South Dakota Dash ’24

Posted on September 13, 2024 by admin

The first day of the trip was a slog from Illinois through Wisconsin and most of southern Minnesota. The second day, August 19, we woke up in Luverne, Minnesota and went to bed in Sundance, Wyoming. Less of a slog, mainly because we stopped a few places in South Dakota along I-90.

First of all, Sioux Falls. How can you stop in Sioux Falls and not see the falls?

Hard to believe, if you crop things right, you’re in a city of around 200,000. Sioux quartzite, it’s called.

Once a hub of water-power industries — the ruins of a mill are on the grounds — these days the falls travel through the municipal Falls Park. Sioux Falls has thoughtfully erected an observation tower on top of a rise in the park, for better views.

Naturally, we went to the top, for the view of the falls, downtown Sioux Falls, and – off in a different direction – a major Smithfield meat processing plant. Sioux Falls isn’t just about credit card HQs, the result of a race-to-the-bottom concerning usury laws. It still has industry, too.

Before leaving town, we sought out the Cathedral of St. Joseph, a work by Emmanuel Louis Masqueray (d. 1917), another of those famed architects mostly lost to time. Among other things, he was chief of design at the 1904 St. Louis world’s fair (one of the four fonts of the modern world).

It was open. Not all city churches can say that on a Monday.

Nice. Westward on I-90, at one of the rest stops, we found a much smaller religious structure, though elegant in its simplicity.

It too was open.

Lunch that day was in the burg of Kennebec, SD (pop. 281), which happened to have a place, Benji’s Diner, with a distinctive ag-town vibe, and serious meat on the menu.

It’s a little hard to tell, but there’s beef under that sea of gravy, and I found it mighty filling. Signs on the highway promote the SD beef industry and beef eating on principle, and they get no argument from me.

We took a look around town. When I saw this, I concluded that every town, no matter how small, has one of these murals as a little expression of civic pride. Seems that way, anyway.

Kennebec is the Lyman County seat.

The built environment isn’t just buildings.

Despite our large lunch, we managed to stay awake for the drive to Wall, SD, stopping for a few minutes at Wall Drug and then Badlands National Park, where we spent a few hours. That decision factored heavily into what happened next in Wyoming, more about which later. Enough to say that by the end of the day, we were in Sundance, Wyo.

But we weren’t done with South Dakota. For reasons I won’t bore anyone with, especially myself, we had to backtrack the next day to take care of a minor issue with the car, so it wouldn’t be major later on. For that, we went to Rapid City, which we had bypassed the day before. I’m glad we got to go, because the mechanical issue didn’t actually take long to deal with, which left us with time to see a bronze James K. Polk.

Plus U.S. Grant, Franklin Roosevelt, and Calvin Coolidge, among other U.S. presidents at street corners in downtown Rapid City that I managed to see.

“When a local man noticed people interacting with a temporarily placed statue of President Lincoln outside the Hotel Alex Johnson [in downtown Rapid City], an idea sparked. This man was Don Perdue, and he came up with the idea to put a president on every corner in Downtown Rapid City,” explains Visit Rapid City.

“It took a lot of convincing, a lot of fundraising, and hours of research before it started. In 1999, Perdue proposed the idea to the city as a way to honor the legacy of the American Presidency. The project was approved and in 2000 the first four presidents were unveiled: George Washington, John Adams, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush… Over the next ten years, a group of local artists worked to create and place all 40 of the remaining statues.”

I didn’t have time to see all of them. Or the inclination. It was in the low 90s F. that day, so I only wanted to spend a few minutes seeking them out, while Yuriko more rationally waited in our air conditioned car.

She was willing to get out and look at Rapid City’s older attraction a few minutes later, however: Dinosaur Park. I later checked with my brother Jim. He said he does indeed remember, a little, our family’s visit to the park in 1960, before I was born.

There’s a good view of Rapid City from atop the park’s hill.

But you’re up there to look at wire-mesh-frame dinosaurs with concrete skins, originally dating from the 1930s but obviously maintained into our time and (maybe?) tinkered with a little to more closely match current thinking about dinosaurs.

