(Former) Dead Man’s Curve

Posted on May 11, 2023 by admin

Time for a genuine spring break, now that genuine spring has arrived. Back to posted content around May 24.

Returning from Normal on Sunday, I took another short detour fairly close by, in the wonderfully named town of Towanda, pop. 430 or so, originally a central Illinois project of the busy 19th-century businessman Jesse Fell. I’d seen signs for Towanda on the Interstate for years, but never stopped.

Towanda is the home of a massive grain elevator, owned by Evergreen FS of Bloomington.

For a more ordinary tourist, a stretch of the former U.S. 66 passes through town, and has a walking path next to the road. I took a stroll.

Also part of the former highway: Dead Man’s Curve.

The nickname isn’t too hard to figure out, but a sign offers details.

It doesn’t offer a death toll, which may not be known, but does say that from 1927 until a bypass was built in 1954, the curve was the site of “many disastrous accidents,” especially involving drivers from Chicago, “unfamiliar with the road and accustomed to higher speeds.” Oops. Once a hazard, now a minor tourist attraction.

Note the Burma Shave signs. They look fairly new, so I take them to be modern homages, in this case noting the dangers of Dead Man’s Curve.

There’s a rhyme for each direction of travel on the road.

Northbound: Car In Ditch/Driver In Tree/The Moon Was Full/And So Was He/Burma Shave.

Southbound: Around The Curve/Lickety-Split/Beautiful Car/Wasn’t It?/Burma Shave.

South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois

Posted on May 10, 2023 by admin

Across the Vermilion River from Chautauqua Park in Pontiac, Illinois, is South Side Cemetery, which predates the town’s Chautauqua activity by some decades, since its first burials were in 1856. At 24 acres, it’s still an active municipal burial ground. I saw at least two memorials with death dates in 2023.

Overall, a nice place for a stroll on a warm day in May, if you don’t mind being in a cemetery. I can’t say I ever have been.

Some older stones, including a scattering of Civil War veterans.

As usual with small towns, not many mausoleums or large monuments, but there are a few.

Lemuel G. Cairns fought for the Union, too, but has no ordinary soldier’s stone. According to Find a Grave, he achieved the rank of sergeant and after the war dealt in cattle in Texas, before moving to Illinois. I suspect he did well in that business in Texas, but maybe got tired of the heat.

The only sizable mausoleum I spotted.

A number of Gaylords reside there, including this fellow, it seems, a doctor and Union veteran.

This is a surname you don’t see much: Hercules. Also, an unusual design for a stone.

Rare, but not unknown.

“Early examples of the surname recording taken from surviving church registers include those of William Hercules (also recorded as Herculus) at the church of St Margaret’s Westminster, on January 16th 1603, and in the Shetlands, William Herculason who married Christian Harryson at Delting, on January 24th 1752,” says the Internet Surname Database.

A prominent Pontiac family, no doubt. With a name like that, they’d better be. One of them – J.W. Hercules – is mentioned as the designer of the Pontiac Chautauqua pavilion.

Chautauqua Park, Pontiac

Posted on May 9, 2023 by admin

A total of four hours behind the wheel there and back from the northwest suburbs of Chicago to Normal, Illinois, could be considered a chore, but not if you have time to stop a handful of places along the way. That isn’t always possible – weather or scheduling might prevent it – but when it is, you might happen across things to see. Maybe even things you won’t see anywhere else.

Such as in Pontiac, Illinois, pop. 11,150. It’s been a surprisingly good source of stopover sights since I started driving to Normal on a regular basis, and so it was on Sunday, when I headed down to Normal to load up the car with some of Ann’s possessions. She’ll be done with school for the semester later this week, so the goal was to not be overloaded when she finally returns.

Plunge into the small streets of Pontiac – that might not be the right verb, since its grid is pretty small – and soon you’ll be at Chautauqua Park.

Spring green and on Sunday at least, warm enough to inspire a little sweat.

A good place to walk around, but also to read, with a good many signs like this.

I read at least a half-dozen. Most of them told me about the history of the park as the setting for the Pontiac Chautauqua, as the park name suggests.

