The Little Bank and the Big Basket of Newark, Ohio

Posted on March 28, 2023 by admin

If you happen to find yourself in Newark, Ohio, I recommend a look at the Licking County courthouse, a Second Empire structure from the grand age of U.S. courthouses, which was between the wars (that is, the Civil War and WWI).

Even though our visit coincided with exterior construction that mars its appearance temporarily, and a wicked cold wind, I knew I had to park the car and get out for a look.

Impressive. The visit to Newark was a digression. The most direct route from Columbus, Ohio to Uniontown, Pa. doesn’t pass through Newark, which is maybe 20 miles north of I-70 and U.S. 40 both. But we had a sight in mind there, so we made the detour, arriving in that large town (pop. 50,000) on the morning of March 19. As you’d think, the main road into town leads directly to the courthouse square.

Some county seats have intriguing buildings facing their courthouses, some don’t. Licking County, Ohio does.

A closer look at that last one.

Wow, an unexpected trove of details.

We’d stumbled upon the Home Building Association Co. bank building (with nickname The Old Home right above the door), a work by Chicago School patriarch Louis Sullivan, dating from 1914. The exterior has been nicely restored, but I could see peering through the windows that work is still underway inside. I understand that the building now belongs to the Licking County Foundation, and will eventually house the county’s convention and visitors bureau.

Notes Wiki: “The ornamentation included a winged lion quite similar to the ones to be found in Cedar Rapids, Grinnell and Sidney. Little mention is made in the literature about Sullivan as to why these creatures populate his banks. Also unique is the presence of Sullivan’s name in the tile mosaic over the front door.”

Yep, there it is. I didn’t notice when I was standing out in the cold.

Underfoot detail at the courthouse square speaks of a time of stronger faith in progress. Or at least when slogans had that faith.

Even so, Newark seems to abide, economically speaking. The U.S. industrial economy contracted, but it didn’t disappear. A sizably lighting products maker and a glass manufacturer run operations here, as do a welter of smaller factories across the county. Regional offices of larger banking and insurance companies are here, and OSU has a large regional campus in Newark as well.

About a block away from the square is the former sheriff’s residence and county jail, in a suitably sturdy Richardson Romanesque edifice. One Joseph W. Yost designed it.

A plaque outside the building told a story of mob violence – against an officer of the law, no less – from the early 20th century. The plaque’s a good deal newer than that, however. RIP, Deputy Marshal Etherington.

The backs of nearby buildings – mostly facing the square – feature history-themed murals in places that would otherwise be drab parking lots. Nice civic touch, Newark.

As interesting as downtown Newark turned out to be, that wasn’t actually the reason we came to town. This building was.

On the outskirts of Newark stands the seven-story former headquarters of the Longaberger Co., which used to make baskets whose look inspired the look of the building, and not in any abstract sense. They were sold via a multi-level marketing scheme.

The building opened in 1997 and is the sort of place that has articles written about it. For obvious reasons. In our time, the grounds and its large parking lot are freely open to passersby.

Company sales peaked at $1 billion in 2000, but it was downhill from there. Maybe its baskets, while handsome enough, were the kinds of possessions that eventually ended up in garages, and one was enough for most households.

The company folded in the late 2010s and the building emptied out, remaining vacant to this day. Another company owns the rights to the baskets and other products, but the operation isn’t here. For a time, redevelopment plans called for a boutique hotel, but that didn’t happen, and at last report the building was the subject of an ownership dispute.

Warren G. Harding, Favorite Son of Marion

Posted on March 27, 2023 by admin

Marion, Ohio, a burg about 36,000 residents 50 miles north of Columbus, happens to be along the route we took south from Michigan on the second day of our trip, March 18. It also happens to be the hometown of Warren G. Harding, which pretty much guaranteed a stop there by us.

After his sudden and unexpected death in office almost 100 years ago, the nation’s grief for its popular president allowed for the construction of an impressive memorial, finished in 1927 and, as Wiki points out correctly, the last of the big presidential memorials (at least so far). Donations paid for it, including pennies from schoolchildren, back when a penny could actually buy something small rather than nothing at all.