Even better, I learned that the park was originally a WPA project, consciously designed to draw tourists to Rapid City with something distinctive. Of all the various WPA projects one can encounter, this has to be unique among the lot.

Return to Le Roy, Home of Wausaneta

Posted on August 1, 2024 by admin

It so happens that Moraine View State Recreation Area is only a few miles north of Le Roy, Illinois, a burg I passed through more than five years ago. At that time I made the acquaintance of Wausaneta, an imaginary Kickapoo chief. His statue has stood in Kiwanis Park in Le Roy for more than a century now, gift to the town of the wealthy crackpot who dreamed him up. I mean, gift to the town of the spiritualist and leading citizen who communed with Wausaneta those many years ago.

As of Sunday, the statue of Wausaneta still stands in Le Roy’s main square.

I didn’t remember the carved stump tree nearby.

Panther Tree, it’s called. The local high school mascot is a panther. The reason I don’t remember it is because it wasn’t there until late 2019; I came in March of that year.

While Yuriko dozed in the car, I took a stroll down Main Street, learning that this isn’t the only Le Roy.

Most of the buildings are occupied by one business or another. The former Le Roy State Bank is now the Oak & Flame Bourbon Hall.

Every town worth its salt had an opera house, once upon a time. In this case, that time was 1892.

The Princess Theatre had an abandoned look, but its web site that says that Horizon: An American Saga is playing there once a day until August 3. Only $5 for seniors and children, and $6 for adults, which might be what it’s worth.

“Marcus West, son of Simeon West, built the Princess Theater in 1916,” the web site says. Simeon West was the aforementioned wealthy crackpot.

“Architect Arthur L. Pillsbury designed the brick theater with limestone accents. The first movie was Tennessee’s Pardner on November 21, 1916. The original theater was a silent movie house with piano accompaniment, as talkies did not make their debut in Le Roy until 1931. A grandson of Marcus West recounts that West’s daughter, while in high school, substituted as piano player when the regular player was unable to accompany the film.”

This building looked genuinely empty. Not only empty, but still sporting a Trump-Pence sign, already a relic of yore. It has a future as a hipster bar, maybe.

Guns & Glory.

Guns & Glory offers firearms, cleaning, repair, concealed carry classes, and Bibles.

“We are probably the only gun shop and religious book store combined that you will find,” its web site says. “We believe we can provide the two most important things to protect you – ‘God and guns.’ ”

Used to be the First National Bank. And a Rexall drug store.

Someone went to some lengths to blot out the Rexall name, but not enough to efface it completely, if you know what you’re looking at.

I believe the drug store in Alamo Heights where I bought comics in the early ’70s was a Rexall, but I’m not quite sure. At some moment after I left town, it disappeared. That same dynamic happened so much that the brand now enjoys only a whisper of its ’50s coast-to-coast retail glory.

Sintra: Pena Palace

Posted on June 3, 2024 by admin

Sizable rain and cool air to welcome June on the first day of the month. But June in northern Illinois isn’t one for too much cool air, and temps came in very pleasant today. That means deck time.

I’m glad we saw the interior of Pena Palace (Palácio da Pena), up in the hills of Sintra. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made the acquaintance of this fellow.

A little context.

It isn’t too often you see grotesques that are that grotesque. Looks like that tree growing from his head gave him a screaming headache, and those fish tails for legs couldn’t be that comfortable, either.

He’s just a cast member at Pena Palace, which is an eclectic riot, a hilltop thrust of colors and fanciful towers. There are more than a few visitors on any given weekday in the spring.

Looks like a crunch, but it was anything but an ugly crowd. They were in a good mood. They’d come because they heard this is a place worth going to see. It is? Yes. Yes it is. They knew they wouldn’t be disappointed, except for those (few?) who are disappointed in everything.

It’s best, I think, to start by looking up at the palace, which luckily is how all visitors approach the architectural extravaganza.

The palace was built on the site of a ruined monastery, abandoned since – you guessed it, the 1755 earthquake. Surviving elements of the monastery were incorporated into the palace design, especially the cloister.