A few quotes from the various signs:

A.C. Folsom

“Under the leadership of A.C. Folsom, a group of civic-minded citizens organized to bring a Chautauqua to Pontiac. Between the years 1898 and 1929, the Pontiac Chautauqua Assembles developed into one of the Midwest’s most popular and successful summer festivals.”

“As the Pontiac Chautauqua grew, dramatic presentations became particular favorites of the crowd. Shakespeare, melodramas, domestic comedies, mysteries, and tragedies graced the stage of the pavilion. Troupes of actors from New York, Chicago and elsewhere traveled the Chautauqua circuit, playing a repertory of four or five plays.”

The Chautauqua pavilion as it appears now.

Theatrical presentations still occur there. According to a non-historic sign, the next one will be the Broadway musical version of Beauty and the Beast, June 14-18, 2023, by the Vermillion Players.

More Chautauqua Park history-sign verbiage:

“Specialty acts from all over the world brought exotic sounds which floated over the park on warm summer evenings. Here are just a few of the individuals and groups which graced the Pontiac Chautauqua: Mme. Schumann-Heink, opera star; The Weber Male Quartette; Colangelos Band; The Honolulu Students; Mr. & Mrs. Tony Godetz, Alpine Singers & Yodelers.”

“Each year of the Pontiac Chautauqua Assembly, noted lecturers, politicians and educators came to edify the event’s patrons… some of the most notable speakers include: Booker T. Washington; William Jennings Bryan; Samuel Gompers; Rev. Dr. Thomas DeWitt Talmage; Carrie Nation.”

Yep, there’s Carrie Nation at the Pontiac Chautauqua.

No visible hatchet. It’s clear she didn’t wear a corset. She considered them harmful.

As fascinating as the park’s Chautauqua history is – and there’s the basis of another limited costume series on prestige streaming, namely the story of a plucky, slightly anachronistic woman entertainer on the Chautauqua circuit, ca. 1900 – that isn’t all the park has to offer.

Namely, it sports two of the town’s three swinging bridges. Dating roughly from the time of the Chautauqua. Original iron work, with wooden planks that have been replaced many times.

Naturally, I had to cross them. One of them:

And the other.

They don’t swing, exactly, at least when you walk normally, but they do wobble, and it takes a moment to get used to the motion. Nice views of the Vermilion River along with way.

Bigger than I would have thought. At this point, the waters are on their way to the Illinois River, then of course Old Man River.

One more item in the park: a plaque-on-rock memorial.

Not just any memorial, but a fairly unusual one.

But not unknown. Naturally, I had to look up Fred Bennitt. I’m cursed that way.

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.

We’ve Stringbeans and Onions, Cabbages and Scallions, and All Kinds of Fruits and Say —

Posted on May 3, 2023 by admin

I’ve been lax, letting the 100th anniversary of “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” go unmentioned until now. The song was published on March 23, 1923. The only popular song about Greek grocers that I know, except maybe for “I’ve Got The Yes! We Have No Bananas Blues.”

I found an article that promises the story behind the song, and offers some detail about the fruit trade in New York, past and present.

“The story of New York produce goes far back beyond Hunts Point,” says an article on the web site of a company specializing in credit rating and market information for the produce industry, referring to the Hunts Point produce market in the Bronx, an enormous operation.

“The city’s colorful history includes the Banana Docks of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were located at Old Slip in lower Manhattan,” it says.

Banana Docks, New York City

The article goes on to say that the songwriters took their inspiration from a Greek fruit stand owner who said the famous line to him, but the account published in Time magazine in the summer of 1923 is, I think, more believable. Especially since it quotes the songwriter himself only months after the monster hit song came out.

“I am an American, of Jewish ancestry, with a wife and a young son,” songwriter Frank Silver told Time. “About a year ago my little orchestra was playing at a Long Island hotel. To and from the hotel I was wont to stop at a fruit stand owned by a Greek, who began every sentence with ‘Yess.’ The jingle of his idiom haunted me and my friend Cohn. Finally I wrote this verse and Gohn [sic] fitted it with a tune.”

It was the first song Silver ever sold. For a most harmonious recording of it, listen to the Mellomen version. With Thurl Ravenscroft. (!) For a sing-along version that also happens to be an early product of the remarkable and mostly unsung Fleischer Studios, and thus has a surreal edge to it, watch this video.