We arrived at the memorial in the afternoon. It was cold and very windy. The structure is whiter than I’d think it would be considering its 90-plus years in the elements, but I suppose the good people of Marion keep it maintained. Warren G.’s the only president they’re ever like to produce, after all.

Its marble Doric columns rise to support an entablature, but not a roof. Harding reportedly wanted to be buried under an open sky, and this was architect Henry Hornbostel and his partners’ way to honor that request.

Warren and Florence Harding are indeed buried within, and under the open sky.

A few miles away is the Harding house, built in the 1890s at the time of the Hardings’ marriage, when he was a newspaper editor and publisher and she a wealthy divorcee. The Marion Star, his paper, is still around, though it’s a Gannett asset these days.

We arrived too late to tour the house, but you can wander around the grounds. Yuriko and the dog had enough sense to stay in the car while I did this, in a wind that felt like it was going to freeze my face off.

Still, I got the satisfaction of standing on the very porch where Harding ran his front porch campaign for president beginning in the summer of 1920, briefly reviving the late 19th-century practice. He would be the last president to do so (as yet, unless you count the zoom campaigning of Joe Biden exactly a century later).

Marion will probably never have a summer, or any other season, like it again. The world came to Marion in 1920, including delegations from groups nationwide to offer their greetings to candidate Harding, and presumably many other people who showed up to hear the speeches he gave on the porch or otherwise join the festivities.

Speaking from the porch didn’t mean a lack of attention elsewhere in the country. The Harding campaign had a small house built on the grounds, which still stands, for the use of the press covering him.

Behind the main house is the Warren G. Harding Presidential Library & Museum which, as any presidential museum does, tries to put a good face on its president and administration. I will give the place credit for mentioning the various scandals the period is known for, such as Teapot Dome.

It’s also forward in acknowledging that his mistress Nan Britton had a daughter with Harding, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, who died only in 2005. As well it should, since DNA evidence in the 21st century has fingered then-Sen. Harding as the baby daddy.

As for his other known mistress, the married Carrie Fulton Phillips, the museum notes, “when she appeared at Harding’s front porch campaign, Republican party members paid for the Phillipses to take a lengthy trip abroad.”

Still, a triumphant Harding is in evidence. At least while in campaign mode. Not bad for a compromise candidate picked by the 1920 Republican National Convention.

Events could have gone another way. Leonard Wood could have been the nominee in 1920 and gone on to the presidency. Or Frank Lowden might have been tapped. Or, had TR lived a little longer (d. 1919), he might have captured the prize and returned to office (at my age, TR had been dead more than a year).

Harding might merely be an obscure senator buried in a more modest plot in Marion, rather than an increasingly obscure president in a grand tomb the likes of which is completely out of style. But that isn’t how it happened.

Historians roundly deride Harding, and I believe there’s some basis for it, but my own estimation of the man himself inched up a notch or two when I read, per the museum, that Harding and his wife were avid travelers well before they occupied the White House. That was part of the impetus for the famed long trip that he took as president in 1923, and which was interrupted by his death.

I didn’t know that Harding called it “The Voyage of Understanding.” Quite a route.

Some of the museum’s artifacts are odder than others, including this one from the Voyage.

That’s a papier-mache potato, about a yard long, that the citizens of Idaho Falls, Idaho gave to President Harding when he passed through in 1923.

Tri-State Appalachian Equinox Road Trip

Posted on March 26, 2023 by admin

Old Chinese proverb, I’ve heard: even a journey of 1,000 leagues begins by backing out of the driveway. That we did on Friday, March 17. We pulled back into the driveway on Saturday, March 25. In between we traveled 2,219 miles, using the ragged marvel that is the system of roads in the United States.

My fanciful name for the trip refers to three states that were the focus: Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. We actually passed through seven states, also including Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and very briefly, Maryland.

