Category Archives: Chicago

The Frederick C. Robie House

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It was a little hard to get a full picture of the Frederick C. Robie House, which sits horizontally on a 60’ x 180’ lot on the South Side of Chicago. At least it’s hard if you don’t feel like backing up into the street, and I didn’t. The wind was brisk and everyone wanted to get inside.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAs usual with a Frank Lloyd Wright work, it’s just as useful to think of it as a complex work of sculpture as much as a dwelling place, maybe more so. Something you might create with large, very expensive set of Legos, and which needs to be sustained with an IV money drip. The place was expensive from the get-go: the 1910 cost was about $60,000, or roughly $1.4 million in our dollars. For that price Robie got not only the lot and the house, with its long, lean lines, but also the furnishings, which were provided by the architect. And at least FLW didn’t run off with his wife.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou pick up your tickets at the gift shop (the entrance is pictured above), a space that was originally a garage, since Robie had a fascination for early auto-mobiles, as some wealthy men of the time did. The shop is stocked with architectural-themed books, videos, clothes, games and knickknacks, many associated with FLW, but not all. It included a Lego set – see, you can build architecturally significant Chicago-area houses from Legos – that looked awfully familiar.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe tour started in the lower level, adjacent to the gift shop-garage, which our guide called the Children’s Playroom, which is habitable but not yet restored. We saw a short video there about the house, including its bumpy history – Robie only lived there a bit more than a year before financial troubles obliged him to sell, to a guy who died shortly after moving in; later, when the Chicago Theological Seminary owned the house, it was nearly razed twice, including a 1950s threat that inspired a 90-year-old FLW to show up to protest.

But of course the building survived, and has even influenced its immediate surroundings . After the video we went outside and took a look at things from the entrance plaza of the Harper Center of the U of C’s Booth School of Business, which is across E. 58th St. The 215,000-square-foot Harper Center, completed only in 2004, references the Robie House with its horizontals and cantilevered elements (a Thornton Tomasetti design: more here).

The house’s entrance is tucked away under one of the large horizontal elements, making it hard to see from the street. The entryway is also only a few inches higher than my height, which makes me speculate that FLW wanted to make it even shorter – why should anything be taller than what he, a short man, needs? If so — and you certainly get that feeling at Taliesin sometimes — WTF, FLW?

But he wasn’t The Genius of later lore quite yet, so he didn’t win on that point. Or maybe it’s that he didn’t really see the design all the way through completion, since he skedaddled to Europe around then.

The second floor, barely visible from the outside through the seeming simple but elegant windows, is an impressive space. The great open room sports interesting glass and wood and lighting features, and I thought it would been a swell place for a swank party – during any decade from the 1920s to the 1950s, since swank was pretty much dead after that. Not sure it would be all that comfortable for daily living, not without more comfortable furniture and more clutter (comfortable for me, at least. What’s life without clutter? Drab.)

Most of the bedrooms aren’t visible on the ordinary tour because they’re on the third floor, which has only one way in or out. For a tour of a dozen or 15 people, apparently, the Chicago Fire Marshall insists on two ways out. So the third floor is accessible via small-group tours that cost more. I didn’t need to see the additional space that badly. We saw one second-floor bedroom, intended to be a guest bedroom, though at the moment it’s devoid of furnishing. I noticed in that room that the electric lights – even though brought up to code by the renovation – are operated by a two-button system, which I don’t see often.

In the not-yet-refurbished kitchen stands a conventional refrigerator, and it doesn’t go with the design at all. But mainly that’s because it stands in front of a dwarf-sized door that leads to a servants’ staircase. That door, the guide pointed out, was for the delivery of ice, and the spot where the refrigerator stands was for an icebox. I hope a little bit of our admission price goes to the purchase of a 1910-vintage ice box, because that spot cries out for one.

Hyde Park ’14

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On the northeast corner of S. Woodlawn Ave. and E. 58th St. in Hyde Park, on the South Side of Chicago, is the Frederick C. Robie House, on that site for more than 100 years and best known as an exemplar of the Prairie School of Design. Next door to its north, at 5751 S. Woodlawn, is the Seminary Co-op Bookstore, one of my favorite bookstores anywhere, though new to the site. One block west of the intersection is the Oriental Institute Museum, repository of Near Eastern treasures, most of which they’ve dug up themselves. The Rockefeller Memorial Chapel rises to the southwest of the intersection, an ornate, soaring structure. That’s a lot within a short walk.