Here’s an series idea for a prestige streaming service: Banana Dock Empire. Criminals vying for control of the Banana Docks in 1890s New York. Too bad Daniel Day-Lewis is too old now to play the part of a rising young thug who murders his way into control of the city’s banana supply.

Springtime Thursday Musings

Posted on April 20, 2023 by admin

Warm again early in the day. Thunderstorms rolled through in the morning and again in the afternoon. Cool air came back late in the day.

Ahead of the rain, we walked the dog around a pond, where a good many red-winged blackbirds flitted around. Hardly our first encounter with them, though there don’t seem to be as many after spring is over.

Moths are back in the house. How did this happen? There’s no lasting victory over moths, looks like. So I put out fresh glue traps, and some dozens have been caught. I still see a few flitting around, and slap them when I can, but I hope they too will either die in the traps, or die mateless and without descendants.

Rabbits are back in numbers too, often in the back yard, but I leave them alone. The dog does too, seemingly not interested in chasing them any more. Such is old age.

Completely by accident, and speaking of rabbits, I learned that today is the 44th anniversary of a swamp rabbit attacking President Carter’s boat (which wasn’t known till later in 1979). Even better, I learned that the photo of the incident is in the public domain, being the work of a White House photographer. This copy is via the Carter Library, though I don’t remember it being on display there.

With the looming deadline for renting more Netflix DVDs in mind, I watched part of the disk I currently have at home, Judgment at Nuremberg. I don’t remember why I put it in the queue, except that I’d never gotten around to seeing it, and Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster are always worth a look.

I didn’t realize that William Shatner was in it until I saw his name in the opening credits. As it happens, he plays a captain. In the U.S. Army, but still a captain.

I also didn’t know that Werner Klemperer played a part, one of the defendants. Naturally, I had a silly thought when he entered the courtroom: Col. Klink was put on trial at Nuremberg? No! His incompetence consistently aided the Allied cause. Call Col. Hogan as a character witness.

I’m reminded of something I once heard about Klemperer on stage: “Kevin D. told me that, during a production of Cabaret at the Chicago Theatre in the late ’80s, Werner Klemperer played [a Jewish merchant not in the movie version], and got the biggest applause of the night. ‘Everyone knew it was because he played Col. Klink,’ Kevin said.”

In the staged revival of Cabaret I saw in 2002, Hal Linden played the same part, and likewise got a vigorous round of applause on his first appearance. For playing Barney Miller, I figure. Such is the power of TV.

West Virginia, #48

Posted on April 17, 2023 by admin

One thing you’ll find in Moundsville, West Virginia, which is in the panhandle not far south of Wheeling, is a mound of impressive height – 62 feet. The Grave Creek Mound.

Look carefully enough and you’ll note that a footpath leads to the top. We were too tired for it at that moment, but it was a moot point anyway, since the Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex had just closed for the day when we arrived, though the gift shop was still open.

“The Grave Creek Mound is one of the largest Adena mounds and an impressive sight for any visitor to Moundsville,” says the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. “A massive undertaking, the total effort required the movement of more than 57,000 tons of sand and earth. Construction of the mound took place from about 250-150 B.C. and included multiple burials at different levels within the structure.

“Although Grave Creek Mound is today an isolated feature on the landscape, the flat area now occupied by the city of Moundsville was once covered with small and large mounds and associated earthworks. Unfortunately, these structures and many others all over the region have been destroyed by treasure-hunters and farmers who plowed over these in the past.”

The complex takes up a large town block in Moundsville, but even larger is the West Virginia Penitentiary, which is across the street from the mound. I’d asked the clerk at the Grave Creek Mound gift shop about its hulking presence, and she told me it had once been a state prison, but was long closed as a prison.

I was reminded instantly of Joliet, and it seems that the state of West Virginia took direct inspiration for its new pen from the Illinois prison.

“No architectural drawings of the West Virginia Penitentiary have been discovered, so an understanding of the plan developed by the Board of Directors must be obtained through their 1867 report, which details the procurement of a title for ten acres of land and a proposal to enclose about seven acres,” says the prison web site.