We saw a lot of places, but two in particular motivated the trip as a whole. One was Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright sculpture – I mean, house – perched over an irregular drop on Bear Run, a creek in rural Pennsylvania. Visiting Fallingwater had long been an ambition of Yuriko’s, maybe since before she lived in this country, since FLW is known far and wide; but I needed no persuasion to go myself.

The other was New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in eastern-ish West Virginia. This was my suggestion, since I keep up on national parks. But I’ve wanted to go there a good while, long before Congress promoted it to national park, which only happened in 2020. Besides, it was high time I spent a little more than a few minutes in West Virginia which, for whatever else it has, is known for its surpassing scenery. This reputation, I can confirm, is deserved.

Weather-wise, spring travel is a crap shoot. The day we left a cold, unpleasant wind blew in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and it followed us under the same gray skies and at temps barely above freezing the next day, into central Ohio.

By last Monday, in southwest Pennsylvania, temps had moderated with the appearance of the sun, and each day was more pleasant than the last as we headed south into West Virginia, where the grass had greened and some bushes had too, though most trees were at the barely budding stage. Thursday, March 23 proved best of all, with sunny skies and temps in the 70s, allowing us to enjoy the best meal of our trip — ricebowl meals — at a picnic table in Fayetteville, W.Va.

A cold rain came calling on Friday as we headed from West Virginia back to Ohio. On Saturday, again in central Ohio, it wasn’t bitterly cold, but the wind was so strong at times that it jostled my car as I drove and my body as I walked. Rain squalls came and went, with a spell of sleet I actually enjoyed, sitting in our parked car listening, knowing that the ice was too small to do any damage. Returning home yesterday, Illinois was pretty much as we’d left it, chilly and not-quite-spring.

The upshot of it all is to pack for the weather variety you’re going to encounter, and I was more than glad – as I returned to the car in a stiff wind, crossing a green field in small-town Ohio, feeling wind chill that must have been around zero (and I mean Fahrenheit) – that I’d brought the coat I use most of the winter.

We brought the dog. We don’t want to leave her at a kennel any more, and no one was at home to mind her. Having your dog along is something like traveling with a small child you can’t take into restaurants or a lot of other places, but we don’t regret a bit of it. Long drives in the car don’t faze her at all, since after the first few minutes, that’s like lying around the house and, as the comedian said, a dog’s job is lying around the house.

She had her energetic moments too, more than you’d think for an ancient dog, such as walking the trail to Diamond Point overlooking the New River Gorge, with its smooth straightaways through forests giving way to patches of mud, large rocks or tightly packed tree roots underfoot, sometimes all of those in a single stretch. Our reward for the sometime-slog was a vista of rare beauty. Her reward? I don’t think it was anything so visual. Maybe following the pack is its own reward for her.

Companion dogs also mean you acquaint yourself with the look and feel of the front office and main entrance of limited-service hotels during the empty early a.m. hours, well lit as a Broadway stage but without any players. Except maybe for the night clerk, just outside the door, who is peering into his phone, cigarette in other hand. Probably our dog, as any dog, could be trained to pee on a disposable rug in the room during the small hours, but somehow we’ve never wanted to do that. There’s something appealing somehow about the ritual of dressing as simply as possible a few minutes after waking at 2:30 or 3, or 25 or 6 to 4, hitching a leash to the dog’s collar and repairing to the first patch of green, or pebbles ringed by a curb, outside the hotel door

Take me home, country roads. I’ll say this for West Virginia, it’s got some crazy-ass serpentine roads through its ancient and forested mountains. The Laurel Highlands in southwest Pennsylvania was no piker in that regard, either. You need to keep an intense focus on the road as it winds this way and that, rises and falls, and passes ever so close to boulder walls, massive trees and wicked ditches. If you don’t mind thinking about your mortality every now and then, that’s some good driving.

Mostly good driving. There are moments when a red sedan, or a black pickup truck, decides that tailgating you at roughly the speed limit as you wind around and navigate switchbacks, is a good idea, and blasts around you at the first marginal opportunity, double solid stripes be damned.