Last week was spring break for Lilly and Ann. Last year I took them to Texas for the occasion, but for various reasons this year, the idea of going anywhere never really took root. Still, I wanted to go somewhere – even if only a few miles away and for a few hours – and see something new if possible. In the summer of 2003, I wrote, “I walked by the Robie House, a creation of Frank Lloyd Wright. Him again. One of these days, I will take the tour, but not today.”

I didn’t know at the time that renovation of the Robie House had barely started, and hasn’t been completed even now, though mostly it has. The main goal last Friday was to tour the Robie House, which we did. Afterward we walked over to Rockefeller Chapel, and then spent an hour or so in the Oriental Institute Museum.

It was still fairly cold, but at least the sidewalks were clear of ice, and we didn’t have far to walk. Street parking always seems to be available next to the Midway Plaisance, just south of our destinations. In 1893, the Midway was briefly the focus of the world’s attention as part of the world’s fair, but now it’s a little-known urban green space, at least outside Chicago. That’s too bad, because it’s certainly interesting, if you know what was there.

We didn’t go into the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. I was astonished to see its new location, which I hadn’t heard about. Until a year and a half ago, the store was snugly located in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary, at 5757 S. University Ave. Turns out the seminary has moved, too, and now the building is home to the U of C’s Dept. of Economics, so famed in free market song and story.

Wiki, for what it’s worth, says: “The seminary move was controversial: it involved the disinterring of multiple graves.” I didn’t know anyone was buried there. Who was buried there? I’ll have to look into that sometime. Once upon a time, I did enjoy the Thorndike Hilton Memorial Chapel and the collection of rocks embedded in the seminary wall. I assume those are part of the Chicago School of Economics now.

Currently the streetscape between the Robie House and where the Seminary Co-op Bookstore used to be – which is across the street from the Oriental Institute Museum — is under construction.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI was surprised to see the bookstore’s new location, which even seems to include a café, like you might see in a Barnes & Noble. It didn’t seem right. At the basement location, there was no room for anything but books and more books. This video, at least, assures us that the new location still has a “maze aspect” and that Stanley Tigerman did the design (himself or Tigerman McCurry Architects staff?), which I guess counts for something.

But how could the new site have the book-cave charm of the old? Next time I’m in Hyde Park, I’ll take a look, to see if the new can hold a candle to the old.

The Mean Streets

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Besides being a transitional month between winter and spring – more winter than spring this year – March is also pothole season. Here’s one of the larger ones I’ve seen lately in metro Chicago, looking a couple of feet in diameter and holding plenty of snowmelt.

Pothole, March 2014In some parts of greater Chicago, it’s pothole season all the time. Years ago I used to drive down Ashland Ave., a major north-south street in the city, on a regular basis. I nicknamed one of the persistent potholes “Henry VIII.” Because it was so large.

I never went any further with the idea. Unlike the Mypotholes artists.

Flashback Within a Flashback

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In March 1987, I’d just moved to Chicago; a year earlier, I still lived in Nashville, but made a number of forays north for recreation.

March 17, 1987

Today I saw the green, green Chicago River and watched the downtown St. Patrick’s Day parade on Dearborn St., which was crowded and mildly boisterous. I’m glad I’m fairly tall. Visibility must be poor along crowded parade routes for shorter people – at least those interested in who’s parading by.

It was a lively parade. Not so many Shriners in little cars, as I saw in Nashville. But a lot of high school marching bands and politicos. Pretty sure I saw Fast Eddie Vrdolyak go by. [Best known as the anti-Harold Washington faction leader in the Chicago City Council, but by 1987 near the end of his political career; just a few years ago, he went to prison for a short spell.]

About a year ago, Nancy & Wendy & Kim & Susie & I all went to Chicago on $25 Southwest Air tickets – an introductory price the airline was offering on its brand-new Nashville to Chicago route. It was as spontaneous a trip as these long weekends get. Stayed with Rich while the others stayed elsewhere, but we’d meet periodically to do things.

