The Gustave Brand Murals at Carl Schurz HS

Posted on April 23, 2015 by admin

Saturday is Anzac Day, and not just any anniversary, but the centennial of the landing at Anzac Cove. Here’s a remarkable collection of images from last year’s commemorations (published by a British tabloid, no less).

Speaking of anniversaries, I’d never heard of this disaster until today, the 75th anniversary of the Rhythm Club Fire in Natchez, Miss.

Last Saturday our tour took us inside Carl Schurz High School, which is on the Northwest Side of Chicago. Its library has something few other school libraries can claim: a domed ceiling and murals by Gustave Brand. The murals were painted in the late 1930s by Brand, a German immigrant who was then pushing 80, so he had some help by former Schurz students. Brand had originally been sent to Chicago by the German government to paint murals in that country’s pavilion at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, and he must have liked it here.

The works were restored in the late 1990s. At the back wall is a large alcove featuring “The Spirit of Chicago.” The text under the painting says: “The Spirit of the Pioneer lingers here. Where once the Redman roamed, a City vast Lifts its proud Skyline to the Morning Sun. A Monument to service nobly done.”

A closeup of the centerpiece.

Looks like a collection of allegorical figures under the protection of the Spirit of Chicago. I take that to be the City, not Columbia with her torch and flag, because of the Y on her chest, the Municipal Device of Chicago. To the left is the Fire, and to the right the ’93 world’s fair, among other things.

On the ceiling, around the dome, are four more murals by Brand, who clearly had a lot of energy for an elderly man. They depict the evolution of the written word, fancifully done, but fitting enough for a library.

Here are Stone Age men — presumably — carving in stone.

Egyptians devising their hieroglyphics. Seems like Brand had a thing for fancy headgear.

Medieval monks doing their part to preserve the written word. And Gutenberg.

What I did see at my high school library when I looked up at the ceiling? I don’t remember exactly, but it must have been acoustic ceiling tiles.

Carl Schurz High School

Posted on April 22, 2015 by admin

One of the other destinations on the Schools by Bus tour was Carl Schurz High School, a Chicago public school at 3601 N. Milwaukee Ave. As the name suggests, the neighborhood used to be heavily German. Work on the school began in 1908, with wings on either side added later that look a lot like the original structure.

Without a wide-angle lens, it’s hard to get an image of the whole structure, so expansive is it. This is the original building, plus part of one of the wings on the right. All together, the structure forms a squared C shape, with a large lawn filling in the C.

“Commissioned by a reform-minded school board headed by Jane Addams, the project was one highlight of a broad program for rescuing the immigrant poor from the ignorance and isolation engendered by the industrial city,” the AIA Guide to Chicago says about the building.

The school board’s architect from 1905-10 was Dwight Perkins, who did the original Schurz structure. “Chicago’s typical Dickensian public school before 1905 was a poorly lighted and ventilated box, set into the city grid with no significant playgrounds,” AIA continues. “Toilet facilities were archaic and located in the basement.

“The forty-odd schools that Perkins designed between 1905 and 1910 changed all that, creating a building type with grass and trees, sunlight and fresh air, safety from fire, and good sanitation.”
Good for him. From our fairly comfortable perch here in the 21st-century First World, I doubt that we really appreciate the squalid conditions that spurred action in the Progressive Era.

I didn’t know this until I read about Perkins, but he also did the Lincoln Park Zoo Lion House. We were there earlier this month.
A nice use of brickwork.

Inside El Centro

Posted on April 21, 2015 by admin

Inside El Centro, a campus of Northeastern Illinois University, you not only can find gender-neutral restrooms (see yesterday), but also a lot of cool pipes near the ceilings.

It’s something more buildings ought to do, at least if their pipes are exposed. El Centro has more surface colors than most buildings, certainly most educational facilities, and on the whole it works.

The hallways put natural lighting to good use. That, by contrast, is no rare thing in newer buildings. Turns out that cutting people off from natural lighting isn’t considered good for them any more. How is it that took decades to figure that out?

Anyway, in the afternoons, one side of the building catches light like so.

Some of the artificial light placements were interesting, too.
As our tour group wandered down one of El Centro’s halls, we encountered another tour group. They were architectural historians in town for the Society of Architectural Historians 68th Annual Conference. The conference seemed to have a lot of tour options, one of which was “Provocative New Architecture in Chicago: The Work of JGMA,” led by Juan Moreno, the designer of the building we were in.
He paused and spoke to us for a moment. He didn’t say anything earthshaking, but it was a nice thing for him to do.