No cons have occupied this particular stony lonesome since the 1990s and now the old pen supports a cottage industry of tours, many stressing the macabre or supernatural stories clinging to a place that saw the execution of dozens of men. Seems like a good use for the imposing old structure, whatever you think of ghost stories. We’d have been in the market for a daylight (non-spook) tour ourselves, but again the timing was wrong.

We passed through Moundsville twice.

Once on a cold, windy day, then a few days later when it was warmer, when we were able to eat at a picnic shelter in a small park along the Ohio River. The park has a view of the elegant Moundsville Bridge, which crosses to Mead Township, Ohio.

Officially, it’s the Arch A. Moore Bridge, named for the longest-serving governor of West Virginia, who also did a spell in stir for corruption. Moore was in office, still unindicted, when the bridge opened in 1986. He was a Moundsville native son, so perhaps a little corruption isn’t enough to scrub his name from the bridge – if in fact anyone calls it that anyway.

In the southern reaches of New River Gorge NP, near Grandview, a trail wanders through outcroppings of what I take for sedimentary rock.

Reminded me a bit of Cuyahoga NP, though that park’s rock formations seemed larger and more extensive.

Near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, and just off U.S. 60 – which follows the Midland Trail at this point, another lost-to-time road – is a wide place in the road that marks access to Cathedral Falls.

Easy access, since it’s less than a minute from the parking lot to a close view of the falls.

Nearby is a homemade memorial to one Hugh Rexroad, who is clearly this person. Did Hugh die here, say of natural causes while admiring the fall, or was he merely very fond of the place? Whatever your story, RIP, Hugh.

The channel takes the waterfall flow to the Kanawha River, which U.S. 60 follows into Charleston.

Kanawha was a proposed name for a breakaway entity from Virginia, but in the event the more pedestrian West Virginia was picked.

A number of memorial statues rise near the West Virginia capitol, but rain kept me from lingering too long. I did see the coal miner, dating from 2002.

Sorry about your mistreatment, especially before you were able to organize. Here’s your statue.

The industry has contracted in recent decades, of course, not just in West Virginia, but the entire country. Still, in 2020, West Virginia provided about 5% of the nation’s total energy, more than one-third of it from coal production, the U.S. Energy Information Agency reports.

“However, because of increases in natural gas and natural gas liquids production from the Marcellus and Utica shales in northern West Virginia, natural gas surpassed coal for the first time in 2019 and became the largest contributor to the state’s energy economy.”

After spending a couple of nights in West Virginia, it occurred to me that I now haven’t spent the night in only two states: Delaware and Rhode Island.

More From the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Posted on April 16, 2023 by admin

Our most recent trip took us to fully 25% of the nation’s commonwealths, to celebrate a famed example of a distinction without a difference.

It wasn’t quite full spring in Pennsylvania last month, but warm enough most of time.

We drove the National Road (U.S. 40) in Pennsylvania, from where it crosses the border near Wheeling, through to Uniontown, and later drove the segment that goes into Maryland.

Didn’t quite make it to the eastern terminus, in Cumberland, Maryland. Once upon a time, maybe a small detour during a late ’90s return from Dallas, we saw the western terminus in Vandalia, Illinois.

One minor landmark along the way.

Searight’s Tollhouse, built in 1835 by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to collect tolls, since the federal government had turned the road over to its various states that year. The structure, near Uniontown, is one of two surviving tollhouses, out of the six built. No tolls have been collected there since the 1870s.

The structure was built near the tavern of William Searight, the state commissioner in charge of the roadway, per Wiki.

Barman and toll collector. There’s an idea for a Western revival limited series on streaming: Will Searight, Frontier Toll Collector. I’m thinking a comedy, in the same Shakespearean writing style as Deadwood, but no one gets killed.

A church on the National Road, east of Uniontown: Mount Washington Presbyterian, founded in 1842.

The church cemetery provides a view of the National Road.

In Uniontown itself, I stopped by briefly at Oak Grove Cemetery, originally the Union Cemetery of Fayette County, which has been accepting permanent residents since 1867.

