Churches After Lunch

Posted on October 17, 2023 by admin

“Nothing matters but the weekend, from a Tuesday point of view.”

Lyrical wisdom from The Kings, a Canadian band who had only one hit in the United States that I know of (or two, depending on how you count the songs). I don’t think I’m going to look it up to confirm that notion. It’s been more than 40 years, after all, and that level of detail doesn’t matter much.

Lunch on Saturday was in Uptown, specifically near the Argyle El station, which is home to a sizable number of Vietnamese immigrants and their descendants. Once upon a time, at a small strip center in the neighborhood, there was a pho restaurant that had the distinction (for me) of being the first place I tried pho. It was the also first restaurant we ever took Lilly to, when she was exactly a month old in December 1997. I’m glad to say she slept through the entire experience in her detached car seat, next to our table. The other patrons were probably glad, too.

That restaurant is gone – or has moved, its space taken by the next-door Vietnamese grocery store – so we repaired to a North Broadway storefront pho spot. Actually much larger than a typical storefront, with room in back for a small stage for live music, colorfully decked out with a handful of small spotlights ready for action, as we saw at some of the larger restaurants in Saigon. Lunch was filling and as good as pho almost always is. Who can ask for more?

After lunch we walked the few blocks to Saint Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Church in Uptown. I lived not far away for a number of years, but had no idea it was there.

Another unusual church style, at least for Chicago. Colonial Meeting House, though looking a bit more Georgian than that, my sources tell me. An architect name Joseph W. McCarthy, not to be confused with the number-one proponent of McCarthyism from Wisconsin, did the design. He’s yet another noted designers of churches, back when that was a growth industry.

Many of the shrines in the church reflect the local population, as shrines tend to do.

In case you want to know who the 17 Martyrs of Laos are, a poster at the back of the nave tells you. Martyrs figure prominently at Saint Thomas, fitting right in for a church honoring a churchman murdered in a church.

Later in the day, in fact the last place we visited on Saturday, was St. Ita Catholic Church in Edgewater, at the edge of my old stomping grounds in Andersonville.

“St. Ita Parish was founded in Edgewater in 1900. On October 23, 1923, His Eminence George Cardinal Mundelein commissioned Architect Henry J. Schlacks to design and build a new church specifically in French Gothic design for St. Ita Parish,” the local parish web site says. I’ve seen a number of his churches.

“The current church, which opened in 1927, was the capstone of Henry Schlacks’ distinguished career as an ecclesiastical architect…. The open tower appears airy and delicate, yet it contains 1,800 tons of Bedford limestone and rises to 120 feet in height. Elaborate Gothic detailing marks the altar, but the medallion windows containing more than 200,000 pieces of stained glass, designed by Schlacks, are the real highlight of the interior.”

I have a vaguely remember visiting the church on a cool rainy Saturday – sometime in the late ’80s, maybe? — but not lingering for too long inside because a wedding was in progress. Last Saturday, cool and rainy, another wedding was in progress.Some other time I might see those many pieces of glass, artfully arrayed.

Churches Before Lunch

Posted on October 16, 2023 by admin

As we navigated the back streets of the North Side of Chicago late on Saturday morning, the rain kept on coming, leaving scatterings of yellow and brown leaves and sizable puddles.

Tucked away in the Lincoln Square neighborhood was our second site for the day, and first church: Luther Memorial Church.

As a congregation, Luther Memorial dates from the late 19th century, and was one of the first English-speaking Lutheran congregations in Chicago. Currently part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

The present Indiana limestone church building rose on the site in the 1920s, designed by E.E. Roberts and his son E.C. Roberts, who were Oak Park architects. Not as well known these days as The Genius, apparently, but they did a lot of work in their day.

Behind the altar is the Christus Window, original to the church in 1926. Blue Christ, I’d call it.

The side and back windows were installed about 40 years later, and they look like it.

That isn’t a criticism. The 1960s are derided as a time of poor design, and it might be in some things – children’s animation comes to mind – but not in the stained glass I’ve seen. More abstract than in previous decades, often, but with their own elegance, though my images don’t quite capture it.