In other parts of the palace, you see kingly things. Such as the king’s office.

The king’s dishes.

The king’s state-of-the-art telephone.

The king being Carlos, sometimes styled Carlos I, though he was the only one of that name in Portugal. Carlos came to the throne in the late 19th century. His grandfather Ferdinand II got the ball rolling on development of the palace earlier in the century, tapping mining engineer, explorer of Brazil, and amateur architect Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege to design it, but Carlos was the last king to spend much time there.

Wiki lists Carlos’ cognomens as The Diplomat; The Martyr; The Martyred; The Oceanographer; The Hunter; The Painter King; The Obese. Quite a selection. Martyr points to Carlos’ fate, gunned down in Lisbon by anti-monarchists in 1908, along with his son and heir-apparent, Luís Filipe. It was a dangerous time for monarchs. And, as it turned out, a dangerous time for monarchy itself in Portugal.

The king might have had all those things above, but the queen – Queen Amelia, Carlos’ wife – had a terrace built for her. It probably got as crowded on the terrace during occasional events at the palace as it does now, but everyone would have been more formally dressed at those long-ago, long-forgotten gatherings.

When you take in the view, you forget about the crowds.

The monastery chapel also survived to be incorporated into the palace.

Inside are marble and alabaster works attributed to one Nicolas Chantereine, a French artist who did well for himself in 16th century Iberia.

There’s always more detail, especially in stone — more exuberant detail, wherever you look.

Wonder how often or whether Carlos wandered around the palace, with no crowds around, pondering the detail. Maybe as a way not to think about affairs of state or what to do about the rising tide of republicanism. Was there so much even he would discover bits he hadn’t noticed before? I can’t say for sure, but that’s entirely possible.

The Jerónimos Monastery

Posted on May 30, 2024 by admin

If the Belém Tower and the Monument of the Discoveries were about Portuguese ventures into the world, the nearby Jerónimos Monastery shows one thing they brought back: immense wealth. Taxes needed to be paid on the incoming wealth, of course, and a certain large part of those levies went to build Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. The Hieronymite monks who lived there for a few centuries were tasked to pray for the souls of successive kings of Portugal and to minister to those leaving on ocean-spanning voyages.

Money well spent, I’d say. The monastery is the extraordinary work of a number of hands, beginning with architect Diogo de Boitaca and including a succession of other architects, designers and sculptors. Together with Belém Tower, it is a World Heritage Site.

The outside of the monastery church, Santa Maria.

The monastery grounds include other large museums, such as ones devoted to Portuguese naval history, and an archaeological museum, both of which would surely be worth the time. But we focused, as most visitors do, on the monastery church and the cloister next to it.

These structures are considered class-A examples of Manueline, a style particular to Portugal during the Age of Discovery and with an emphasis on elaborate stonework. Sturdy work, too: the earthquake of ’55 didn’t do a lot of damage to the monastery.

Some Portuguese royals, namely the go-getters of the Aviz dynasty who oversaw worldwide Portuguese expansion, are entombed in both transept chapels. Note the elephants supporting the tombs.

Quite the ceiling.

Vasco da Gama, as mentioned previously, has a tomb near the church’s entrance. Across from him is the Portuguese epic poet Luís Vaz de Camões (d. 1580), whose best known work celebrates the voyages of da Gama.

The poet might not actually be in the tomb. His original resting place was disturbed by the 1755 earthquake, and by the time of his entombment in Santa Maria in the 19th century, finding his remains was a matter of guesswork.

Santa Maria church, I’m glad to say, charged no admission, though I was happy to donate a few euros to its upkeep. All you have to do is wait in line, which took about 20 minutes.

The cloister, on the other hand, sold admissions, though at a fairly reasonable 10 euros. It was busy, but not so crowded that we couldn’t buy admission right then. Anyway, it was entirely worth it.

One is allowed to peer into the courtyard, but not enter it. I believe that that’s actual grass, not Astroturf.

Endless details carved all around.

A large refectory includes the sort of tilework that Portugal is famous for.