Saw Rap Master Ronnie at the Theatre Building, ate Romanian food at Little Bucharest, where the portions are enormous. Rich introduced us to Erin W. over a Swedish breakfast that was actually dinner at Ann Sather, and we got into a long discussion over whether the equinox was the first day of spring or not. I took the opposing view, pointing out that it was nearly freezing outside.

The larger group gathered Saturday night and we went to Neo and danced [remarkably, still there]. Later, we tried to get into Medusa, but couldn’t [it seems to survive as a nightclub in Elgin, but at this time it was in the city]. Nate nearly got into a fight with the bouncer, but fortunately didn’t. Good thing we didn’t get in, anyway, because it was nearly 3 a.m. and for my own part I wanted to sleep. As we drove away from Medusa, Kim claimed that she was still up for something else, going somewhere else, but in mid-sentence fell asleep. Luckily as a back-seat passenger, not the driver.

A Day at the Office, 1987

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As expected, a wicked cold weekend – at least for November. Was positively Januaryish, without piles of snow. Authoritative prediction says it’ll be around freezing hereabouts through Thanksgiving at least.

One compensation: the evening skies have been very clear. Venus, which is the Evening Star right now, hangs brilliantly in the west after sunset. More subtle minds than mine have pondered Venus lighting up the west. A little Blake:

Thou fair-hair’d angel of the evening

Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light

Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown

Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!

I just look up and think, Wow, look at Venus.

Twenty-six years ago toward the end of November, for reasons I don’t remember, the entire staff of the magazine I worked for at the time got together for a group photo. I’ve had a copy since then.
There was a time, and it extended until past 1987, when men went to the office wearing a tie. No one had to put on a tie to pose for this picture. The term might have been around at the time, somewhere, but I’m sure we hadn’t heard of “casual Friday” or any other casual day when we posed there in our Chicago office.

Top from left: Howard (RIP), Sandy, Mike, me, Kevin, John. Bottom from left: Lisa, Linda, Harriet (RIP), Maryann, Lori (RIP) and Winnie. I think I’ve marked all the RIPs correctly. I haven’t kept touch with quite everyone.

Alexander & Johann

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Name that Founding Father. Who happens to be depicted by a bronze in Lincoln Park in Chicago, a place he surely never visited.

Yes, it’s Alexander Hamilton, inventor of the national fisc. And, for that matter, our public debt, which you can see as a millstone around ca. 300 million necks, or a brilliant way to promote the stability of the federal government (indeed: the entire world now has an interest in maintaining the United States).

The statue has a story. Kate Buckingham — the heiress who paid to build Buckingham Fountain — apparently thought Hamilton didn’t get his due among Founding Fathers. She lived long enough to see Hamilton put on the $10 bill, so you’d think that would be enough, but no. She didn’t live long enough to oversee the large memorial she originally wanted for the site (see this posting for more on the story, including the original, never-done monument design by Eliel Saarinen).

So what we have in the 21st century is a gilded bronze of Hamilton on a red plinth, overlooking some flower beds. As you can see, there isn’t much gilding left. I like it that way.

Not far away is a statute with a somewhat different vibe.

Yet Hamilton and this fellow were pretty much contemporaries: it’s Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (except Geothe never wound up on the wrong end of a dueling pistol, so he lived longer than Hamilton). Maybe Johann’s dressed for an outing of Sturm und Drang. At the base the statue says: To Goethe/The Master Mind of the German People/The Germans of Chicago 1913.

I can’t see the date 1913 and not think of what was to come, when the Mind of the German People was distracted in such unfortunate ways. But that’s hindsight. The statue’s been there 100 years, free of the “trammels of costume and conventionality,” as the committee of local Germans who commissioned the work wanted. Recently, I read, a new brown patina was added, so it looks nearly new.

The Elks National Veterans Memorial

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“The elks live up in the hills and in the spring they come down for their annual convention. It is very interesting to watch them come down to the water hole. And you should see them run when they find that it’s only a water hole. What they’re looking for is elk-ohole.”

 – Capt. Jeffery T. Spaulding

I was winding down by around 4 p.m. on October 19, but I wanted to see one more place. It wasn’t far north of Mother Cabrini’s shrine, and also at one of the edges of Lincoln Park: the Elks National Veterans Memorial. I could see its Roman-style dome from quite a distance in the park.

