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.

Along North Avenue, Chicago (Murals &c.)

Posted on August 30, 2023 by admin

My stroll along North Avenue on Saturday gave me an opportunity to look more closely at murals I’d seen before, but only from the vantage of a moving bus window, which isn’t optimal. Murals have always been around – one I looked at is over 50 years old – but I can’t help feeling that now is pretty much a golden age of murals, at least as far as North American cities are concerned: commercial, polemic, vernacular, idiosyncratic, ghost, ars gratia artis and uncategorizable.

To start: not actually on North Avenue, but steps away, a new-looking advert on a wall under the Damen El station.

An eatery about as Chicago as can be, but I wonder. What are the odds the restaurant will outlast the mural? It’s a tough game, doubly so considering how many other joints in the city offer dogs and burgers. Chicago’s a city of dogs and burgers, you could say.

Equally new, equally commercial, on the opposite wall (a detail).

Not a painted mural, but built-in concrete relief mural and adjacent art on North Ave., making a wholly nondescript brick building into something notable.

“Life-Tree” or “Arbol de Vida” (1989), according to writing on the wall. No random reference, that.

The building traded for $2.9 million in 2017, according to the now defunct DNAinfo Chicago, closed in a fit of anti-union pique (and whose workers later formed the nonprofit Block Club Chicago, which is still around).

The work was created “by artists John Pitman Weber and Catherine Cajandig,” the DNAinfo Chicago archive says. “They were helped by nine community-based youth artists, who contributed other works along the same wall.”

As pretty much all Chicago streets do, North Avenue also features works by those who don’t sign them, unless I’m missing their code (and I probably am). Such as this entire graffiti’d wooden fence.

Encouraging one and all to – bake?

There’s something vaguely unsettling about this rendition of a famous cartoon rodent. The more I look at it — an unholy melding of Mickey and Goofy?

A graffito, see the bottom, that encourages warm interpersonal relations.

As this mural seems to do as well.

Not a mural or graffiti, but advertising posters tell a story as well, such as the rise of Korean chicken in North America (and corn dogs, too).

And the persistence of tobacco, in spite of everything arrayed against its use.

I don’t think I’ll take up premium cigars, or any cigars, but I have to like an outfit whose web site quotes in large script: “If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying, or he is a Gurkha,” which is attributed to Indian Army Chief of Staff Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw (d. 2008).

Soon I came to North Avenue’s most intriguing mural, and certainly the most polemic of the ones I saw. One not to be appreciated from a bus, whose title I had to look up later: “La Crucifixion de Don Pedro” (1971). It’s a little hard to get an unobstructed view, unless you’re up close.

Left.

Center.

Right.

“ ‘La Crucifixion de Don Pedro’ was painted in 1971 by three community artists: Mario Galan, Jose Bermudez, Hector Rosario, and was commissioned by the Puerto Rican Arts Association,” notes Clio. “It is the oldest Puerto Rican mural in the city. The mural shows Don Pedro Albizu Campos being crucified between Lolita Lebron and Rafael Miranda. Campos was the Vice President [sic] of the Puerto Rican nationalist party, which fought for Puerto Rican Independence. Lebron and Miranda were also members of that party.”

The backdrop is a Puerto Rican revolutionary flag raised against the Spanish in the 19th century.

My sources don’t say who’s depicted as the figure stabbing Campos, paralleling the soldier stabbing Christ, but my guess would be Luis Muñoz Marín, first elected governor of Puerto Rico and generally considered the architect of the Estado Libre Asociado status of the island that the nationalists so bitterly opposed. Enough to organize violent uprisings in the 1950s, which landed Campos in prison most of the rest of his life. In the case of Lebron and Miranda, they wounded a number of Congressman by opening fire in the U.S. Capitol in the pre-metal detector days of 1954, which earned them about a quarter century each of hard time in the federal prison system.

Another polemic on North Avenue.

Not polemic.

Unless you count the comment about ICE that Homer wouldn’t be able to see, even if he weren’t sloshed.

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.

The Less-Crowded Galleries

Posted on August 28, 2023 by admin

Yuriko went to her intermittent cake class on Saturday, which means I got to drive into the city and hang out there for a few hours. I went to the Art Institute of Chicago, since it had been a while.

The big show at the moment is “Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape,” which closes after Labor Day. The exhibit features not only works by the one-eared Dutchman, but also Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard and Charles Angrand.

I’m sure it’s a fine collection of works. But as I could see from the exhibit entrance, the galleries were packed (almost) like rush-hour subway cars. That was a deal-breaker for me, so I sought out other artwork, somewhere in the museum I hadn’t spend much time before. This was easy to do, since it is such a large place.