Yet I only got the smallest sampling of the twisty roads. No roads without pavement this trip, though plenty enough didn’t bother with details such as guardrails. Another, entirely unpaved and mostly unregulated network of roads and tracks, many perhaps pre-New Deal, must exist in West Virginia. Out away from the nearest town, while we were parked a national park site on a small paved road, three ATVs buzzed past, each with two people. They were headed toward town after emerging from the woods, their vehicles streaked with mud. I was just close enough to see in their faces they’d had a fine time out in the unpaved network.

Also, if you really wanted to get home to West Virginia, wouldn’t you take the Interstate?

We made stops in Ohio going and coming.

On Saturday, March 18 we made our way south from Ann Arbor, where we’d spent the first night, to Columbus, Ohio, to spent the second. On the way is the Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation, a Byzantine edifice rising in a small town, which we visited, but also sites associated with Warren G. Harding: his memorial and burial site, and also his home, in the large town of Marion, Ohio.

Our return home, beginning on Friday, March 24, took us back through Ohio, to Columbus for the last night of the trip. Saturday morning, after takeout breakfast at Tim Horton’s – for that part of Ohio is in the Tim Horton’s orb, we were glad to learn – we visited downtown Columbus and the Ohio Statehouse in a howling cool wind. Ate lunch, Korean-style chicken and salad, sitting in the car in a clearly gentrified neighborhood, the bricked-streeted German Village. We spent the rest of Saturday driving back, via Indianapolis.

On the morning of Sunday, March 19, we left Columbus and made our way east through the remarkable town of Newark, Ohio, then Wheeling and Moundsville, West Virginia and from there to Uniontown, Pennsylvania, a mid-sized far outer suburb of Pittsburgh. Or at least it will be in a few years.

On Monday, we paid our visit to Fallingwater, taking turns on tours, after which we had lunch in a low-season tourist town and took an impediment-rich hike in Ohiopyle State Park, along the rocky shore of the Youghiogheny River, at that point boasting a highly picturesque waterfall. That was enough for one day for Yuriko, who napped in the car (along with the dog) as I walked the much shorter and smoother path to Fort Necessity National Battlefield late that afternoon.

On Tuesday, we made our way back west a short distance, to visit the Palace of Gold in rural West Virginia, in the peculiar north panhandle of the state (which I’ve long thought of as a conning tower). We returned that day to Uniontown by way of Moundsville, W. Va., home of an ancient mound of remarkable height, a former penitentiary of remarkable solidity, and a bridge across the Ohio River of remarkable elegance. Those things, and some tasty if not remarkable barbecue.

The next day, we left for West Virginia, but not by the most direct route, because I wanted to see the Flight 93 National Memorial in deep rural Pennsylvania. Progressively smaller roads lead there, including – as we traveled it, which I figured would be the quickest route – a short stretch of I-68 through the oddity that is the Maryland panhandle. Late that day, Wednesday, we arrived in Beckley, W. Va.

We spent almost all of Thursday at the national park, at one sight or another, driving and hiking and pondering historic and sometimes crumbled structures. But that wasn’t quite enough. On Friday morning, before we left for Ohio, we went back to the park. Around noon, we headed west, passing through Charleston long enough to visit the West Virginia State Capitol and eat Chinese takeout, though not at the same time. A little north of Charleston, we crossed back into Ohio after gassing up near the small town of Ripley, West Virginia. Believe it or not.

One other thing: this was a vacation from the news, which following is part of my job. Except for the briefest snippets on the radio, when sometimes I didn’t change stations out of habit for some seconds, I ignored the news of the world, or even smaller parts of it. I think that’s a good thing to do.

But of course, a few things got through. I heard the opening bars of The Dick Van Dyke Show theme on a news program one day, and I jumped to the conclusion that he had died. That isn’t a big jump, since he’s 97. But no, merely a one-car accident.

Image being that well regarded, that your minor auto accident as a nonagenarian is national news. Anyway, glad not to say, RIP, Dick Van Dyke.

