Plymouth Church, Milwaukee

Posted on September 27, 2023 by admin

Tucked away on a side street northeast of downtown Milwaukee, and not far from Lake Michigan to the east and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to the west, is Plymouth Church. I arrived there on Saturday afternoon as the last place on my Doors Open visit.

It is United Church of Christ, one of whose confessional predecessors were New England Congregationalists. Puritans and Separatists, if you go back far enough.

“Alexander Eschweiler, who designed many prominent houses and buildings throughout Milwaukee, served as the architect of the original building,” notes Historic Milwaukee. “His design harkened back to an older pastoral age, replicating the image of an old English church. The beautiful sanctuary is notable for its nine Tiffany windows.”

Maybe eight. A volunteer at the church entrance – a little old church lady (really) – told me that one of the windows was unsigned. It sure enough looks like a Tiffany, but without the lettering, you can only be 99.44% or some other high percentage sure of its pedigree.

I spent a good while looking at the windows, dedicated more than a century ago to a number of early congregants.

Long looks are highly recommended.

Toward the front entrance. At that moment, the afternoon sun obscured the church’s rose window, which rises over the choir balcony.

Obscured unless you got up close. Then it is a thing of wonder.

The window was installed in 1917. Let Bobby Tanzilo, writing in OnMilwaukee, take it from here: “ ‘The window, a large Tiffany art glass, was presented to the church by Mrs. C. W. Noyes in honor of her mother, Marcia Wells, wife of Daniel Wells, who built the Wells Building and for whom Wells Street was named,’ wrote the Sentinel in June 1917.

“The window represents an angel figure bestowing the benediction of peace. This is the seventh memorial window in Plymouth Church.”

1917. How many of the congregation prayed ardently for Peace that upheaval year? For the American men headed for war? For Victory? All in a single breath?

Tanzilo also discusses the artist who did the rose window, and quite possibly the other windows, while working for Tiffany: Clara Burd (d. 1933). That despite the fact that Tiffany didn’t name the artists that worked on its projects.

“Clara Burd was – along with others including Agnes Northrop who designed the 1917 Hartwell Memorial Window that’s at Art Institute of Chicago, Clara Driscoll and others – one of the so-called ‘Tiffany Girls,’ talented women responsible for designing stunning works of art in glass (not only windows, but also lamps and other objects),” Tanzilo wrote.

She did a lot else besides. Such as book illustrations. “The Returning Prodigal” (1911).

The full article is worth a read, and has a full set of pictures of the windows of the church.

Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

Posted on September 26, 2023 by admin

Head west on Bluemound Road in Milwaukee – once an Indian trace, later an early paved road – and before long you arrive at Calvary Cemetery. The entrance is easy to spot, though my shot is from inside.

It’s Milwaukee’s oldest Catholic cemetery, counting as a rural cemetery, as it was outside the young city in the 1850s. About 80,000 people repose there these days, including the first mayor of Milwaukee, Solomon Juneau.

I didn’t see his grave. But there were a lot of others, varying in style, age, condition and carved sentiment. The ground has contour and the trees are mature. Everything you need for a picturesque cemetery.

Including some sizable art and a handful of mausoleums.

That’s the stone of the Jung family, early Milwaukee brewers. What was it Jung said about beer being the royal road to the unconscious? No, that was that other Milwaukee brewer, Ziggy Freud. I believe they were rivals.

A good number of priests are buried at Calvary, including some fairly recent internments, such as this long row of Jesuits.

More Jesuits. A wall of Jesuits, with room for a few more.

The cemetery was unusually busy for a cemetery, because it was on the Doors Open Milwaukee list. Not for the grounds or stones, but for the chapel atop the fittingly named Chapel Hill.

“This cream brick Romanesque style chapel was designed by architect Erhard Brielmaier and built in 1899,” says Historic Milwaukee. “A noted designer of Catholic churches around the country, Brielmaier also designed the famous St. Josaphat on the city’s south side, under construction at the same time. The chapel is located on one of the highest elevations in the city with impressive views of Story Hill, Miller Park and the downtown skyline.”

A nonprofit, the Friends of Calvary Cemetery, is overseeing the long and expensive restoration of the chapel. Some decades ago, the Archdiocese had planned to tear it down, but fortunately preservationists prevailed. Members of the Friends showed visitors around the inside on Saturday. We had to sign a waver in case a piece of it fell on us.

The crypt was dark and crypt-like.