After the Great War, the Elks wanted to build a memorial to their members who had died in the conflict, which numbered more than 1,000, as well as space for the org’s national headquarters. The main rotunda of the Elks National Veterans Memorial was the most ornate space I saw during Openhousechicago, though Mother Cabrini’s shrine was a close second.

This was no accident. The Elks War Relief Commission, which was tasked with supervising the building’s construction, wrote in its  recommendation to the Grand Lodge in 1921 that: “The suggested building be made definitely monumental and memorial in character; that the architectural design be so stately and beautiful, the material of its construction so enduring, its site and setting so appropriate… that the attention of all beholders will be arrested, and the heart of every Elk who contemplates it will be thrilled with pride, and that it will for generations to come prove an inspiration to that loyalty and patriotism which the Order so earnestly teaches and has so worthily exemplified.”

The order picked New York architect Egerton Swarthout to design the memorial. He had a predilection for Beaux-Arts, which shows in the Elks memorial. More than shows, it overflows. I wouldn’t want everything to be done in that style, but it has its place – such as in massive, ornate memorials completed in the 1920s.

My camera, and my skills, aren’t remotely up to capturing the marbles or the soaring murals or even the gilded allegorical statues of the rotunda, which depicted Elk-approved virtues (Brotherly Love, Charity, Fidelity, and Justice). Better to see them with the eye, or failing that, at the memorial’s web site.

By contrast, I gave picture-taking a go at the Grand Reception Room at the Elks National Veterans Memorial. It too is ornate to beat the band.

I was especially taken with the allegorical painting called “The Armistice,” which of course references November 11, 1918. Eugene Savage did that work and others in the room, and I thought that style looked familiar. Like a WPA work, but before that agency existed. Sure enough, Savage was an important player in the WPA Federal Arts program, so I guess that was no accident either.

The National Shrine of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini

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I expected to see interesting architecture on last week’s Openhousechicago. I didn’t expect to run across the humerus of a saint. But the relic arm bone’s behind glass and under the altar of the National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, which is just west of Lincoln Park.

The shrine itself is magnificently ornate, done in a “modern Romanesque” style. Mosaics and frescoes on the dome overhead illustrate the life of the saint; the stained glass all around tell of the Resurrection, the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit, the Apostles, and more, even including the seal of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was founded by Mother Cabrini; there are four side chapels and four side altars; and the shrine has a Tamburini Pipe Organ, an Italian variety that I’ve read is rare in North America.

This is the view of the dome from the front pews, and a part of the baldachino (canopy) over the altar.

I’ve been in a fair number of ornate churches, but what struck me about this place was how new it feels. Not just new by the standards of European sacred spaces – which might be 100 years or less – but new by American standards. This iteration of the shrine was only opened last year.

A predecessor shrine was part of Columbus Hospital, an institution founded by Mother Cabrini (d. 1917) at this location in 1905. All together she founded 67 hospitals, schools, and orphanages in the Americas and Europe. I’m pretty sure I knew about the Columbus Hospital before it closed in 2002, but never ventured into it or the original shrine.

A condo tower was eventually developed on the site of the hospital – an extremely valuable piece of land, with its immediate access to Lincoln Park and views of Lake Michigan – but part of the deal was that the shrine had to be redeveloped on the site as well. So the floors over the shrine, which is a separate entity within the structure, are residential condos. An unusual arrangement.

The shrine also includes offices and a small museum about the saint. Among other things, the room in the hospital in which Mother Cabrini lived until her death is re-created, and on display are a habit she wore, her bed, an address book, and a to-do list (“continue work on that fourth miracle this week”).

LaSalle & Oglesby

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Lincoln Park is peppered with statues, some better known than others. Thousands of people drive by this fellow every day, since he overlooks the intersection of two large streets bordering the park, Clark and LaSalle.

Fittingly enough, it’s René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, perched over his namesake street. How many of the passersby know that? I wasn’t sure who it was until I read the plaque, which calls him “Robert Cavelier De La Salle.” Considering we’re talking about a 17th-century Frenchman, both styles are probably OK. The statue was made in Belgium, of all places, designed by one Jacques de La Laing, and was a gift to the city from Lambert Tree, a wealthy Chicagoan and second-tier Illinois politician of an earlier time (died 1910). His more important legacy is the Tree Studio Building.