Including a depiction of an emotionally distressed horse.

That’s what it looks like to me, at least. Some of the tile artists apparently appreciated the fact that such a horse’s lot is little but work, work, work.

A Lisbon Ramble

Posted on May 24, 2024 by admin

Rain and wind sometimes but sun and warmth other times this week here in northern Illinois. Had breakfast on the deck most of the days since we returned. Lisbon wasn’t quite as warm as expected, with cool evenings – a little below 20° C. – evolving into warmish days, maybe 25° C. or so, followed again by cool evenings. We were rained on only once, more about which later.

Back to posting on Tuesday, in honor of Decoration Day, even though that’s next Thursday. I’m all for three-day weekends, or four or five, but we ought to acknowledge the heart of the occasion.

We arrived tired in the early afternoon of May 14 at the smallish but popular Praça Luís de Camões, emerging from the artificial lighting of the Metro into broad sunlight on the warmest day during our near-week in southern Portugal, just shy of about 30° C as they reckon things.

At once the dulcet sounds of these three gentlemen captured our attention, and we joined the loose ring of those listening. A good thing to do while sitting around getting ready to catch your second wind.

They played their versions of jazz standards and more recent songs. Sweet versions, each of the musicians taking the tunes aloft in distinctive ways. I didn’t see their names posted, even when I got close enough to drop in one euro each, so they’ll just have to be the Musicians of Praça Luís de Camões.

They had an enthusiastic audience member. He danced around on his feet for a while, the lay on the plaza tiles and “danced” around in that position.

We’d have listened longer, but we needed to obey our thirst, to use the ad phase that’s too good just to be that. Facing the square: McDonald’s. We each had a cold drink.

That’s my idea of a good souvenir, and I took it as such.

We headed down a busy retail street, R. Garrett, a thoroughfare with the likes of Ale-Hop Rua Garrett, Stradivarius women’s clothing, Gardenia shoe store, bbnails, Happy Socks, Livraria & Cafe, a book store, and the Percassipt quilt shop. A handsome street at spots. And under development.

Basílica de Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, the Basilica of Our Lady of the Martyrs, also rises on the street.

Before 1755 there was a different church on this site. As a Christian site, its roots stem back before Moorish domination of the Iberian peninsula.

Reinaldo Manuel dos Santos designed the current church, and of him Portuguese Wiki says: “Reinaldo Manuel dos Santos (1731-1791). Arquiteto e engenheiro militar português, foi um dos maiores expoentes da arquitetura e do urbanismo pombalinos,” which I believe is clear enough except for that business about pombalinos, a building and design style distinctive to Lisbon after the earthquake.

Now that’s a ceiling for the ages.

At R. do Carmo, a pedestrian street, Yuriko and Ann went to examine a particular clothing and other item store, while I took a wander.

People seemed to be paying attention to something.

They were right to take pictures. Stand just off the street was Elevador de Santa Justa, a Machine Age lift connecting two parts of the city, each at a different elevation.

I’d read about it, but didn’t make a particular plan to see it. But there it was. The work of one Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard, who is known for this structure and others like it. We didn’t get around to taking a ride, since time is short and Lisbon’s destination list is long, whoever compiles it.

Oakton College

Posted on May 8, 2024 by admin

We’re in that rarefied period when neither the heater nor the cooler kicks in much. You could say God is my HVAC. It won’t last.

How many community college campuses have enough outdoor sculpture to qualify as a sculpture garden? Say, a dozen pieces or more. It’s an odd question, but it occurred to me at Oakton College in Des Plaines as we walked around recently, taking in the fine spring day and an assortment of outdoor sculptures on that campus.

That online search didn’t take long. If you wanted to figure out which community colleges have sculpture gardens, looks like the International Directory of Sculpture Parks & Gardens would be your go-to source. For all its insanity, the Internet continues to amaze.

Copses of trees and bushes ring the college’s wide parking lots, giving its small cluster of buildings a semi-suburban feel. A small creek runs through campus, and signs next to a small bridge over it say Turtle Xing, with turtle silhouettes on the yellow traffic signs to remind us to watch out for shelled reptiles in easy-to-smash spots. Not sure I’d ever seen one of those kind of warnings before.