“Originally built intended for services, prayers, private contemplation, and as a mausoleum for clergy, only one clergy member was ever buried at the site,” Historic Milwaukee continues. “The structure has two levels: the upper level features the chapel, with its raised sanctuary and high altar, side altars recessed in twin apses, lofty vaulted ceilings, soaring arches and central dome; the lower level is the bi-level mausoleum containing 45 crypts. Reposing directly beneath the main altar is the body of Reverend Idziego Tarasiewicza, interred in 1903.”

Why just him? The authoritative answer seems to be, dunno. Go figure.

Hope Lutheran Church & The Carpenter Mansion

Posted on September 25, 2023 by admin

I went on Saturday to see a church, Hope Lutheran, west of downtown Milwaukee, but I also got a good look at its attached building, the Carpenter Mansion. It’s an unusual Siamese twin-like pairing of structures.

The Carpenter House came first, built in the 1890s as a home for the founder of a thriving commercial bakery and his large family. These days, it’s a little long in the tooth, though a nonprofit is overseeing its restoration, a slow process. Still, handsome cream city brick, artfully put together.

“The gorgeous cream city brick Queen Anne house is a stunner outside even now, with its broad arches squaring off the entry porch – which also has some striking, stumpy and bulbous Romanesque columns – the elegant chimney, the decorative carved panels – including one under another arch, this one a second-story window – and the remains of a turret on the southeast corner of the home, which is perched atop a small hill,” writes Bobby Tanzilo in On Milwaukee.

The newer Hope Lutheran has its charms, too, such as a well-kept exterior.

The church ceiling evokes the ribs of an upside-down boat, like an impromptu meeting place for members of the early church. In that, and its elegant and simple lines, Hope Lutheran reminded me of St. Paul’s Episcopal in San Antonio, though the structure is even more pronounced in the Texas church.

Also like St. Paul’s, a fine array of stained glass windows.

How often is the Serpent seen in this medium? Not sure how often. Note the nick in the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

The church and the house are connected via a small room. The church bought the house long ago, and most of the first floor is church offices. The upper floors are closed for the ongoing restoration.

I took an interest in the fireplaces.

Artful in their way as the stained glass.

Along North Avenue, Chicago (Buildings)

Posted on August 29, 2023 by admin

By Saturday, the high heat of last week had disappeared, leaving too nice a day to spend too long at the Art Institute. So to return to meet Yuriko after her cake class near Humboldt Park, I took the El from the Loop to Damen station, got off and walked westward for about half an hour along North Avenue, instead of transferring to a bus.

I began at the North-Damen-Milwaukee intersection. The former Noel State Bank at 1601 N. Milwaukee Ave., I’m sorry to say, is now a former Walgreens, with the excellent building boarded up and slightly forlorn.

The handsome former North Avenue Baths (2041 W. North Ave.) has been home to a number of restaurants since its redevelopment some decades ago.

I didn’t investigate closely, but a spot called Vajra seems to be the first-floor occupant now, offering Indian and Nepalese food.

Continuing west. A slow parade of ordinary, but interesting buildings.

An intriguing former church.

At one time, it was St. Paul’s Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church (2215 W. North Ave.), as indicated on the building itself. As indicated online, it has been stuck in redevelopment limbo for some time now.

Oakley and North Ave. Oddly enough, Google Maps refers to Oakley as a boulevard south of North, but an avenue north of North.

Smaller structures, some with redevelopment potential.

Someone spent some money on both 2542-44 W. North Ave. and 2646-54.

Further west are newer developments, rather than redevelopments.

I spent some time with Google Street View, whose images of the site go back to August 2007, when whatever had been there had been razed, but the apartments weren’t in place. By March 2009, four stories had been finished — or at least the building skin was finished. At that moment, I’m sure construction had ground to a halt.

By June 2011, the developers had found the money to add another floor, which suggests to me that the interior probably wasn’t finished in 2009, either. The first-floor retail was vacant for a long time, with Be Kids Cafe appearing only by July 2019. Not good timing, but who knew?

“This is one of the few cafe/kids activity spaces in the city that is both fun for kids and great for parents,” said an early 2020 review. “Nicely made Metric coffee drinks, chill spot for parents to hang, and awesome climbing gym for kids.”

Metric coffee? Coffee by the kilo, I guess. A brand I didn’t know, but what I know about coffee brands would barely fill a cup.

Now the Etheria Cafe occupies the spot, opening early last year. It doesn’t actually sound all that different.

The corner is across from Humboldt Park which, sad to relate, has seen its homeless population rise even in the few months since we last visited.