Famed permanent residents? I checked with Find-A-Grave (just now), and the pickings are slim: mostly forgotten members of the U.S. Congress, though there is a Civil War officer, Silas Milton Bailey (d. 1900). I just made his acquaintance. Quite a story. Uniontown jeweler in civilian life; solider that didn’t let getting shot in the face keep him from action for long.

Fort Necessity is just off U.S. 40 and thus the National Road. Something I noticed there, featured on a park service educational sign. Of course. How could they not be involved?

The camp, Pennsylvania SP-12, existed from 1935 to ’37, with about 800 men, planting trees and laying out trails and roads. This is the first time I’ve seen the CCC seal depicted at any of its sites, though of course the men sometimes rate bronze recognition. There is evidence that the seal dates back to the active period of the corps.

Just as we left Pennsylvania for the last time, I was able to stop at the border with Maryland on U.S. 219, just south of Salisbury, Pa. Not just any border, but the Mason-Dixon Line. It’s one thing to cross it, as I have who knows how often. It’s another thing, according to my eccentric lights, to stand on it.

Yuriko had never heard of it. I explained a little about its history and its wider but not quite literal meaning as a line between free and slave, North and South, but she didn’t find it all that impressive.

Ohio Timbits

Posted on April 13, 2023 by admin

Finally, a string of warm days here in northern Illinois, as in 80s in the afternoons. The grass is green and some bushes are coloring up, too. Trees are a little more hesitant, but it won’t be long. Of course, come Saturday, weather from up north will end our balmy run.

One thing I was glad to learn during our recent trip east was that Tim Hortons territory in the U.S. extends as far as Columbus, Ohio.

What is it about TH doughnuts that is so good, even in small form? The excellence of the dough, presumably, but that doesn’t really answer the question.

Another ahead-of-the-road-foodies discovery: Tudor’s Biscuit World. From a recipe dating back to the kitchens of Hampton Court Palace in the time of Henry VIII?

Of course not. The 20th-century founders were named Tudor. Though there’s a scattering of Biscuit Worlds in Ohio and Kentucky, and an outlier in Panama City, Florida, it’s largely a West Virginia operation. As we drove south through that state, we kept seeing them along the way. That inspired me, the next morning, to visit one and buy breakfast sandwiches for us.

Its sandwiches are much like McDonald’s breakfasts, the best thing that fast-food giant makes, except more variety, and Biscuit World’s various sandwiches were larger. Pretty much the same high quality. I can see why they can compete with McD’s.

The Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation rises over the small-town streets of Carey, Ohio (pop. 3,500). I spotted it as a point of interest on one of my road atlases.

I’ve read that a lot of people show up for Assumption Day, but in mid-March, only a few other people were in the basilica.

The next day, we saw St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Zanesville, Ohio, a handsome church that needs a grander setting, one not hemmed in by busy streets.

Zanesville is known for its Y Bridge, and I have to say driving over the thing was less interesting than driving down any of the other streets in Zanesville. As Wiki states: “It has received criticism for a tunnel-like effect due to its solid railings, providing hardly any view of the scenery.”

I agree. I know public budgets are tight in a place like Zanesville, median household income, $26,642. Still, there has to be a way that’s not too expensive to make experiencing the bridge genuinely distinctive, like the Tridge in Midland, Mich., except with vehicular traffic.

(Chin up, Zanesville. The Midwest is going to rise again, with its cooler temps and access to water. You or I might not live to see it, but still.)

West of Zanesville – where you can find the National Road & Zane Grey Museum – you can also stand in front of this pleasant house in New Concord, Ohio.

Behind the white picket fence, the John and Annie Glenn Museum.

Then.

Now.

Leaving that early sign outside is a nice touch. Not every artifact needs to be behind glass.

Both the Glenns and Zane Grey were closed for the season. I didn’t need a museum to tell me that we were partly following the route of the National Road as we drove on U.S. 40 in Ohio and more so in Pennsylvania.

Route 66 has had better publicity, but the National Road – the original stab at an interstate – now that’s a traveler’s road, a route to seek glimpses of a past remote and tough. Well, from the vantage of today’s macadamized roads.