By the time we left Luther Memorial, the rain had slacked off. Our second church of the day is one we used to know, over in the Ravenwood neighborhood, since we attended it sometimes in the late ’90s: All Saints Episcopal. Rev. Bonnie Perry was there at the time, and I understand she was instrumental in keeping the church open. These days she’s bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan.

An example of stick style, rare in Chicago, designed by John Cochrane, who also did the Illinois State Capitol and the Iowa State Capitol, among many other projects. The church was built in 1883, when Ravenswood was still a suburb of Chicago.

By the time we got there, the church was closed to Open House visitors. Getting ready for a wedding, we realized, when we say people dressed for a wedding going in. An elegant interior, as I recall.

The National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial

Posted on October 15, 2023 by admin

It’s mid-October and in Chicago at least, that means Open House Chicago, which we’ve attended most years over the last decade. We’ve visited churches, synagogues, temples, office space, libraries, factories, theaters, museums and more as part of the event. Open House is a worldwide phenomenon.

Rain fell heavily Friday night, and was forecast to last into Saturday morning – which it did, also obscuring whatever partial eclipse was above the clouds. The weather didn’t stop us from going out, though it did slow us down some, since driving in the city is like driving through glue even in the best conditions. To make things easier, I decided to head into the neighborhoods east from O’Hare – relatively accessible from our suburb – and on to Lakeview near Lake Michigan, as familiar as a neighborhood can be in Chicago, since we used to live there.

Our first stop was west of Lakeview, however, in the much less familiar Lincoln Square. It was still rainy and quite windy when we arrived at the National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, which I hadn’t known about till I saw it on the Open House List.

The weather discouraged outside photos, but I did manage to capture the mural on the side of the museum building, which faces west on Lawrence Ave.

“Cambodian Color” (2017) by Brandin Hurley and Shayne Renee Taylor.

A detail near the museum entrance, and out of the rain.

It’s a small museum, only a few rooms, but enough to provide some testimony and images about the Cambodian genocide – the evacuation of Phnom Penh, forced collectivization, blunt-instrument murders to save ammunition, Tuol Sleng and other death prisons, the Khmer Rouge turning on itself when an agrarian utopia mysteriously didn’t appear — the whole horrorshow of ideology gone barking mad. A somber place to visit, but that should be an element in one’s wanderings.

One of the docents, a young woman I took to be an American of Cambodian ancestry, asked me if I knew anything about the period. Unfortunately, I do. Not unfortunate that I know, but that there was anything to know. I remember reading reports of mass murders in “Democratic Kampuchea” while the Khmer Rouge was still in power and of course after its overthrow, when much more detail came out. I told her simply yes, that I’d heard of it.

The memorial is in the back room of the museum.

Not really visible unless you look very closely is Khmer script up and down the glass panels. A lot of it, in other words. Names.

“Designed within an environment for quiet contemplation utilizing glass, stone, water, and light effects, the memorial includes the individual names of thousands of relatives lost by Cambodians all over the United States,” the museum web site says.

Not Yet, I Haven’t

Posted on October 12, 2023 by admin

Not long ago I came across the blog of a fellow – Everywhereman.me — who aspired to visit everywhere mentioned in the U.S. version of the song “I’ve Been Everywhere.” He then did just that, mostly by motorcycle. I don’t think I’ll do that exactly, but that’s the kind of meshuga I like, since I’m a bit touched myself.

Though others have recorded it, including Johnny Cash no less, I associate the U.S. version with Hank Snow. As well I should.

The original version was Australian, written by Geoff Mack and a hit for Lucky Starr. I have to give it its due. Australia is full of lots of weird and gorgeous place names, after all.

You need a written list to keep up with Lucky, as posted in Wiki. Or a very detailed knowledge of Australia.

Other versions for other places exist. None other than Stompin’ Tom Connors starts off in the United States, but naturally gravitates to Canada, with an entire verse about the Maritimes.

Canada’s fine, but Texas place names are just as good.

By one Brian Burns, who managed to work in some of my favorites, ever since my days of poring over Texas road maps: Pflugerville, Dime Box, and Cut and Shoot.