Not a tent city, exactly, more like a village: 40 or so unfortunates, according to local reporting.

Burlington, Wisconsin: Liar Liar

Posted on July 17, 2023 by admin

If, in downtown Burlington, Wisconsin – not a very large place, since the entire town’s population is about 11,000 – you pay attention to your surroundings, you’ll start noticing plaques.

They honor winners of a contest put on at the end of every year by the Burlington Liar’s Club. I’ve read that the contest is for tellers of tall tales, submitted by entrants nationwide, but looking at this list of winners, I’d say only some of them count as “tall tales,” along the lines of a watermelon vine dragging a boy in its wake.

The rest are jokes. In the 1978 example, pretty much like one Johnny Carson would have told.

Newspapermen of nearly 100 years ago made up the Burlington Liar’s Club, but the thing achieved a life of its own, quickly evolving into the overseer of a not-very-serious contest with entrants from around the nation. No doubt the contest is unique in the nation, like the Nenana Ice Classic or the Sopchoppy Worm Gruntin’ Festival.

“The club started in 1929 as a joke,” the club website says. “A Burlington newspaper reporter wrote a story to the effect that these ‘old timers’ got together each New Year’s day at the police station, and lied for the championship of the city…

“… city editors, with an eye for interesting features, ‘put it on the wire,’ and the following December the Associated Press and other news agencies began phoning Burlington to find out if the city’s annual contest would be repeated…

“Letters began to trickle in from the four corners of the country commenting on the ‘contest.’ They furnished the inspiration for a real contest instead of a phony one, national in scope, and the Burlington Liar’s Club was formed to carry it on.”

Just the kind of thing to notice during a small-town walkabout. I was delighted. Who isn’t fond of the oddities in Wisconsin? The fiberglass fields and pyramids and Forevertrons.

One Sunday late in June, I took Ann to the southern Wisconsin camp she where is working as a counselor for the summer, and after I dropped her off, spent a little time looking around Burlington and environs.

The small downtown of Burlington, which at this point in history counts as exurban Milwaukee, is a handsome place, with most of its storefronts occupied.

That is, some handsome old buildings with modern tenants.

Nothing like a sturdy pre-FDIC bank building. Completed in 1909; that makes it pre-Fed as well.

I couldn’t not look it up. The Bank of Burlington in Wisconsin existed in various forms since the mid-19th century; it was prospering in 1916, according to this article from that year, posted by AccessGeneaolgy. A bank in some form or other was in the building until 2021, which Chase closed its office there. That hints that Chase was the last of a string of banks swallowing other banks in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Also: C.B. McCanna. That would be Charles B. McCanna (d. 1913), who organized the McCanna Cheese and Butter Manufacturing Co., and operated about 20 factories in the area. He was also president of the Bank of Burlington in his later years.

“In 1893, the company was reorganized as McCanna and Fraser, with McCanna serving as president until his death,” says the Wisconsin Historical Society. “In 1898 he founded the Wisconsin Condensed Milk Co., which soon became one of the largest producers of condensed milk in Wisconsin and operated branch factories in Pecatonica and Grayslake, Ill.”

You’ve heard of Wisconsin beer barons. Here we have a cheese baron.

I enjoy the old-fashioned approach of a 1916 article about McCanna, another article accessible via Access Genealogy. Of course, it wasn’t old-fashioned at the time, just standard practice in lauding business men:

“Dairying and the industries which are allied thereto have ever constituted an important source of the wealth and prosperity of Racine County, and among the most enterprising and progressive business men of the district are those who have turned to that line of labor as a source of their business development. One of the well known, successful and highly respected representatives of the business in Racine County was Charles B. McCanna, who became an influential citizen of Burlington and one whose activities constituted not only a source of individual success but also constituted one of the strong elements in the advancement of public prosperity.”

Recinte Modernista Sant Pau

Posted on June 22, 2023 by admin

And this is?

You guessed it, a former hospital. More specifically, the entrance building to Recinte Modernista Sant Pau in Barcelona (as its web site seems to style it in Catalan). Formerly, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. I defer to the succinct article about the place in Atlas Obscura.

“In the late 19th century, Barcelona was expanding beyond its old city walls, and beyond the Hospital de la Santa Creuwhich had served the city since the early 1400s. In 1896 a wealthy Catalan banker named Pau Gil i Serra died, leaving behind a will that requested his estate be used for a new hospital that would utilize the newest available medical technology.