Reasons to be Cheerful, Videos 3

Posted on March 15, 2023 by admin

Back to posting around March 26. It may not quite be spring, and I don’t mean the equinox, but it is time for spring break, for my nonprofessional writing efforts anyway.

Captured a couple of flags in flight not long ago.

Illinois needs a new flag. Remarkably, it might get one. I didn’t know that until this evening, looking around for alternate designs for the state flag. Of course, with a committee working on the matter, there’s no guarantee of a better flag. Even if the state had a design competition, that might not work out either. Guess we just have to hope for the best, or at least the better.

Bet this rock is in the Suburban Boulder Database, which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Or it would be, if I hadn’t made that up. The database, that is, not the USGS, which I assume is real, unless it’s a Deep State trick to persuade us dupes that the Earth is round. Yet who else will give us volcano warnings?

I always take a look at plaque-on-rock memorials when I can. I like the economy of the things. No money, or room, for a bronze or marble statue? No worries, affix a plaque.

That one commemorates the 100th anniversary of the founding of Batavia, Illinois, and was dedicated on September 3, 1933. It mentions the first settler in the area, one Christopher Payne, and lauds him and other early settlers “who here broke the sod that men to come might live.”

Maybe, but Payne and his 19th-century passel of children didn’t stay. They soon moved on to Wisconsin.

Never mind what the poet said, March could well be the cruelest month. So it’s time for cheerful tunes.

A wonderful cover of “Honey Pie” by the newly named The Bygones.

Admiration for one Dutch musician can lead to the discovery of others, such as Candy Dulfer.

And of course, a longstanding reason to be cheerful, “Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3.”

It’s cheerful to recall the first time I remember hearing Ian Dury and the Blockheads — a spring day in Tennessee as I crossed campus. The year, long ago, though at the time it seemed to be the cutting edge of the future. A nearby frat house was broadcasting its musical tastes to all passersby, such as me. The tune: “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick.” One of the kinds of things I went to college to experience, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

American Standard, Lexington, Illinois

Posted on March 14, 2023 by admin

As points of interest go on a map, I’d say this one’s pretty intriguing.

Crazy Presidential Elephant. Considering that we were going to pass by the exit to Lexington, Illinois on our drive from Normal to the Chicago area on Saturday, I had to take a look at that. For that extra thrill of discovery, before visiting I barely skimmed the two reviews on Google Maps, one of which didn’t say much anyway.

Lexington is a burg of just over 2,000 souls, known for not much, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, Teddy Roosevelt visited as president, and in an example of how the Internet still amazes, with a minimum of research you can read the remarks he gave from the train that day.

The Crazy Presidential Elephant doesn’t have anything to do with TR. Or at least, I don’t think I saw him mentioned on the elephant.

Lexington doesn’t have much as a U.S. 66 destination, but it has this elephant shape conjured into existence with thousands — it must be thousands — of agglomerated manufactured metal objects of varying elements and forms and colors. Countless car parts: a fuel tank, hubcaps, bumpers, door handles, tail pipes; but not all car parts. Long chrome and short iron. Wheel shapes and rods and chains, painted or rusted or neither. The glue holding the multitude of parts must be industrial strength. Or is it? Already the elephant is beginning to lose bits and pieces as the Illinois seasons bake and freeze in turn.

The formal name of the sculpture is “American Standard.”

The agglomeration is one thing, but spicing up the elephant is the writing on many surfaces.

What is this thing? Why is it here?

“This is not your typical roadside attraction — it’s the political platform of artist Kasey Wells, who ran for president as a write-in candidate in 2020. Wells created the piece with Chicago artist Kyle Riley and carted it thousands of miles on a trailer during his campaign,” explains public radio station WGLT.

“The elephant wears a gold crown with ‘Standard Oil’ painted in red, white and blue. Wells ran as a left-leaning independent interested in divesting from the oil and gas industry, transforming the Federal Reserve and putting an end to war, among other things.”

It’s a good place to soak in the details. Endless details.

Look closely enough, and you can meditate on impermanence, and not just in the philosophical sense.