El Centro, Northeastern Illinois University

Posted on April 20, 2015 by admin

I came across this sign on Saturday afternoon. That’s the first usage of “gender neutral” I’ve ever seen at a restroom. (There ought to be a hyphen, but never mind.) I wondered whether it’s an up-and-coming usage to replace “unisex” or merely is supplementing it.

The gender-neutral restrooms — one of three options, along with standard gendered rooms — were at El Centro, a satellite campus of Northeastern Illinois University that was completed only last year. It was one of the schools we visited as participants on the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Schools by Bus tour. Unlike the Churches by Bus tour last fall, only one bus was enough for everyone. As the docents explained, this was the first tour of its kind by the CAF, compared with the churches tour, which has been going on for 20 years.

The schools were interesting, but the churches were more beautiful. There’s no escaping the utilitarian nature of a school, even if the overall design is good. Still, El Centro was well worth a look. The glass structure’s covered with fins: blue on one side, yellow on the other. Stand at one spot and it’s yellow.

Move, and it starts a transition to blue.

Then it’s blue. Or move the opposite way, and it goes from blue to yellow.

Just as remarkably, the building manages to work well despite standing hard by the always-busy Kennedy Expressway.

Last fall, Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin wrote that, “Chicago architect Juan Moreno, a Colombian native who in 2011 won attention for a striking charter school built for the United Neighborhood Organization in Chicago’s Gage Park neighborhood, wisely saw the Kennedy as an opportunity, not a monster.

“Instead of setting his three-story, steel-framed building far back from the highway and sticking a parking lot in between, Moreno slid El Centro almost alongside the road. Rather than turning out an ordinary box, he bent his long, linear structure like a boomerang to turn its southern end toward drop-dead views of the downtown skyline. Then he sculpted its exterior for reasons both formal and functional…

“In the crucial move, 20-inch-wide fins — their faces blue to the south, yellow to the north — are layered atop El Centro’s glass skin, ostensibly to shield the building from the sun’s glare. But there’s no denying that the fins endow the building with visual rhythms that express the highway’s rushing motion and reveal the influence of the Pritzker Prize-winning London architect Zaha Hadid.”

A Gazebo and More

Posted on March 4, 2015 by admin

What this country needs is more public gazebos. There, I’ve said it, and I don’t care who knows it. I’m pro-gazebo.

World-Wide Words tells us that the word gazebo “is surrounded by more mystery than an earnest etymologist would like. It appears in 1752 without any warning or antecedent in part four of a book by William and John Halfpenny with the title New Designs for Chinese Temples, an influential work that was aimed at the then new English fashion for the oriental in design and architecture.

“Little is known about William Halfpenny, who called himself an architect and carpenter, not even if this was his real name… The word gazebo is equally mysterious. A lot of people have assumed that — like the temples described in the book — it must be of oriental origin. If it is, nobody has found its source.

“Failing that, etymologists make an educated guess that he named the structure tongue-in-cheek, taking the ending -ebo from the Latin future tense and adding it to gaze, so making a hybrid word that might mean “I will look.” If true, the model was probably videbo, “I shall see,” or perhaps lavabo, literally “I will wash,” taken from the Latin mass of the Roman Catholic Church to refer to the towel or basin used in the ritual washing of the celebrant’s hands.”

If you’re ever in Milam Park (see February 26) in San Antonio, you’re likely to find yourself looking at this fine gazebo.

An attached plaque says, in English and Spanish, “The people and government of the state of Jalisco, Mexico, offer this kiosk to the noble city of San Antonio de Bexar, in tribue to the relationship, tradition, and cultural inheritance of our people. May 1993.” Why Jalisco and San Antonio have a special relationship, I don’t know, but it was good of them to send a gazebo, even if they call it a kiosk.

To the north of the park is Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital. Or at least that’s what I’ve always heard it called — the formal name these days is the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, which is part of the Christus Santa Rosa Health System, which has five hospitals. Last month workmen were busy adding color to the side of the building, which had previously been a drab structure.

On one side of the hospital’s an enormous mural — eight, nine stories tall?

One thing I need to do in the future is look at some of San Antonio’s many building-side murals. This is a start. It’s called “Spirit of Healing.”

According to the San Antonio Express-News, the hospital’s exterior “[is] taking its color cues — purples, oranges and blues — from the adjacent… mural by Jesse Treviño, the façade of Santa Rosa Hospital cheerfully is being transformed… Colorful channel glass panels are being hoisted into place on the hospital’s south side facing Milam Park and El Mercado. Roughly 11 feet by 3 feet, there will be 300 of them when all is said and done.

“Backed with LED lighting, at night they will glow like Christmas lights. During the day, the visually dynamic custom cast panels — lightweight to span large distances yet strong, durable and wind-resistant — mark the building as a special place.”