In some alternate universe, in which Frenchmen took to the Midwest in greater numbers than they really did, and in which France prevailed in the Seven Years’ War, LaSalle might be revered as the forefather of a French-speaking nation stretching from the shores of the Great Lakes to the Mississippi Delta. A country that regularly chaffs against the English-speaking nation on the Eastern Seaboard and the Spanish-speaking one to the west (and Russians in the Pacific Northwest, just for fun), and which also has restive populations both English and Spanish within its borders.

In the world-as-it-is, LaSalle gets a fair amount of recognition anyway. I remember learning about him long ago in Texas History class, since he made it all the way to the future site of Texas before being offed by his own men. Also, a lot of things are named after him — or at least share the name — besides the street, and it’s worth noting that LaSalle St. is a metonym for the financial industry in Chicago.

Deeper into the park, on a small hill in fact – how did that get there? Must have been manmade – is a statue of Richard J. Oglesby, Union general, 14th Governor of Illinois, and U.S. Senator. He’s obscured to the west by a large tree and probably not that easy to see from Lake Shore Drive to the east, though I haven’t tested that assumption. I’m fairly sure obscure applies to him generally speaking, though I’ll have to ask someone who went to Illinois public schools back when such a thing as Illinois History was taught, and see if he was mentioned.

In any case, the statue is the work of sculptor Leonard Crunelle, a protégé of Lorado Taft, and was dedicated in 1919, when there were still people who remembered Oglesby (he died in 1899). In Decatur (Ill.), I understand, his home is a museum, and the town of Oglesby in LaSalle County, which is north-central Illinois, is named after him.

The Moody Church

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Put this in the semiliterate headline file: Kim Kardashian, Kanye West engagement doesn’t phase Kris Humphries’ dad. That was the head brought up for a New York Daily News article by Google News last night at about 10:20 pm CDT. Normally, that isn’t a story I would click on, but I wanted to see if the error was on the web site. It wasn’t.

Across the street from the Chicago History Museum on Clark St., just south of Lincoln Park, is the Moody Church. The current building dates from 1925 and it’s an impressive pile o’ bricks. The AIA Guide to Chicago puts it this way: “According to the dedication-day program, the church was inspired in part by the Byzantine Hagia Sophia in Istanbul; the offices and meeting rooms on the LaSalle Blvd. side were based on various Romanesque churches from Lombardy. A brick structure with sparing use of terra-cotta ornament, the building provided a large gathering place at a limited cost.”

The Moody Church was another place on the openhousechicago list that I’ve passed by many, many times – when going to the museum, or on the Clark or Broadway buses, or when visiting Lincoln Park – but never entered. So I went in.

This is looking toward the front, where the focus isn’t an altar, but a pulpit. Or maybe a lectern. Not sure what they call it.

And looking toward the back. All together there are hardwood seats for 2,270 people on the main floor and 1,470 in the balcony. It must be quite a sight when the seats are full of – Moodyites? – members of the Moody Church. Must be quite a sound when they sing.

A spot of background: Moody’s Church is an independent evangelical Protestant organization, founded by Dwight Moody, a 19th-century shoe salesman from New England who found another calling, beginning with organizing a wildly successful Sunday school. His original church in Chicago, not on this site, burned down in the Fire in 1871. Later, after Moody himself had died, his organization tapped a Scotsman named John Harper to be its pastor. Coming from Britain in 1912, he booked passage on a certain steamer later famed in books and movies for sinking in the cold, cold Atlantic. He didn’t make it to his new flock.

Those are just some of the more dramatic moments in Moody history, entirely unrepresentative. Its own account of its history is here. There’s also the Moody Bible Institute (with campuses in Michigan and Washington state, and in the news lately for dropping its ban on alcohol and tobacco for its employees), as well as publishing and radio arms (it’s the owner of 36 stations nationwide).

I’m sure the church wanted people to see the inside of the fine structure in which they worship. But of course they also wanted to proselytize just a wee bit. Upon entry, I received a DVD guide to the church, a pamphlet with a message from the current pastor, Erwin Lutzer, a schedule of upcoming events, the Order of Service for Oct. 20, 2013 (the sermon was to be on “Recognizing False Prophets”), and a small booklet by Dr. Lutzer called “One Minute After You Die.”