“ ‘American Standard’ sits across the street from a Freedom gas station, adjacent to a historical marker pointing out Standard Oil subsidiary filling stations during Route 66’s heyday,” the station says. (How did I miss that? Never mind.)

“The spot is rife with symbolism, but Wells still owns the piece and can move it or sell it at any point.”

A Normal Parade

Posted on March 13, 2023 by admin

I found out by chance on Saturday that Normal, Illinois, was holding its St. Patrick’s Day parade this year on that very Saturday, when I happened to be in town to pick up Ann for her spring break ride back home.

Compare with the downtown Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade, a few years pre-pandemic.

Not that the pandemic made the difference. Many more million people in the area to draw from made the difference.

Still, the spirit of celebrating Ireland is there, and maybe the urge to feel alcoholic mirth as the day unfolds. Stereotype has these to be one and the same, but I won’t sully the good name of Ireland by suggesting such a thing, though Eire did come in at number seven highest in liters of alcohol per capita consumed among the nations of the Earth in 2016 and is forecast to be number four in 2025. Erin go Bragh.

Though it was a little cold, I enjoyed the more mellow Normal Irish parade. A few people standing around, a few more were in the parade, mostly in vehicles representing local organizations and businesses, and that was about it.

No high school bands or collegiate floats. The parade could have used a few of each, but maybe the Illinois State University administration worried about the possibility of civil disorder.

A few parade-goers were out and about in costume.

One more car in the parade.

The Space Force is recruiting. The slogan: “The Sky is Not the Limit.”

Hot Springs NP, 2007

Posted on March 12, 2023 by admin

Even though it was a digital camera, and a fairly good one when I acquired it ca. 2001, my Nikon Coolpix 4300 had its limits. Mainly, memory. At least compared to the vast memories of current devices.

So that might account for the fact that I only have one image at Hot Springs National Park in March 2007. Or maybe I wasn’t much in the mood for using a camera there. It’s good to put the camera down for a while sometimes, no matter how photogenic the place you find yourself.

This is it, the Hernando de Soto statue at Fordyce Bathhouse. The image itself is only passable.

The sculpture is in the former men’s bath hall and was a centerpiece of a fountain.

The Fordyce Bathhouse is a building of exceptional beauty in its public spaces and state-of-the-art health and fitness equipment of the roaring ’20s in its bath spaces.

“The Fordyce is now the park’s visitor center, and offers tours of its elaborate facilities – self-guided, but at a good price, free,” I wrote at the time. “The building style, Spanish Renaissance Revival, is supposed to pay tribute to Hernando de Soto, who supposedly came this way. No fancy bath houses were necessary for passing Spaniards, Indians or other early visitors, however, who apparently soaked in pools fed by the springs wherever they found them.”

Beverly Lake ’23

Posted on March 8, 2023 by admin

The snow forecast for Friday night didn’t show, though a little rain came the next day. Sunday turned out warmish, around 50 F., and mostly clear.

We made our way in early afternoon to Beverly Lake, which is on forest preserve land almost as far west in Cook County as you can go.

The map’s misleading, or at least incomplete. It depicts the 22-acre Beverly Lake, but most of the trails are in open space to the west and northwest. The trails are marked for cross-country skiing, but on Sunday, they were merely soggy in a few places.

“We’ve been here before,” I said. Yuriko didn’t remember, since it was a while ago: a warm day in April 2004, when we got a break from the kids for a few hours. I probably wouldn’t have remembered if I hadn’t written about it.

The lake.

Trails wide and narrow.

We came across a half-dozen volunteers removing invasive species and making a bonfire out of the debris. An older member of the party, maybe the leader, was keen to explain what they were doing. The enemy, he said, is buckthorn. Once he pointed it out, I started seeing it in a lot of places, including along some of the trails.

The buckthorn is the vine-like branches hanging and clinging every which way on the forest trees.