In fact, I didn’t have to go far. Just downstairs a floor from the Van Gogh et al. exhibit are the galleries of the Arts of the Americas. Few people were around, certainly not as many as the floor above. I had an enjoyable ramble, looking here and there at my leisure, not having to navigate other onlookers.

A few details, such as from Frederic Remington’s “The Advance-Guard,” or “The Military Sacrifice (The Ambush)” (1890).

From “Nouvart Dzeron, A Daughter of Armenia” (1912), by an artist I didn’t know: Ralph Elmer Clarkson.

A fireplace (1901) designed by George Washington Maher.

A lock by one Frank L. Koralewsky, illustrating the Grimms’ “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” It won Korwalewsky a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915, and I’d say he deserved it.

The more I looked at its detail, the more amazing it seemed.

This statue caught my attention.

I don’t think I’d seen it before. Soon I discovered it was “The Puritan” (1883-86) by the great sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Anyone who can design a thing like the $20 Double Eagle gold piece is great in my book, and I was delighted to find one of his works. Even better, there were more on the wall nearby.

“Jules Bastien-Lepage” (1880).

“Violet Sargent” (1890) (sister of the painter).

And “Amor Caritas” (1897).

Van Gogh is well and good — and probably better on a weekday — but Saint-Gaudens is equally worth the trip to the Art Institute. Another example of the limited imagination of crowds, too. I bet that for every 100 people who’ve heard of Van Gogh, maybe a handful know Saint-Gaudens.

Nichols Bridgeway ’23

Posted on May 8, 2023 by admin

Saw this headline in the WSJ late last week: ‘I’m Not Excited For Him to Become King’: American Royal Watchers Draw the Line at King Charles Coronation

Do we as Americans need to be excited about the coronation of Charles? No, we do not. Interested, if that kind of thing interests you, but I’ll bet even a good many Britons don’t have strong feelings one way or the other. As one of those things that doesn’t happen very often and which harkens back to a long history, the event interested me, but not to the point of distraction.

Reporting on the event makes it seem as if there are only two modes of thinking about Charles, and the British monarchy for that matter: slavish adoration and awe at the pomp, or bitter republican convictions that see the royals as posh parasites. I can’t muster enough emotion to feel either of those, though I could probably sit down and come up with reasons on each side of the monarchy, pro- and anti-, like any former high school debater.

Still, I did a little reading about the sceptre and orb, because who doesn’t like a little reading about orbs especially? Of even more interest, though, is the Stone of Scone, which for years I thought was pronounced the same way that the British refer to their biscuits (but no, it’s “skoon,” which does sound more Scottish). I understand that all it takes to see the stone these days is a visit to Edinburgh Castle. Its presence there since 1996 must count as a physical reminder of UK devolution.

All in all, the coronation didn’t interest me enough to get up at 4 or 5 am on a Saturday for live coverage. Plenty of video was available soon after.

While we were in Chicago on Saturday, we found ourselves on the Nichols Bridgeway, which runs from Millennium Park to the third floor of the Art Institute.

I couldn’t remember the last time we were there. Might have been back in 2011, when we attended my nephew Robert’s graduation from the School of the Art Institute. That’s when I took this picture of him with a faux nimbus.

The bridge still stands, of course. Looking north.

South.

We went for the views from the bridge. One thing Chicago has for sure is an alpha-city skyline.

Looking west on Monroe St.

Looking east.

Note how few cars there are (none) compared with the number of pedestrians. Turns out the Polish Constitution Day Parade had just finished. We missed it. Maybe next year; looks like a spectacle.

Another New Flag

Posted on May 7, 2023 by admin

The last weekend of April: cold, wet and miserable. The first weekend of May: warm, dry and pleasant. Such is spring.

We were in Chicago for a while on Saturday taking advantage of the fine weather, and when walked by Daley Plaza, we saw these flags.

What’s that one in the middle? One reason — the main reason — I took a picture was to look it up later. It didn’t take long. That’s the new Cook County flag.

Since last year, so not quite brand new, but not anything I’d heard about. The county sought a new design in a time-tested manor, by asking high school students to submit them (which is how Alaska got its excellent flag nearly 100 years ago).

An improvement on the old flag, I think, though I will give that one points for depicting a map of Cook County and its townships, which is distinctive. In any case, it looks like —

— vexillologic critics are beginning to have some impact on official flag design.