“Catalan architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner designed the site, which would represent the merging of six of Barcelona’s hospitals… Sixteen of the structures were built in the Modernist style and, though guidebooks and tourists often overlook the site, make up the largest Art Nouveau site in the world.”

“The Hospital de Sant Pau was fully functioning until 2009, when a new building, erected in the northern half of the complex, took over the duties. Several of the historic buildings were refurbished over the next several years. The site, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, reopened to the public in 2014.”

A few details.

Not to neglect the detail underfoot.

Murals and mosaics.

In its time as a healthcare campus, each building had a specialty, or set of specialties. The buildings opened onto gardened plazas; windows provided natural light to the building interiors. Many more modern hospitals are still playing catchup in those regards. Restoration work began in 2009 and is ongoing.

Some of the interiors are exhibits, such as a recreation of an early 20th-century hospital room, when the facility was new.

Some wards are unrestored, and there’s scaffolding on some of their outsides.

Other buildings house various international NGOs associated with health, such as the Barcelona office of Eurorids, Rare Diseases Europe.

The front building is event space.

Gobsmacked, I was. The place made me smack my gob. Amazingly unlike any notion I have of a hospital. Guess I have to revise my notions of what hospitals can look like.

Palau Güell

Posted on June 20, 2023 by admin

More Gaudí. More Güell. Visit Barcelona, and they come up time and again. If you have an interest in the built environment, that is, or follow guidebook and web site recommendations.

Gaudí wasn’t always so well known among English-speakers, if my 1929 EB is any indication. He has no entry. Neither does Eusebi Güell, which is a bit more surprising, considering his prominence as a Catalan industrialist – foodstuffs, wine, cement, more – in the freewheeling late 19th century, and indeed as a local politician and one of the richest men in Spain. Of course, we moderns have found skeletons in his closet, or at least the family closet, by modern standards.

These days, Güell is best known as a patron of Gaudí, who (among many other things) designed him a mansion in the 1880s that is posh almost beyond belief: Palau Güell.

The mansion is just off La Rambla. We strolled for a time down that thoroughfare, as much of Barcelona and its tourists seem to do all of the time, and had jim-dandy seafood al fresco at tourist prices (entirely worth it) at a small joint near the entrance of La Boqueria market, which was closed for Sunday.

La Rambla looked a lot like this, except we saw a lot more t-shirts and shorts.

La Rambla, 1905
Wikimedia/Montse liz

The front of Palau Güell.

The interior, as I mentioned, is posh, and a little hard to photograph. Still, I took some details, such as the basement, where carriages and horses were kept.

Stained glass near the main entrance celebrating Catalonia.

The dining room.

A view of the back, including ironwork on the balconies.

There was a lot else besides, but what I really enjoyed were Gaudí’s rooftop chimneys, which is the last place one visits. Some of the more famed chimneys anywhere, I believe.

They come in singles.

Or groups, depending on how you look at them.

The crowning star.

I was also able to create images of Barcelona rooftops from this vantage.

You know, just like Picasso. I must be in my Blue Period.

Parc Güell

Posted on June 19, 2023 by admin

It has happened to me in a lot of places over the years, and I can’t quite account for it. In various parts of the United States, but also in Europe and Australia – anywhere I might blend in with a crowd, including places where I don’t speak the language. What happens: a stranger asks me directions. It happened in Barcelona, too, during our return from Parc Güell (Güell Park), down a fairly steep slope in the Gràcia district.

This street wasn’t our actual path, but branches off from it and gives some idea of the hill you need to climb – partly assisted by an outdoor escalator at one point – to reach the park.

It was a neighborhood of political graffiti as well. A whiff of old Barcelona, I guess. Much of it in English for some reason.

While coming down the slope, Yuriko had gotten somewhat ahead of me, so I was walking alone for a few moments. A woman with some small children in tow asked me directions to the park in Catalan (or Spanish). I was able to point in the direction I’d come and say “park,” which conveniently is the same in all the relevant languages. She seemed happy to hear it, and I was certain I’d given her some correct information.

Parc Güell is a large place, though only a section of it includes architectural elements by Antoni Gaudí. The city has charged admission to that section for the last 10 years or so.

“[Industrialist and Gaudí friend] Eusebi Güell entrusted Gaudí with the project of making an urbanization [sic, neighborhood] for wealthy families on a large estate he had acquired in the area popularly known as Muntanya Pelada,” the park’s web site (machine translated) says. “Its situation was unbeatable, in a healthy environment and with splendid views over the sea and the Plan de Barcelona.