The Spanish Governor’s Palace

Posted on March 3, 2015 by admin

Across Military Plaza (Plaza de Armas) from San Antonio City Hall is the Spanish Governor’s Palace. It too was a place I’d been before, maybe as long ago as the 1970s, so I dropped in for a revisit. It’s a well-done re-creation of the Spanish colonial period, including 10 rooms, some dating back to earlier centuries, others added in the 20th century.
Once again, from that fount of all things Lone Star, the Texas State Historical Association: “The Spanish Governor’s Palace, at 105 Military Plaza in San Antonio, was constructed in 1749. The name, something of a misnomer, is traditional; the building was not the home of the Spanish governor but served as the residence and headquarters for the local presidio captain. [So the governor didn’t live there, and while very nicely restored, it isn’t a palace. At least it was Spanish. At first.] The one-story masonry structure is built in the Spanish Colonial style; in the rear is a large patio.”

It’s a very pleasant spot on a warm day, this patio.

The association continues: “A keystone above the entrance bears the date of construction and the Hapsburg coat of arms. After the end of Spanish sovereignty, the building passed into private ownership. In the late 1860s it was purchased by E. Hermann Altgelt, founder of Comfort in Kendall County. He and his family lived there at various times, and the property was held by his widow, Emma Murck Altgelt, until the early 1900s. Then the building fell into a state of disrepair.

“In 1928, voters in San Antonio passed a bond issue for the purpose of purchasing and conserving the building, and in 1929–30 the building was restored under the supervision of architect Harvey P. Smith. Members of the San Antonio Conservation Society aided in restoring and furnishing the historic structure. In 1962, the building was registered as a recorded Texas historic landmark and is now a national historic landmark.”

This gentleman makes an appearance in the building, at least pictorially, looking every bit the Spanish nobleman of the early 18th century. The sign next to him said: “Jose de Azlor, the second Marques de San Miguel de Aguayo, was born in Spain and came to Mexico in 1712, where he owned a large ranch in Coahuila. After being appointed governor of Coahuila y Texas, Aguayo visited the site for the Presidio San Antonio de Bejar and ordered that the fort be built at this location.” That was just one thing. He had a busy time as governor of Coahuila y Texas.

The Old Spanish Trail Zero Milestone (One of Them, Anyway)

Posted on March 2, 2015 by admin

From San Fernando Cathedral, I made my way past San Antonio City Hall, which is a handsome Italian Renaissance Revival structure dating from the 1880s.
Among the other monuments and markers on the grounds is a boulder with a plaque stuck to it. I have to say I’m a sucker for boulders with plaques stuck to them. This one’s apparently been there over 90 years.

ZERO MILESTONE
OLD SPANISH TRAIL

St. Augustine – Pensacola – Mobile – New Orleans – Houston – San Antonio – El Paso – Tucson – Yuma – San Diego

Dedicated by Governor Pat M. Neff
March 27, 1924

Erected by the San Antonio City Federation of Women’s Clubs
Mrs. J.K. Beretta, President

Zero milestone, eh? Odd, considering that San Antonio is roughly in the middle of the route described by the cities on the plaque. This Old Spanish Trail, incidentally, has nothing to do with Spanish colonialism in North America, except that it passed through territories that were at one time or another part of the Spanish Empire. The OST was a 20th-century invention. (Confusingly, OST also refers to an earlier, non-motorized trail between Santa Fe and Los Angeles that did involve actual Spaniards.)

As this excellent article published by the Texas Transportation Museum notes, “…a very grand vision arose for a continuous highway from the Atlantic at St. Augustine in Florida to the Pacific in San Diego California, a distance of 2,817 miles…. The route was given a picturesque name, “The Old Spanish Trail,” as a marketing tool, much as naming the first Northern transcontinental route from New York to San Francisco, “The Lincoln Highway,” first proposed in 1912. The names were designed to capture the imagination of cities and counties along the proposed routes and encourage participation in the construction of the route, as the OST organization could not even begin to pay for all the roads and bridges that would be required.”

But why is there a zero milestone in San Antonio? Google “zero milestone Old Spanish Trail” and you’ll also find information about a plaque on a sphere in St. Augustine — dating from 1928.

Back to the Texas Transportation Museum article: “Governor Neff dedicated an OST zero milestone outside San Antonio city hall in March 1924. It is still there today… The first ceremonial drive across the 2,817 miles of continuously improved road, lined with signs put up by each state, began in San Diego, California on April 4 1929. Their arrival in San Antonio was ceremoniously greeted with a dinner at, of course, the Gunter Hotel.”