Vestiges of Marshall Field’s

Posted on January 12, 2023 by admin

Back to posting on January 17, out of respect to the legacy of Dr. King, because a holiday’s a holiday, and also since it’s nice to have a little time off not long after a sizable stretch of holidays, which can be a bit tiring.

We’re just ahead the pit of winter, but for now anyway the weather isn’t that bad. “Pit” is an inexact term, of course, but I think of it as the last week of January and the first one of February, more or less. Since the Christmas freeze, temps have been more moderate, but I expect another gelid blast sometime soon.

The following is a reminder that, once upon a time, department stores were the disruptors.

“The development of the department store posed a serious threat to smaller retailers,” explains the Encyclopedia of Chicago. “Many small merchants tried to rally the public against the new behemoths, but they failed to gain much support. Rather than rally to the side of traditional merchants, Chicago shoppers embraced the new form of retail.

“The opening of the new Marshall Field’s State Street store in 1902, only a few years after anti–department store protests, signaled that this newer type of institution had won the admiration of consumers. The opening was a sensational event, and the store decided not to start selling items on its first day of business so that more of the eager public would be able to pass through.”

Ah, if only passing through the building were quite as awe-inspiring here in the fraught 21st century. Still, a visit has its moments of visual splendor. If you look up.

I need to spend more time looking this masterpiece. In person, I mean. Closer views are available on higher floors, but it’s a wow even from the ground floor. Worth the crick you might get putting your neck in just the right position to see it.

“The highlight of the Marshall Field store was the Tiffany Dome (1907), a glass mosaic covering six thousand square feet, six floors high,” EOC says.

Not just any glass, but a special kind of glass that Tiffany & Co. had just invented. State-of-the-Victorian-art amorphous solids in a glassy myriad of hues, in other words.

The Marshall Field Building’s other yawning space – a building that takes up a city block has ample room for yawning spaces – is worth the uplook too.

A building of this kind also has a practically limitless supply of engaging detail. Some of it is literally underfoot, and by literally, I mean literally.

Back on the seventh floor, not long after noon, we wandered through a not particularly busy clutch of quick-service restaurants. At some point, department store management erased the longstanding and high-quality casual food service in the basement, and reconfigured parts of the seventh floor for food service.

Near the restaurants is a corner with floor-to-ceiling windows. Hard to pass those up, so we didn’t. We took in the views from northwest corner of the building.

Looking north on State St.

Looking west on Washington St.

A few years ago, the ornate venue originally known as the Oriental Theatre, which started as a 1920s movie palace, took a new name, Nederlander. After theater impresario James M. Nederlander (d. 2016). Doesn’t he count as a New Yorker? Guess his company would argue that it is national, as indeed it is.

Elsewhere on the seventh floor is a pocket-sized, plain hallway with a small exhibit of figures from Marshall Field Christmas windows on State Street, which were as much holiday tradition at the store as decorating the Walnut Room or hiring a Santa Claus, with thousands of Chicagoans and tourists seeing the windows every year and developing fond memories of the place.

As recently as 2015, the windows were inventive expressions of the window designers’ art.

The items on display in the hall aren’t particularly old: most are from this century. Such as from 2004.

2006.

A luminous creation from 2005.

I could write more – say, 1000 words – contrasting these artifacts with the 2022 State Street Christmas windows, but I don’t need to. Here’s one of the storied windows this Christmastime.

One could take the current owners of the building to task for this diminished creativity, but it isn’t the cause of anything, only a symptom.

I can’t end on that sour note.

While taking pictures at an elegantly decorated part of the seventh floor, I caught an image of a passing lass, elegant as her surroundings.

The Ghost of Marshall Field

Posted on January 11, 2023 by admin

On the second to last day of 2022, we spent a while at Macy’s downtown Chicago store. The chain does business in the magnificent building originally occupied by Marshall Field & Co., the celebrated retailer on State Street, which takes up an entire city block.

On the seventh floor, Marshall Field looks out upon the modern operation. It hasn’t had his name since the early 21st century.

Does the mustachioed shade of Mr. Field (d. 1906) wander the building at night, collar taut, making no noise and visible to no one, because he’s a happy ghost? After all, his building, not quite complete when he died, is still there, and still retail. Or is he having trouble keeping quiet, considering the direction of the department store business?

For some modern context – business context, that is – I fed “Macy’s” into Google News today. Some headlines that emerged:

Macy’s Analyst Remains Bearish Following Disappointing Q4 Preannouncement: ‘Longer Term Structural Challenges’

Macy’s Cautious View on Consumers Hits Shares

Macy’s quietly lays an egg — and more may be coming for retail: Morning Brief

All those are actually relatively good news in the world of department stores, which cling to life but which further disappear with each passing year. I’m not saying that Macy’s is doomed, just operating as one of the last players standing on much smaller playing field.