The sculpture isn’t off in some field. A representative is right there in your face at the edge of a parking lot.

A little more subtle, but just as close to the parking lot.

Closer to class buildings.

“Pink Hydrant 15” by musician and sculptor Irwin Hepplewhite.

Never mind, I made that up.

“Silver Oak” by Barry Tinsley (1983). A Chicago artist, still apparently active. Glad to hear it.

I had to puzzle that for a moment. Chi-ca-guo.

Of course, Chicago, “wild onion,” a version of an Algonquin word for the weedy onion marshes where the Chicago River met Lake Michigan, pre-Fort Dearborn.

This was good to learn: a certified wildlife habitat.

I know there’s a nonprofit and good intentions behind that designation, but I can’t help but laugh a little. Where is this certificate posted, anyway? Can animals request a copy?

I know where it must be: in this building.

That’s a show-stopper: The Margaret Burke Lee Science and Health Careers Center, a 2010s addition to campus. Modernist glass blended with Prairie School (?) and I’m too dense to know what else, but there’s some exceptional design skill on display in the structure, which is perched next to the campus’ central pond. Maybe the other buildings, presentable enough but a little ordinary, envy Margaret for her green-tint good looks.

Design by Legat Architects, a regional practice. Nice work, Legat.

Thorncrown Chapel

Posted on April 22, 2024 by admin

My bourgeois householder impulses kicked in today and I mowed the lawn, which, happily, is sporting a nice crop of dandelions. I’m actually fond of dandelions, so I suppose my lawncare impulses aren’t entirely conventional. I gave up raking leaves years ago, too, and don’t regret it. I look at my lawn in the spring and think, where did all those leaves go? To nourish the soil, of course.

On April 7, we left Harrison, Arkansas, where we’d spent the night, and headed for Dallas by not quite the most direct route. Soon we passed through Eureka Springs. We wanted to amble around town a bit, but parking was hard to find and – this rankles on a Sunday – costs money. So on we went, west on U.S. 62. Moments out of town, I spotted the sign for Thorncrown Chapel.

The chapel rises gracefully on its Arkansas hillside, whose trees at that moment were budding, but not obscuring the view. Good timing for a visit.

Wood and glass and light and – air. So light you’d think it’s going to float away, despite however many pounds of wood it represents.

“Thorncrown Chapel… is the most celebrated piece of architecture built in Arkansas,” says the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, which is a tall statement. But that opinion seems to have some weight, considering the structure’s honors and spots on architecture lists, besides the acclaim accorded architect E. Fay Jones.

“Eighteen wood columns line each of the long sides,” the article notes. “The columns are connected overhead by a latticelike diagonal web of light wood pieces, creating the building’s most important visual feature. This interior bracing is Jones’s inspired inversion of Gothic architecture’s transfer of the loads of a building to “flying buttresses” that brace the walls from the outside.”

The Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel, also by Jones, has similar charms, but I’d say Thorncrown kicked things up a notch in design.

We happened to be in time for the Sunday nondenominational service, so we sat in for a while. No admission, but we were happy to make a donation.

Much better images are here. Seems that the muse was with E. Fay Jones when he designed the chapel for a couple who happened to own the land, Jim and Dell Reed, and who had this built instead of a retirement home, tapping Jones, a one-time student of Frank Lloyd Wright, for the job; and ultimately seeing it completed in 1980, after divine intervention was said to be a factor in the financing.

One of the speakers at the service – I can’t call it the sermon or homily, just a chat – who looked my age or a little more, was their son, Doug Reed, I think. Maybe he sees chapel every day, or often enough, but somehow a sense of awe came through as he described how the Thorncrown came to be. That didn’t make an impression on me in the moment, but the more I think about it, the more impressive it is, how familiarity hasn’t effaced awe for him.