That doesn’t really answer the question. Maybe the San Diego-San Antonio stretch was finished first. Or more likely, the San Antonio City Federation of Women’s Clubs really wanted a marker.

San Fernando Cathedral

Posted on March 1, 2015 by admin

Where are the copy editors? Maybe the Chicago Tribune laid off all its copy editors. On Wednesday, the paper ran a review of The Royale, a play now on stage in Chicago, and it begins like this: “In 1910, Jack Johnson, a boxer who had long dominated the World Colored Heavyweight Championship, finally coaxed the formerly undefeated James J. Jeffries out of retirement… Johnson’s July 4 victory in Reno, Nev., over the white opponent was hailed as a singular moment for the advancement of African-Americans, many of whom felt enormous pride as they listened, huddled around radios, as the Galveston Giant laid his doubters, and, symbolically, white America, flat on the canvas.”

Is it too much to ask that someone at the Tribune know that there were no commercial radio broadcasts in 1910?

I didn’t remember the last time I visited San Fernando Cathedral, which is in downtown San Antonio — probably in the early ’80s — so I figured it was time to go again. A church has been on this site since the 1740s, though as usual with this kind of thing, the structure’s been modified and enlarged and restored and otherwise changed over the centuries.

In our time, it’s a handsome structure with a Gothic Revival nave, triple entrance portals, a gable roof, and twin bell towers and buttresses.

Just inside the entrance, in the narthex, you’ll find this marble coffin.

The nearby plaque asserts that:

Here lie the remains of Travis, Crockett, Bowie and other Alamo heroes. The Archdiocese of San Antonio erected this memorial May 11, AD 1938 R.I.P.

Formerly buried in the Sanctuary of the old San Fernando church

Exhumed July 28, 1936 Exposed to public view for a year Entombed May 11, 1938

If it’s written in stone, it must be true. Right? But not everyone’s so sure. Ashes and bits of bone were found buried in the sanctuary in 1936, and the archbishop at the time concluded that they were the defenders of the Alamo, whose bodies were known to be burned. This article posits that the archbishop pulled that assumption out of his miter, and that the remains might actually be casualties — Spanish loyalists, no less — of the little-known Battle of Rosillo fully 33 years before the Battle of the Alamo.

San Fernando’s lovely inside. The view toward the apse.

And back through the nave.

Not far from where I took this picture was a brass plaque embedded in the floor that said: Official Center of San Antonio by Ordinance of the City Council. Another plaque in the floor of the church said: Original Entrance to the Church of the Villa de San Fernando. Demarcation of the Center of the City 1731.

The Texas State Historical Society outlines the early history of the church: “Although information is contradictory, the cornerstone for the first attempt to build a stone church was laid most likely on May 11, 1738. In 1748 the viceroy approved a donation of 12,000 pesos to complete the church. With funds secured, two artisans from San Luis Potosí, Gerónimo de Ibarra (a master stonemason) and Felipe de Santiago (a stonecutter), were hired to continue the project. Ibarra razed the earlier construction and enlarged the dimensions of the building. He completed the church in 1755.”

After that, of course, came damage and repair and modifications and even a part for the structure in the Battle of the Alamo, when “Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna not only used the church as a lookout but ordered a red flag flown there to signal that the Texans at the Alamo would be shown no mercy.”

The reredos. Maybe it would be a retablo in this context. In any case, a shiny bit of work.
To the right were a number of stone tablets embedded in the wall that looked they might have been burial stones that used to be part of the floor. One of them, in Spanish and English, was that of Eugenio Navarro, brother of Jose Antonio Navarro, who lived a lot longer.

HERE RESTS The Remains of EUGENIO NAVARRO Native of the City of Bexar who departed this life on the 6th of May 1838, Aged 34 Years, 5 Months & 21 days He fell an innocent victim, by a shot from the Pistol of a vindictive adversary, who also lost his life by the dagger of the brave defender, of his honour and person.

That is, someone shot Eugenio, but he was able to dispatch the attacker with his knife. In 1836, he’d had a critical part to play in the Texas Revolution, especially in warning the Texians in San Antonio that Santa Anna was coming, and in force. More about him here.

Two Ukrainian Village Churches

Posted on November 5, 2014 by admin

The Open House Chicago sites were only open until 5 pm on either Saturday or Sunday or both, and it was almost 4 when we headed to Ukrainian Village by El from the South Side and then a westbound bus. A little tiring, but I wanted to see the interiors of Sts. Volodymyr & Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church and St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral before the event finished. It was worth the effort.

Sts. Volodymyr & Olha is a massive brick presence just south of Chicago Ave.