The downtown Chicago location was fairly busy that day and still decked out for the holidays. Especially on the seventh floor, home to the Walnut Room, which still has a reasonably impressive Christmas tree.

The Walnut Room is a grand space even in our time, serving meals of one kind or another since 1907, and the site of large Christmas trees since that same year. Originally named the South Grill Room, this is how it looked in 1909, not in the holiday season.

Generations of Chicagoans came here to eat or, like me as long ago as the late 1980s, to see the grand tree. Looks like they are still coming for both purposes, so at least Macy’s has that going for it.

“The bold selection of grilled foods was meant to distinguish the South Grill Room from the daintier tearooms,” the Digital Research Library of Illinois History notes. “The restaurants’ role was not to make money (they usually operated at a loss) but rather to lure hungry visitors into the store and give those already inside a reason to stay. Their upper-floor location required diners to navigate past enticing impulse goods while making their way upstairs.

“Because so many customers spoke of this restaurant by referring to its Circassian walnut paneling, it was later renamed the ‘Walnut Tearoom,’ next as the ‘Walnut Grill,’ and finally as the ‘Walnut Room’ in 1937.”

Also on the seventh floor: the Narcissus Room. It used to be a tea room. One of those daintier rooms mentioned above. There were still signs pointing to it, so I decided to go take a look. For all I know, tea rooms are the latest thing among hipsters and Gen-Whatever social media posters.

The room as it once was. My source puts the card at 1920.

The entrance to the Narcissus Room much more recently. As in, about two weeks ago. Note that it isn’t locked, and there were no signs advising against entry by non-employees.

Nice detail on at the threshold.

I opened the door.

I did not, in fact, enter. This view was freely available from outside the door, which is in public hallway in the store. According to Macy’s, you can rent the room for an event. As of that day, anyway, no events seemed to be in the works.

The Art of American Victorian Stained Glass

Posted on January 10, 2023 by admin

If you board the El at the Cumberland station near O’Hare, you can ride to downtown Chicago without any further effort. If you get off at Washington station and head east — but not upstairs, since the El is a subway at that point — you will find yourself in the Chicago Pedway System, a network of underground walkways.

If, like me, you go downtown only sporadically, you won’t know the Pedway System in its entirety. Even regular downtown visitors and residents probably don’t know all of the five miles of tunnel or even the half of it. I didn’t know there was that much until I read it — can that be right?

Anyway, from Washington station, the Pedway goes around the northern edge of Macy’s, which occupies an entire city block. In the wall opposite the basement entrance to that department store, 22 pieces of stained glass from the golden age of American stained glass — installed behind protective clear glass and backlit — welcome curious passersby. Like us late on the morning of December 30.

By golden age, I mean the late 19th century. This one was fabricated by Belcher Mosaic Glass Co., Newark, NJ, 1885-87.

Unknown fabricator, originally in a Louisville mansion, late 19th century. I like to think the mansion belonging to Daisy Fay’s (later Daisy Buchanan’s) family, but I suppose not.

A night owl. Fabricator also a late 19th-century unknown; a lot of them in the exhibit are.

The formal name of the exhibit is The Art of American Victorian Stained Glass. I’m not a scholar on art glass, so I rely on someone else’s expertise, namely the curator of the exhibit, Rolf Achilles.

“We always think that America has been copying everything from Europe. But no,” Achilles said about the exhibit when it was installed in 2013 (which I somehow didn’t hear about). “Painting on glass is one of the things Americans did, but also they stained the glass, and used ornamentation on glass; they added jewels, they added large chunks of glass.

“We have a superb example of this type of work. Look at the jewels, the facet of jewels were cut by diamonds and then chunks of glass were cast. This is uniquely American in the 1880s and 1890s. It was only around late 1890s and 1900s when the European started doing this, and then it is called Art Nouveau and everyone gets excited.”

A detail illustrates his point.

The sign for this one was missing.

One more Belcher. All the stained glass is striking, but this one notches it up to stunning.

“While their era of production was short lived [1884 to 1897], Belcher windows were popular and many examples still survive today, both in situ but more likely in collections,” Wiki says.

Manufacturing came to a sudden end at Belcher. It’s possible the fabrication process, unique to the company and involving various heavy metals, poisoned some of the workers, though that isn’t clear. If so, that would well represent that 19th-century age of beauty and poison, wouldn’t it?

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Chicago