Japan ’19

Posted on December 3, 2019 by admin

Yuriko returned recently from a couple of weeks in Japan. Besides time with family, she visited a number of interesting places in the Kansai and a little beyond, such as the Adachi Museum of Art off in Shimane Prefecture, which hugs the Sea of Japan coastline northwest of greater Osaka.

Never made it up that way myself. The museum, which features a large collection of works by Taikan Yokoyama and other artists, is also known for its garden. Looks impressive.

I’d have to see it myself to compare it to Ritsurin Garden in Takamatsu on Shikoku — the most breathtaking Japanese garden I’ve seen. But best not to invent rankings for places like that anyway.

Also of interest: she visited not only the Tower of the Sun (Taiyō no Tō) on the former grounds of Expo ’70 in Osaka, she went inside.

That wasn’t possible when I was in Osaka, though gazing at the exterior was something I did from time to time. I’ve read that the interior only opened permanently last year after renovations to the structure, with the artwork inside refurbished too. It’s a depiction of the Tree of Life.
Wow. I’d like to see that as well sometime. Along with the Maishima Incineration Plant (which Y didn’t visit this time).

The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center

Posted on November 12, 2019 by admin

The first time I ever heard of anyone denying the reality of the Holocaust was when I did an article about the fact that there were such people for my student newspaper in college, ca. 1980. I interviewed a VU history professor about it — a professor who would later teach a semester-long Holocaust seminar that I took. I’d never heard of such a thing. Who would say such a thing?

This venomous wanker, for one, who was too extreme for the John Birch Society, and who libeled William F. Buckley. For his part, Buckley said that the wanker (not his word) epitomized “the fever swamps of the crazed right.”

I don’t remember whether the wanker’s name came up in the interview, but the name of his publishing company did, which I remember after all these years. Back then, it produced books and pamphlets. Now the same ideas are spread by social media posts that sprout like poisonous toadstools.

I remembered all that when I visited the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center on Sunday.
I also remembered news reports in 1978 about Neo-Nazis who wanted to march in Skokie, which had a sizable population of Holocaust survivors. The prospect of such a march inspired the creation of the organization, the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, that would eventually (2009) open the museum, which is in Skokie.

The motive for founding such a museum is clear enough: tell the story, show the documentation, put the testimony out for all too see — or do nothing while evil people lie about what happened.

I arrived just in time to be admitted, at about 4 in the afternoon, under overcast skies, so it was hard to get a good look at the building. I did not, for example, notice that roughly half of the structure is black — including the entrance — and other other half white — including the exit. The entrance/exit can be seen in this photo, taken in the light of a June day. The museum is a work by Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman, who died just this year.

I only had an hour, which wasn’t enough. I need to go back sometime. The Holocaust exhibit takes up most of the first floor, which is where I spent the hour. The exhibit winds its way through a number of small rooms and alcoves, running more-or-less chronologically from a description of Jewish life in Europe in the early 20th century to the rise of the Nazis and the increasingly harsh repressions of that regime, eventually to become industrialized mass murder.

The museum acknowledges that the Nazis murdered many other people, but its focus is on the genocide of European Jews. Much of the story is familiar, at least to me, but for those less familiar with the history, the museum does a good job of walking visitors through the steps toward the Final Solution.

The many documents on display fascinated me as much as anything else. Germany, Nazi or otherwise, is a document-happy country, and there they were: letters, notes, passports, visas, orders, lists, ID papers, records of various kinds, and on and on. Now just paper on display, but some of them vitally important to the people who originally had them; probably life or death, in the case of exit papers.

The many photos were haunting. Some were of survivors, before the ordeal began, or when things were bad but not as bad as they would be. Others were of the doomed. Yet others were those whose fate is unclear, but who likely perished. The museum’s videos were short and to the point, and often featuring testimony from survivors who later lived in the Chicago area, the ranks of whom must now be thinning rapidly. They told of uncertainty, suffering, everyday life in the ghettos, the struggle to escape, efforts to resist against impossible odds.

By the time the museum announced that it was closing, I’d made through the early Nazi years and the beginning of the war and to the first displays concerning the Final Solution, but I could have easily spent more time.

From that point in the museum, finding the exit turned out to be more of a challenge than I’d have thought. Tigerman and interior designer Yitzchak Mais made a little maze-like, a little disorienting, which must have been on purpose. I’ve read similar things about the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. I navigated my way out using the red-letter EXIT signs mandated by fire codes.

The Edgar Allan Poe Museum

Posted on October 31, 2019 by admin

Halloween snow today. Mid-morning.

Mid-afternoon. Of course, it will melt in a day or two.

I’ve spent a fair number of Halloweens in the North; this is the first time snow has fallen. Cold rain, sometimes, but no snow. Sometimes warm fall days or blustery cool ones, like the Halloween of 2001, when Lilly was so unnerved by the dark and the strong winds while out trick-or-treating that she insisted that I carry her home. She wasn’t quite four, so it was possible — but tiring.

Speaking of Halloween, I’ve been listening to “Danse Macabre” lately.