Yaroslav Korsunsky, an architect from Minneapolis designed the church in the 1970s, reportedly in a Byzantine-Ukrainian style the early second millennium AD. I’m no expert on that, but I will say that the interior is stunning.

A few blocks north is St. Nicholas. It too is a striking church.

Note the 480-light chandelier.

And the fine stained glass.

Afterward, we didn’t feel like walking the additional blocks to see Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral, which we visited last summer when it happened to be open. It’s also resplendent, and has the distinction of displaying an icon that includes not only the founder of the parish, but the architect of the building, Louis Sullivan.

Three Bronzeville Churches

Posted on November 4, 2014 by admin

It was a first for me: a church with a lime-green interior wall, all the way around, and a large cross created by colorful lights, as a fixture on the ceiling. To find this church, you take the Green Line south to the 43rd St. station, and then walk west on 43rd. At Wabash Ave., turn left – to the south — and there you are, at 4315 S. Wabash: The First Church of Deliverance.

I’ve seen it described as a rare example of Art Moderne in a house of worship. I’ll go along with that. One Walter T. Bailey designed the structure toward the end of this career, which involved a practice in Chicago and Memphis, doing (among other designs) a number of Knights of Pythias buildings, including this one I’d never heard of near Nashville.

Lee Bailey, writing for WBEZ, says: “The church was built in 1939 and designed by Walter T. Bailey, the first African American to hold an architecture license in Illinois. Those terra cotta-clad twin towers were added in 1946, designed by Kocher Buss & DeKlerk. The building’s modernity wasn’t by chance. In the 1930s and 1940s, First Church was an exceedingly modern congregation.

“The Rev. Clarence H. Cobbs was only 21 when he founded the predominantly black First Church congregation in 1929. The church began its radio broadcast in 1934, giving Cobbs and his 200-member choir a national reach and influence. The congregation’s choir revolutionized the sound of gospel music in 1939 when its organist and composer Kenneth Morris convinced Cobbs to install the newly created Hammond electric organ at the church. The church’s gospel festivals in old Comiskey Park in the 1940s drew thousands.

“In 1953, the congregation became the first black church in the U.S. (quite possibly the world) to broadcast its services on television. WLS-TV carried those services live — a significant development, in retrospect — for 12 straight weeks. Songs that later became gospel standards made their debut at the church under Hobbs, including the staple ‘How I Got Over.’ ”

The interior is auditorium-style, and green is the first thing that strikes you. Then the details, especially the luminous ceiling cross.

Up closer to the front.

Nearby, at 4359 S. Michigan Ave., is the Centennial Missionary Baptist Church. Once upon a time, it was the Eighth Church of Christ, Scientist. Actually, not that long ago.

It too is an auditorium church, but more semicircular. In that way it reminded me of the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist, which is downtown.

Centennial Missionary Baptist Church, Oct 18, 2014

A nice woman named Doris gave us a tour, including not only the main part of the church, but some back rooms. Open House Chicago notes that “Designed in 1911 by architect Leon E. Stanhope, the Centennial Missionary Baptist Church was originally home to the Eighth Church of Christ, Scientist. Designed in the neoclassical style, with a striking red domed roof, it was one of the longest-running African American Christian Science congregations.

“The building only recently became home to Centennial Missionary Baptist Church – which itself boasts a distinguished history. Their first house of worship was a building owned by Lorraine Hansberry, and numerous gospel music greats performed over the years.”

The third church we visited in Bronzeville, Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, 4600-4622 S. King Dr., began as the Chicago Sinai Temple in the early 1910s, designed by the prolific Alfred Alschuler. I didn’t take any exteriors, but Design Slinger has some good images.

The exterior is stately, while the interior is gorgeous.

Design Slinger says: “In 1910 architect Alfred Alschuler drew up plans for a Chicago Sinai building complex that would include an auditorium for worship and a large community center which would house offices, classrooms, meeting spaces, a gym and a pool…. as members moved further south, a large corner lot was purchased at 46th and Grand Boulevard to serve as a new home base.

“Since the congregation was part of the Reform tradition, Alschuler followed a design scheme that was popular at the time with other congregations in not proclaiming that the building was a house of worship, by choosing a historical classic architectural style. The restrained sophistication of Greco/Roman refinement would convey to the passerby that this was a substantial edifice, it could be a bank or a library, but not wear its religious affiliation on its sleeve.”

By the 1940s, the Jewish population in the area couldn’t sustain a synagogue, and the structures became part of the high school run by Franciscans. In 1961, Mt. Pisgah Missionary Baptist congregation acquired the property.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Architecture