“In October 1900, the land began to be leveled and the works went at a good pace. On January 4, 1903, a description published in the Yearbook of the Association of Architects stated that the two pavilions at the entrance, the main staircase, the shelter or waiting area, the external fence, the viaducts and part of the large esplanade, as well as the water evacuation system [sic, were complete? Under way?]”

In any case, only two houses were ever sold, so as a new neighborhood, the place was a failure. Eventually Güell’s heirs sold the would-be development to the city. The common-area work that Gaudí did remained, to great acclaim in future years.

A path from the entrance leads to a large esplanade, or perhaps best called a terrace, originally planned as a place for outdoor shows.

An undulating bench marks the edge of the esplanade.

It offers a sweeping view of Barcelona, plus other Gaudí structures in the park.

It’s a popular place.

Gaudí collaborator Josep M. Jujol did the bench mosaics.

Stairs lead down from the esplanade, which is supported by 86 columns that form the Hypostyle Hall. It was supposed to have been a sheltered marketplace.

From there, the Dragon Stairs. The figure is actually a salamander, I’ve read.

At the base of the stairs is the Porter’s Lodge, which houses exhibits about the 19th- and 20th-century history of Barcelona. Its interior walls are bright colors.

Other parts of the park include the paths and viaducts that Gaudí designed. We did some wandering.

I was reminded a bit of Brackenridge Park in San Antonio, but the similarities aren’t really that deep.

Lush bursts of flowers adorn parts of the park.

Springtime in Barcelona. There’s a romcom in there somewhere. Probably not a very good one, but how many are?

Sagrada Família

Posted on June 18, 2023 by admin

In a (mostly) low-rise town like Barcelona, high-rises stand out. Even unconventional high-rises. Even one of the world’s most unconventional high-rises, Sagrada Família.

You can see the basilica and its modern construction cranes from the roof of Barcelona Cathedral.

Or from Parc Güell.

From the Montjuïc Cable Car.

Or from the entrance of Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau, looking down the fittingly named thoroughfare Avinguda Gaudí.

In full, the structure is Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família. Lauded around the world these days. Not everyone has had praise for basilica down the years, however.

George Orwell was not, of course, a tourist in Barcelona in 1937, but he did visit the Sagrada Família at one point, which he mentions in Homage to Catalonia.

“For the first time since I had been in Barcelona I went to have a look at the cathedral – a modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world. It has four crenellated spires exactly the shape of hock bottles. Unlike most of the churches in Barcelona, it was not damaged during the revolution – it was spared because of its ‘artistic value’, people said. I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance, though they did hang a red and black banner between its spires.”

Sage about much, but Orwell wasn’t right about everything. Still, before I visited Barcelona, I was a little skeptical myself. Something that receives that much praise inspires a bit of skepticism, or should, and the many pictures I’d seen didn’t quite convey greatness, at least to me. Oddness, yes. Maybe strangeness for the sake of strangeness, as envisioned by Antoni Gaudí and carried on for decades by his successors down to the present day, but not to completion just yet.

So on our first morning in Barcelona, May 18, after a pleasant breakfast in the hotel, and a walk of only a few blocks, we approached Sagrada Família from its western corner. Despite its height, basilica emerged into view only as we rounded the last neighboring block. Then it was time to gawk.

Often enough images don’t do a place justice. That is really the case for Sagrada Família. Whatever skepticism I had evaporated. It has a presence, rising there in front of you. It is still quite a strange church, but a great strangeness — a strange majesty? — expressed in innumerable details.

Naturally, despite realizing that seeing the structure with my own eyes is the best way to experience Sagrada Família, I proceeded to take a lot of pictures. We passed by the structure more than once, so I captured it at different times of day.

As I said, innumerable details.

One side is the Nativity Façade, mostly completed while Gaudí was still alive. He was fatally struck by a streetcar in 1926 at age 73, and is buried in the basilica’s crypt, which was closed when we visited. As you’d expect, that side celebrates the birth of Jesus.

The other side is the the more austere Passion Façade, a more recent completion, though expressing Gaudí’s ideas.

I didn’t know who Japanese sculptor Etsuro Sotoo was. Yuriko did, and she was keen to see the large door to the basilica that he designed, which is in the Nativity Façade. The door’s leaf motif not only includes many leaves in bronze and glass, but also some creatures that live in the underbrush.

That was the door through which we entered the basilica on the afternoon of May 19. These days, you have to book a tour to do so, which I did weeks before we arrived in Barcelona – the only thing I booked ahead of time for the trip besides the visit to the Book of Kells and the Long Room.

