginning of the statuary in the Virginia State Capitol. In alcoves surrounding the Houdon Washington are busts of the other U.S. presidents born in Virginia — Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, William Henry Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, and Wilson — along with Lafayette, who’s there until there’s another president from Virginia, the guide said.

The Old House Chamber, whose entrance is behind Washington’s back, has been restored to look the part of a 19th-century legislative chamber, but also to be a repository of sculpture. It’s replete with marble and bronze busts and statues, representing various Virginians, including George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, George Wythe and Meriwether Lewis. Non-Virginians have their place, too: namely Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens.

CSA generals include Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, Joseph E. Johnston, Fitzhugh Lee, and of course Robert E. Lee looking pretty much like Robert E. Lee.

It wouldn’t be the last representation of Lee we’d see in Richmond. This particular bronze was created by Rudulph Evans in 1931 and erected where Lee stood on April 23, 1861, when he accepted command of the military forces of Virginia.

That wasn’t the only event associated with the Old House. In December 1791, the House voted to ratify the proposed U.S. Bill of Rights in the room. In 1807, Aaron Burr was acquitted of treason in the room in a Federal Circuit Court trial presided over by John Marshall. Various Virginia constitutional conventions met in the room, and so did the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861. The entire Virginia State Capitol soon became the Confederate Capitol as well.

We also visited the modern Senate chamber — the modern House of Delegates was closed — and it looks the part of a well-appointed working legislative chamber, without a surfeit of statues.

The Old Senate chamber sports paintings depicting the first arrival of Englishmen in Virginia, John Smith, Pocahontas, and a scene at the Battle of Yorktown. In the Jefferson Room is a scale model of the capitol that Jefferson had commissioned in France to guide the builders in Virginia, since he wouldn’t be there to supervise things personally.

We spent time on the capitol grounds as well. The most imposing among a number of memorials near the capitol is the George Washington equestrian — formally the Virginia Washington Memorial, by Thomas Crawford — which is surrounded by other colonial Virginians of note and allegories.

The CSA was represented on the grounds as well, as you’d expect, including a Stonewall Jackson bronze. Other memorials are closer to our own time. This is part of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, created by Stanley Bleifeld and dedicated in 2008.

A memorial dedicated to Virginia women, a collection of bronzes, was still under wraps when we looked it — but slated for dedication only two days later, on October 14.

There was even more to see, but eventually hunger took us away from Capitol Square to a nearby hipster waffle house — the Capitol Waffle Shop — for lunch. I had my waffles with egg and sausage on top, a combination that worked very well. Also good: hipster food prices in a town like Richmond are less than in places like Brooklyn, just like prices for everything else.

The Tripoli Shrine Temple

Posted on October 1, 2019 by admin

Last night at around 11, or just an hour before September ended, I sat on my deck outside in short sleeves, in comfort. Warm winds blew. The day had been summer-like, in the mid-80s at least, and October 1 has been roughly the same. Rain is coming tonight, though, and so are cooler temps.

I don’t have any interest in becoming a Shriner, but I have to like a fraternal organization whose members wear fezzes and meet in gilded, onion-domed buildings inspired by the 19th-century popular vogue for Orientalism. I’ve seen Shriners in their little cars buzzing along parade routes, and once upon a time I went to a Shrine Circus in a temple that the Shriners later sold, and which has been sold again.

In Milwaukee, on Wisconsin Ave., the Shriners built themselves an exceptional edifice, the Tripoli Shrine Temple, taking inspiration from the Taj Mahal.
No example of Moorish Revival is complete without stone camels, I think. Especially considering that the Shriners originally called themselves the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Two camels are perched beside the front entrance steps.

The statue to the right of Shriner and child is a nod to the Shriners Hospitals for Children, of which there are 22 in North America (though none in Milwaukee).
The temple, designed by Clas & Shepard of Milwaukee and completed in 1928, is every bit as ornate inside as out.
Second floor.
Looking up.
There was no shortage of Shriners around, helping show off the place.
This one gave a short talk about the building. He had interesting things to say, especially about the countless thousands of tiles on the floors and wall. Literally countless, since no one kept count or has made a count. He said that during the interior construction of the temple in the late ’20s, a family of four skilled in tilework lived in the temple, staying until they were done a few years later.