Potosi, Missouri

Posted on April 19, 2024 by admin

Sometime in late 18th century, Frenchmen came to a spot in the wilds of North America, which in later years would be southeastern Missouri, and began digging for lead in a place they called Mine Au Breton – Mine of the Breton, for Brittany native Francis Azor, who pioneered the effort in the area to extract the element. The name didn’t last, however. Since early U.S. sovereignty, it’s been Potosi, Missouri.

Still, the earlier name lingers in a small park in Potosi, which we visited on the morning of April 6 after leaving where we’d spent the night, Farmington.

A nice little park, a block from the town’s main thoroughfare, High Street. Mine a Breton Creek runs through it.

A small bridge crosses the creek at one point. You wouldn’t think such a bridge would merit a name, but the people of Potosi (pop. 2,500) clearly disagree.

Red Bridge. It even has a former name: Steel Wagon Bridge. Maybe more minor bridges should have names. Adds a little character to localities. Of course, if that caught on, most of them would be named after minor local politicos.

After the Louisiana Purchase was a done deal, Americans came to the area, but Moses Austin was already there, having cut a deal with the Spanish to mine there. Texas schoolchildren learn who he was, or at least they did 50+ years ago, when I was such a schoolchild. He’s the father of Stephen F. Austin, who was the Father of Texas. So maybe Moses is the Grandpa of Texas. My brother Jay suggested that we visit Potosi to see his grave, and since it was only a few miles out of the way, we did.

The grave itself isn’t one of the better-looking ones I’ve ever seen: a white, virtually unadorned slab under an uninspired protective shelter.

His wife Mary Brown Austin, daughter of an iron mine owner and mother of Stephen F., is there as well. We didn’t hear that much about her in school.

Moses Austin came to the area to mine lead – and escape debt back in Virginia — and apparently had a good go of it in the 1810s, though I suspect life wasn’t as good for the slaves that did the actual digging. Austin is credited with renaming the town Potosi, after the place in Bolivia, a silver mining center known as the location Spanish colonial mint, producer of countless Spanish dollars. Educated miners like Austin would have known it, anyway, and maybe he was thinking big. As in, dreams of silver. But lead would have to do.

Quite the go-getter, Moses Austin. “He & his 40 to 50 slaves & employees built bridges, roads, a store, a blacksmith shop, a flour mill, a saw mill, a shot tower, and turned out the first sheet lead & cannonballs made in Missouri,” the informative Carroll’s Corner posted.

Austin suffered reversals and ultimately lost his fortune in the Panic of 1819, and so schemed to take settlers to the underpopulated wilds of Texas, then part of New Spain — to escape his debts, among other things. He received a land grant from the Spanish Crown (that’s quite a story), and was set to go when death came calling, leaving the task to his son – who had to deal with newly independent Mexico for his grant. That’s another story, one far from modern Potosi.

Google Maps calls the cemetery along High Street, with the Austins’ grave, City Cemetery. A sign at the site says: Potosi Presbyterian Cemetery, Est. 1833.

It’s a mid-sized, old-style cemetery with some charm.

With memorials broken and worn.

And others still waiting for that wear to happen. It will.

High Street is the location of a handsome county courthouse (Washington County), the third on the site and a 1908 design by one Henry Hohenschild, a Missouri architect who did a number of public buildings. Remarkably, the same document tells us that Moses Austin (probably) designed the county’s first courthouse. Moses was one busy guy.

There are a number of antique stores on High Street, and while Yuriko was off exploring them, I was buttonholed by two Jehovah’s Witnesses sitting with their material across the road from the courthouse. Or rather, I allowed myself to be buttonholed, so I could talk a little religion. Just like I did in Salt Lake City. Or religion-adjacent. I think the ladies, Mary and Kay I believe it was, were surprised that I knew about the sale of the JW HQ property in Brooklyn some years ago.

Chicago Riverside Stroll

Posted on April 2, 2024 by admin

Intense periods of rain marked the day and into the night, with snow ahead. A nonsticking April sort of snow, but still carried by stiff unpleasant winds. A rearguard winter wind, and winter winds blow only in one direction. In your face.