A mile marker on U.S. 40 in Ohio, but only 25 miles from Wheeling, West Virginia – as the marker tells us, and the fact that Zanesville is 50 miles west.

At the courthouse square in Newark, Ohio, bronze Mark Twain can be found looking Mark-Twainy except – no cigar. Come now, he even smoked cigars when he made an appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Or maybe this is the reformed Mark Twain, who promised to give up cigars after the 1910 arrival of Haley’s Comet. No, that’s not it. I made that last part up. But he did in fact give up cigars that year.

Outside the Ohio Statehouse, a couple danced and was photographed. For reasons, presumably. A spot of romantic whimsy, I hope.

The capitol grounds are well populated with bronzes, including from just after the Great War.

And a little earlier, historically speaking. Quite a bit, actually: Columbus, as in the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, in a 1892 work.

See him, and reflect on the vicissitudes of history.

Columbus (the city) has a good skyline, at least from the capitol grounds.

We had lunch that day in the Columbus neighborhood of German Village, or maybe more formally, German Village Historic District, which has the hallmarks of fairly far along gentrifying, an old ethnic neighborhood revived some years after its ethnicity melted into the population.

We got takeout from a small-chain chicken wing joint, which was packed with a youngish crowd at the brunch hour on Sunday, and ate with gusto in our car, out of the wind and collecting enough sunlight to warm the inside of the car.

Across the street was a sizable park.

After eating, I took a look around. Schiller is honored in German Village. Check.

Then there’s Umbrella Girl, a fixture in a fountain still dry for the season.

Instructions.

I’d say bilingual, but I don’t see that dogs have a lingua, as expressive as they can be.

The Ohio Statehouse

Posted on April 12, 2023 by admin

Through much of 1999, I visited a fair number of Midwestern cities on editorial business of one kind or another. At some point, that included Columbus, Ohio. I was staying downtown, so during a lull, I popped over to the Ohio Statehouse, which occupies a prominent 10-acre block.

I went in and looked around back then, but thinking about it last month, what I remembered most was the statue of William McKinley near the street. He’s still there, of course.

With verbiage about the immortal memory of President McKinley. That’s what I remembered, how memorials speak to those who already remember, at least among Americans. Later generations do not remember, or much care, except in certain lightning-rod cases. I suppose that isn’t a good thing, but there is the upside of mostly forgetting to hold historical grudges.

The president isn’t alone at that part of the capitol grounds, with some bronze allegories to keep him company.

The back entrance.

We’re used to seeing a dome on such a structure, but state capitols mostly started using that form, patterned after the current shape of the U.S. capitol, after that building took shape in the 1860s. The Ohio Statehouse is older than that.

We arrived late in the morning of March 25, the last day of the trip, after spending the night in suburban Columbus. I would have similar shots of the front, but as innocently spring-like as the pictures seem to be, there was a wicked strong wind blowing. Not terribly cold, just incessant and sometimes so energetic that you could feel yourself tipping one way or another, especially as a gust passed without warning.

Much calmer inside. Under the rotunda.

Nice detail work. I’m impressed by the Spirograph floor. The Spirograph-ish spirit of democracy, maybe.

The design is much less spare than in West Virginia, but not the work of any single designer. It’s the Greek Revival creation of a series of architects beginning in the 1830s and not finished until 1861, just as the nation fell apart.

Perry, hero of Lake Erie, isn’t forgotten. Not at least on the wall.

Nor Vicksburg. Many Ohioans were there.

Nor Cleisthenes, ancient democratic reformer.

I can’t say I’ve ever seen him at a capitol before, and he isn’t known as a native of Ohio, but it’s a good choice. No less than Herodotus called him “the man who introduced the tribes and the democracy” to Athens, “tribes” being the 10 groups organized by residence in Attica, rather than clan or other kinship.

The seal of Ohio in glass.

The visitor entrance, and the information desk, closed gift store and some museum exhibits, are in the basement, itself fairly handsome.

I didn’t know who founded the 4-H Program. Now I do, but sadly I am likely to forget.

I like this a lot: the counties of Ohio, each in a different stone.

Finally, words of wisdom –

Not because Lincoln had a special connection to Ohio or the building. Just, I think, on general principles.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: History