In high school, I made the mistake of calling the piece “Halloween music” in front of my band director. He let me have it. It’s a tone poem! It’s serious music from France! It’s blah blah blah. Know what, Mr. W? I was right. It can be all those other things and Halloween music as well. Halloween as in spirits roaming our world before All Hallow’s, not the candy-gathering custom.

The last place we visited during the recent Virginia trip was the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in the Shockoe Bottom neighborhood of Richmond.

A small, specialized museum not in a house that Poe lived in — one of the places he lived was a few blocks away, long demolished — but including a building that is suitably old. In fact, according to a plaque on the wall, the oldest house still standing in Richmond, the Ege House.

All in all, an interesting little museum. Ann thought so too. I found out things I didn’t know, such as that Poe was a gifted athlete at the University of Virginia. Also heard more about things I did know, such as that after Poe died, his enemy Rufus Griswold wrote damning and largely false accounts of the author — vestiges of which still cling to Poe.

The museum is essentially three rooms: Poe’s early life, which was haunted by Death; Poe’s literary career, which was informed by Death; and Poe’s early and mysterious death, which was literally about Death. Some of the artifacts were owned by Poe or his family, or were portraits of them. Other items evoked his life and literature.

Such as this marble-and-bronze memorial to Poe.

The sign says, “… Edwin Booth, on behalf of the actors of New York, presented this monument to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1885 in memory of Poe…” Eventually, I guess, the Met got tired of it, and it ended up in Richmond.

Or this bust of Pallas, a copy of a Roman sculpture. Can’t call yourself a Poe museum without that, though a depiction of Night’s Plutonian Shore would be good as well.

Poe himself in stone out in the garden.

The garden is a pretty little space. People get married there, apparently.

My own favorite item.

I haven’t seen The Raven, but a movie with Vincent Price and Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson, directed by Roger Corman, who did a lot of Poe-inspired movies, has to be worth a look.

Colonial Williamsburg

Posted on October 29, 2019 by admin

Things to bring to Colonial Williamsburg: money, walking shoes, water (especially in summer) and — I can’t stress this enough — some historical imagination. Not everyone has much. I understand that. Still, if you can’t bring much historical imagination to your visit, best to go somewhere else.

A look at a few of the recent “terrible” reviews of Colonial Williamsburg on TripAdvisor illustrates the point (all sic).

Mrpetsaver: This place is like that fort or museum with old buildings common in some communities, but on a larger scale.

My kids got bored very quickly and so did I. Most of the staff are great and professional dressed up in costumes, but aren’t acting. Instead, they discuss how the original inhabitants did their different jobs etc.

Dewpayne: It has some very interesting sites but there so far away you get bored it’s more about the shops and selling water I wouldn’t recommend it.

zebra051819: This historical site was a huge disappointment and I would not recommend spending your time here. There must be more informative sites where one could gain an appreciation of Civil War history.

Mrpetsaver is right, though. Colonial Williamsburg is a larger version of an open-air museum. It is an open-air museum. One on a grand scale, the likes of which we’d only experienced — sort of — at Greenfield Village.

Colonial Williamsburg shouldn’t be confused with Williamsburg, Virginia, which is a town of around 14,500 on the lower reaches of the James River. As a 21st-century American town, it has the usual amenities, such as honky-tonks (maybe), Dairy Queens and 7-11s, where you can buy cherry pies, candy bars and chocolate-chip cookies.

Colonial Williamsburg, on the other hand, occupies 173 acres and includes 88 original buildings and more than 50 major reconstructions. All of Colonial Williamsburg is within modern Williamsburg, but not all of modern Williamsburg involves Colonial Williamsburg. A fair bit of it doesn’t, according to maps.

A hundred years ago, Williamsburg was a small college town with a history, namely as the second capital of Virginia when it was a prosperous tobacco colony. No doubt the story of how Colonial Williamsburg came to be in the early 20th century is fairly complicated, with a number of major players, but I’m going to oversimplify by saying that Money wanted it to happen, as persuaded by Preservationism.

Money in the form of Rockefeller scion John D. Rockefeller Jr., who had the deep pockets necessary to start the purchase and restoration of the historic sites, and Preservationism in the form of W.A.R. Goodwin (1869–1939), rector of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, who felt alarmed that the 20th century was eating away at the area’s historic structures.

Colonial Williamsburg is a odd hybrid of past and present, but also of museum and neighborhood. The foundation that runs the museum doesn’t play it up — and some of the disappointed TripAdvisor reviews note it ruefully — but it turns out that you don’t need a ticket to wander along the streets of Colonial Williamsburg.

Cars aren’t allowed on the streets during museum hours, but visitors are perfectly free to park a few blocks away and walk around. That’s because the town of Williamsburg still owns the streets and sidewalks, making them public thoroughfares.

Also — another thing the foundation doesn’t dwell on — people live in Colonial Williamsburg. “There are dozens of people — families, couples, college students — who live in some of the historic homes of Colonial Williamsburg,” says Local Scoop. “Many of the homes are original colonial-era buildings; others were rebuilt based on historical accounts to look like the homes they once were.