It was merely chilly Saturday before last when we strolled down Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue in the evening in downtown Chicago, partly along the Chicago River. Some old favorites rise in that area, such as Marina City.

Idly curious, I looked up some listings for condos in the building. For less than $300,000, one can buy a 500-square foot unit, listed as zero beds, one bath. I wonder what that means in context: a Murphy bed? Not like some utilitarian job you might have found in the Kramdens’ apartment, but maybe something a little more upmarket. Are there upscale Murphy beds? Of course there are.

At more than 60 years old, Marina City doesn’t count as the newest and poshest, but it has historic appeal, and has any other residential complex seen a fast-moving auto pitched out of its parking garage into a river? Such happened for The Hunter (1980), the last Steve McQueen movie. A bad guy’s fate, if I remember right.

The Wrigley Building, legacy of a chewing gum fortune. What more to say about the masterpiece on the Chicago, open now these last 100 years?

The courtyard north of the building is formally the Plaza of the Americas, which I’m sure only tour guides call it. On windy days the flags of the OAS fly over the plaza. Does the actual flag of the OAS also? Its design: Let’s wheel all the national flags together. It’s a recognized way to organize flags, but on a flag?

At the west end of the plaza is a bronze Benito Juárez, a gift of Mexico to the city of Chicago in 1999, with one Julian Martinez listed as the artist (not this artist). At night, Juárez doesn’t catch the light very well.

These golden wings are a newer addition to the plaza, 2022, and supposedly temporary. Another of the pairs of wings that have sprouted worldwide, though these are sculpted, not painted.

“Wings of Mexico” by Jorge Marin. A little digging around, and I see that he did “El Ángel de la Seguridad Social,” which we spotted in Mexico City.

Queen of All Saints Basilica

Posted on March 4, 2024 by admin

The latest run of warm days is now ending, with rain moving through northern Illinois. In its wake, more seasonable temps for early March. Sunday wasn’t seasonable at all, with the air heated to a pleasant low 70s F.

On Sunday afternoon I headed for the the northwest side of Chicago. You’d think that would be straightforward, considering that I was coming from the northwest suburbs, but no: O’Hare takes up a sizable chunk of real estate between those two areas, and there’s no going under it like in Los Angeles. One goes around.

I was sure I didn’t need to consult a map, either. Go more-or-less east on a major road (Irving Park) that curls along the southern edge of the airport; go north on another major road that is just east of the airport (Mannheim); and then connect with the east-west road (Devon) that would take me to the part of the city I wanted to visit.

Easy, especially since I knew the first part of the route well. I often take those first two roads to the airport entrance. True, I had to go a little further north on Mannheim into less familiar territory to connect with Devon, but all I’d have to do is watch for Devon. So I did.

No, that wasn’t it, but it’ll be soon. No, that’s not it either, maybe the next major light. No, not that one. Maybe one more. No. We’ve all done this: expect something while driving, sure that it will come up soon, and it doesn’t. So I pulled over to check my map, finally, and I was some distance north of where I want to be. Mannheim doesn’t actually connect to Devon. The next major north-south street east of Mannheim, which is River Road, does. Oops.

Use the GPS, you say. I still say no. I wasn’t going to be late for anything that needed my punctuality, for one thing, but more important, I passed through a stretch of relatively unfamiliar and interesting territory as I navigated my way southeast to Devon. Metro Chicago is so large that that’s possible even after living here for decades.

Had I not been “lost” I would never have noticed this along the road.

I’d happened across Queen of All Saints Basilica in the Sauganash neighborhood of Chicago, one of the three minor basilicas in the city. I might have seen it on a list of local Catholic sights some time, but I didn’t remember it and didn’t set out to see it. But see it I did, though it was already closed. The exterior had to do.

Completed in 1960, so I’m surprised it isn’t more modernist. But I suppose the diocese wanted neo-Gothic, and that’s what architects Meyer & Cook provided. That firm seems to be better known for the art deco Laramie State Bank Building, also on the western edge of Chicago. While Queen of All Saints is certainly impressive, what if the diocese had asked for an art deco church?

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Architecture