In we went.

Too many distinctive features to name, but what struck me most of all were the columns supporting the ceiling, which branched like trees toward the top.

There was no shortage of other tourists admiring the place, but the vast space inside held them all pretty well.

Everyone takes pictures.

I wonder how many tens or hundreds of thousands a day. Or an hour.

El Born & Parc de la Ciutadella

Posted on June 14, 2023 by admin

The first lines of the search results for the El Born district of Barcelona, sampled this morning:

El Born is sandwiched between Via Laietana and Barceloneta and is served by the metro stops Barceloneta and Jaume 1 which are on the same line. Las Ramblas and…

El Born brings to Greenpoint and NYC a taste of tapas y platillos from Spain and has a focus in Barcelona, where the owners are from.

A local’s guide to El Born district of Barcelona. The 26 best hotels, museums, bars, restaurants, shops and guided tours of El Borne for 2023.

Located in between the Gothic Quarter and the Ciutadella Park, El Born is one of Barcelona’s trendiest and most popular neighborhoods.

Once home to Barcelona’s affluent merchants, noblemen, and artisans, El Born is now one of the hippest, liveliest, and most creative…

That last line is from a site called “travel away” (no caps), which looks like an Afar knockoff, and the headline is “A Curated Guide to El Born, Barcelona.” Of course it’s curated. You must visit that perfect tapas place that serves unique craft sangria, or you’ll come down with a bad case of FOMO. (We had tasty tapas and swell sangria during our Catalonia holiday, but not in El Born.)

Anyway, you can’t just wander around to see what you can see, can you?

Of course you can. I wasn’t hip enough to know that El Born is trendy, but we were intrigued by our surroundings as we ambled along the mostly pedestrian thoroughfare Passeig del Born, where we acquired a drink and snacks to eat on a bench.

The soda in question. All the way from Hamburg. We’d never heard of it, so we gave it a go. Now I can’t remember what it tasted like, so it must have been neither that good or particularly bad.

At one end of the passeig is a large plaza featuring an imposing cast-iron structure.

That’s El Born Centre de Cultura i Memoria. The main part of the inside was free to walk into; just follow the rules.

The El Born Centre was once a large public market (Mercat del Born), and the first cast-iron structure of its kind in Barcelona, dating from 1876.

I was inspired to take a few black-and-whites.

I should have take more of those in Barcelona, which has a lot of good contour for monochrome. Ah, well. The iron framework over our heads wasn’t the only thing to see at El Born Centre. Beneath the ground-floor walkways is an archaeological site with a connection to Barcelona’s bloody past.

A neighborhood once existed here, as it becomes clear staring down on the ragged wall stubs and stones. In 1714, after the Principality of Catalonia capitulated to Bourbon forces toward the end of the War of Spanish Succession, the victors leveled the neighborhood to build the Ciutadella (citadel) and its security esplanade, presumably to help keep the Catalans in line. Well over a century later, after the hubbub in ’68 (1868, that is) the city assumed control of the site and eventually built the market on a relatively small part of it.

Much later, the ruins were uncovered, and archaeological investigations proceed. Sources tell me the ruins of 60 houses in 11 separate blocks can be found in El Born’s archaeological site.

We exited from the opposite end of El Born Centre that we entered, and from there a short street leads to the sizable Parc de la Ciutadella (Citadel Park), which is the use 19th-century Barcelona had for most the former military facility. Good choice. It’s a grand place for a stroll. Or just to hang out.

A water feature. Reminded me a little of Chapultepec Park in Mexico City.

Plus an assortment of monumental structures. Such as the Catalonian parliament building.

A thing called Castell dels tres Dragones, which seemed to be closed for repairs. Later (as in, today) I learned that Lluís Domènech i Montaner designed it. We’ll come back to him. He did something much more amazing that we saw later.

A Catalan gazebo. Note the difference in detail from Castilian gazebos. Catalans are reportedly fiercely proud of their gazebo heritage.

We were too tired to climb these stairs, but we did admire the work from some distance.

That’s the Ciudadela Park Cascade, which as far as I can tell doesn’t honor anything specific, but was built in the late 19th century to celebrate Barcelona’s revival. And in time for the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1888, which is yet another place to visit once that time machine is up and running (and 1929, too).

The park, like Jackson Park in Chicago and Hemisfair is San Antonio, owes much of its modern shape to a long-ago world’s fair.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Architecture