“… buckthorn species were first brought here from Europe as a popular hedging material,” explains the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “They became a nuisance plant, forming dense thickets in forests, yards, parks and roadsides. They crowd out native plants and displace the native shrubs and small trees in the mid-layer of the forest where many species of birds nest.”

Even more menacing in black and white, I think.

Former Barrington Banks

Posted on March 7, 2023 by admin

It’s an Irish bar now, but it once was the First State Bank of Barrington. Long ago.

Spiffy bank building from the pre-FDIC days. I passed by it on my short walk around downtown Barrington. Opened in 1916, closed in 1932, so in the financial world, the bank had a mayfly-brief existence, snuffed out by the Depression. Soon after its banking days were over, a series of popular local restaurants opened in the structure, starting with Last National Bank Tavern, “incorporating the teller cages and vault area into the dining area,” notes an Historic Barrington sign on the building.

Currently it is occupied by McGonigal’s, open only during this century. The mural on the wall – framed by a former window – is signed by one Alex Brubacher.

Looks like it was painted in anticipation of McGonigal’s, since it features the building; and its place in the neighborhood near a clocktower, commuter rail line and The Catlow, among the many shamrocks; and a date of 2009. According to a sign over the door, the pub opened in 2010, so close enough.

Across the street, another building originally housing a 1910s financial services entity: the First National Bank of Barrington. For those for whom a mere state bank wasn’t good enough. And who knows? Maybe that made the difference, because First National survived the Depression and First State did not.

Looks like an upmarket clothier on the first floor these days. First National moved out in 1984. (Odd, if I said “nearly 40 years ago” that somehow sounds longer ago.) It didn’t last much longer as an independent bank; a major regional swallowed it soon after.

Just north of Main St., which puts it in Lake County and not Cook, is a named gazebo.

The David F. Nelson Community Gazebo, to be specific, and to gave a name that most passersby probably don’t give a first thought, much less a second. This 2017 article is behind a paywall, but I could read the first paragraph, which tells me that “[Nelson is] known for many years of community volunteerism, as well as serving as the town’s village president.”

Not a bad idea for one’s retirement: become a gazebo

The Catlow Theater Marquee

Posted on March 6, 2023 by admin

Recently I had a few minutes to walk around the smallish downtown of Barrington, Illinois, and I passed right by The Catlow.

That’s the thing-itself theater, including its marquee. On the other hand, this is the theater’s online presence: a plaque saying that the theater would open soon, but in the meantime the marquee was for lease.

It took me a while to figure out that byfs.org isn’t the web site address on the marquee, since it goes to a (temporary?) dead end. Instead, the sign must refer to barringtonbysf.org — the address of Barrington Youth & Family Services. But tickets to what?

Just eyeballing the theater entrance made me think the place has that permanently shut look. I know movies were being shown there only a few years ago, before – ah, that must be it. Temporarily closing in early 2020 turned out instead to be the big sleep for the theater. Unless it actually closed in December 2019, as Cinema Treasures says.

Regardless, considering The Catlow’s location in a well-to-do part of metro Chicago, funds might be raised for a revival of some kind.

“Named for its original owner, a local businessman named Wright Catlow, this Tudor Revival/Jacobean-inspired theater opened on May 28th, 1927,” Cinema Treasures says. “It was designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Betts & Holcomb.

Early on, the venue held live performances and showed movies, but within a few years, it was all movies, and somehow the theater survived into the 21st century. I went there sometime in the 2010s, not for a movie, but to look at the lobby and an adjacent small restaurant. Maybe. Or was that in the 2000s, when I took a photo of the exterior for my magazine at the time?

Never mind, the building seems to have changed hands more recently.

“The owners are currently in negotiations with the Village of Barrington to purchase the theater for use as a Community/Performing Arts Center. New owners took over on October 20, 2022,” Cinema Treasures says, a little cryptically. New owners? Does that mean the village, or someone else?

Questions, questions. If the theater ever starts showing movies again, I’ll make a point of going, provided the movie isn’t too stupid. And as long as the theater doesn’t decide to nickel and dime its patrons (more like quarter and dollar these days).

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There