Spring Valley Twilight

Posted on October 4, 2023 by admin

We visited Spring Valley not long ago, just as the daylight was fading.

Not only twilight’s last gleaming, the ragged end of summer.

Fort Sheridan Water Tower

Posted on October 3, 2023 by admin

Where are those copy editors, anyway? A Washington Post correction from today.

Much of the former Fort Sheridan in Lake County, Illinois, is now a residential neighborhood, which is only reasonable. Even when it was an Army base, it was mostly residential. The officers’ houses are now refurbished single-family houses and the enlisted men’s quarters are now refurbished multifamily.

Time was short on Saturday, so I didn’t have all the time I wanted to look around the post-military neighborhood, but we did take a stroll on the former parade ground, which is now green space looped by Leonard Wood Ave.
Leonard Wood. Ask people driving on Leonard Wood who that might have been and his obscurity would assert itself in the form of blank stares and wild guesses.

I don’t know the details of all of his lengthy military career, but I do know that TR theoretically reported to him in Cuba in ’98 and that, in some alternate reality, Wood captured the Republican nomination for president in 1920 and went on to be 29th President of the United States, rather than the office going to a newspaper publisher from Ohio.

In that case, Wood would surely be remembered. Maybe about as much as Harding. Which might not be that much.

We spotted the fort’s former water tower on the other side of the grounds.

I had to see that up close, so we stopped by before we headed south for our lunch appointment.

Impressive. A design by noted Chicago architectural firm Holabird and Roche, who did many of the fort’s buildings.
Per Wiki: “Built from 1889 to 1891, the tower was among the first structures completed in the fort. It was built with bricks made from Lake Bluff clay and designed to resemble St. Mark’s Campanile in Venice.”

Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve

Posted on October 2, 2023 by admin

On Saturday, we made our way to the edge of Lake Michigan.

We’d come on the sunny last day of September to Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve, a unit of the Lake County Forest Preserve District. For a little more than a century, the U.S. Army maintained a presence at Fort Sheridan and in surrounding acreage for a shifting variety of uses, until base closure turned the site mostly over the private development, with a relatively small slice added to the forest preserve system.

The decommissioning was in the 1990s. I remember writing about the redevelopment, but after I quit much local reporting about the Chicago area ca. 2005, I tucked whatever I knew about Fort Sheridan in a remote filing cabinet in my memory. That is, I forgot it until not long ago, when I noticed the forest preserve on a map – a paper map – and determined to go, since we were due for lunch with Wendy and Ted later in the day in Evanston anyway.

This forest preserve is only partly forest. We took short trails through prairie.

A ravine runs through it.

Coloration has started.

Barely but vividly.

Remember the Alamo. In This Case, As It Was In 2018

Posted on October 1, 2023 by admin

A summerish weekend to kick off October, and we were out and about in the warmth. Soon temps will be more in line with the usual Octobers of northern Illinois.

Some trees are changing, but most still are holding their green. That too is bound to change soon.

Five years ago in October, I spent some time in San Antonio after the passing of my mother. That included a walk around downtown. I was persuaded that my mother wouldn’t have wanted me to mope around the house, but rather do what I would have done anyway. That is, go out and see things.

Even in very familiar places.

San Antonio tends toward pleasant weather that time of the year, and so it was that day. A lot of people were visiting the Alamo, taking in some of the demonstrations on the grounds. Such as the firing of period firearms.

Not, I think, using actual ammunition. But everything else seemed authentic, especially the loud bang!

Back to the AGSL

Posted on September 28, 2023 by admin

The Plymouth Church wasn’t actually the last place I visited for Doors Open, it was the last place I planned to visit. But the event still had an hour to run when I walked out of that church on Saturday, so I checked the map and discovered I was within walking distance of the American Geographic Society Library on the UW-Milwaukee campus, which is usually open only Monday to Friday.

Home to 2 million or so items: maps, atlases, photographs, monographs, serials, digital geospatial data and of course globes. Many, many globes.

A divers collection.

Maps on display.

This wasn’t my first visit, though it had been about five years, and I hope not my last. Maps are useful, but also their own reward.

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.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There