“It’s not a perk available to everyone. To live in the Historic Area, one has to work at Colonial Williamsburg or be an employee at the College of William & Mary. In all, there are 75 houses rented through the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation…”

I found this out when I was there, and pretty soon I started noticing that a fair number of the houses had small signs denoting them as private residences. I also noticed a few people doing neighborhood sorts of things, like jogging or walking their dogs, as opposed to tourist sorts of things.

So why buy a ticket? That’s so you can see the interiors of the many buildings flying the Grand Union flag. They mark the open-air museum’s buildings.
Also, your ticket gets you into some Colonial Williamsburg events, many of which involve reenactors. So we got tickets. At $45 each, and no student discount (grumble), that’s more than Henry Ford/Greenfield, in the same league as some theater tickets and some theme parks, and less than other theme parks (whose mascot is a Mouse).

At that price, I was determined to wear out my feet. So we did, spending October 14 from late morning to late afternoon at Colonial Williamsburg. At the end, I felt like I’d gotten my money’s worth. I’m a sucker for open-air museums, for one thing, but more than that, it is a special place with a lot to see and think about, if you add a dash of historical imagination.

You walk from the visitor center along a wooded path until you come to the historic buildings. The first one of any heft is the Governor’s Palace.
Maybe no grand thing back in England, but for colonial Virginia, a worthy residence for the gov. What you see now is a reconstruction from plans and, according to the guide on the interior tour that we joined, archaeological investigation of the materials left when the building collapsed in a fire in 1781, not long after Gov. Jefferson had decamped to Richmond.

When it burned, the structure was being used as a hospital for men wounded at the Battle of Yorktown. All of them but one escaped the fire, the guide said. I told Ann we should listen for that unfortunate fellow’s ghost. She told me to shush.

From there we wandered down the Palace Green to Duke of Gloucester St., pretty much the main street of the historic area. The view from the other end of the Palace Green.
Nearby is the Bruton Parish Church. It isn’t one of the Colonial Williamsburg buildings, but people go in as if it were. We did. A couple of parishioners were on hand to tell visitors about the church.
The building dates from the 1710s, but according to this history, it didn’t look much like the original by the mid-1800s, after various alterations and modernizations. Like Colonial Williamsburg, the church was restored to its 18th-century appearance only in the early 20th century.

The church’s graveyard was fenced in, but you could get a pretty good look at it anyway.
Some of the stones were close to the church itself.
The stone of Letitia Tyler Semple, one of President Tyler’s many children. A handful of stones were inside, flush with the floor of the church, as you see in old English churches. W.A.R. Goodwin has one of those.

We spent the rest of the day looking at and entering various structures on or near Duke of Glouchester St., such as the Geddy Foundry, the Courthouse, the Market Square, the Magazine, the Printing Office, the Silversmith, Bakery, Apothecary, and Raleigh Tavern, where we saw two reenactors: one playing Marquis de Lafayette and other James Armistead Lafayette, who spied for the Patriots at the Marquis’ request, and, after some inexcusable delays by the state of Virginia, finally won his freedom for his service.

Duke of Glouchester St.
The Magazine and its arms.
The Courthouse and nearby stocks. No rotten tomatoes on hand for tossing.
Duke of Glouchester St. Courthouse

Botetourt St.
The reconstructed Capitol was the second-to-last place we visited, taking a late-afternoon tour. Nicely done, I thought, though the authenticity of the redesign has been questioned.
The last place was Charlton’s Coffeehouse, where a foundation employee (“costumed interpreter”) in 18th-century garb showed us around and served visitors either coffee, tea or hot chocolate. Most of us tried the chocolate, as Ann and I did. Colonial hot chocolate included a variety of flavors not usually associated with modern hot chocolate. If I remember right, almonds, cinnamon and nutmeg in our case, but no rum. Our time is decidedly more abstemious than Colonial days when it comes to alcohol. Tasty anyway.

Some people expect the costumed interpreters to be actors (see above). To varying degrees they were in character, but mostly their job was to explain what went on in a particular building, and in the places like the foundry and silversmith and printing office, demonstrate some of the 18th-century work techniques. I had no complaints.

The fellow in the foundry turned out pewterware before our eyes and the young woman who showed us around the coffeeshop was informative and entertaining, telling us for instance the story of the tax collector (under the Stamp Act, I believe) who was greeted at the coffeehouse by a committee (mob) of citizens who suggested he find other work for himself. Wisely, he did.

There are restaurants at Colonial Williamsburg in some of the “taverns,” but I didn’t want to spend time at a sit-down restaurant when there were other things to see. So we subsisted on snacks during the visit, which are available in Colonial-themed small stores here and there on the grounds.

The 21st-century snacks were good.

The American Civil War Museum

Posted on October 22, 2019 by admin

I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when we got to the American Civil War Museum in Richmond on October 12. I expected an easy drive from where we parked, near the capitol, to the museum, which is at the site of the former Tredegar Iron Works on the James River.

No such luck. The Richmond Folk Festival had gummed up everything along the river, blocking all vehicular access, so after some time in sluggish traffic, we went back to the same parking lot near the capitol — luckily my receipt was good for the whole day — and walked the half mile or so to the museum. Not a bad walk, but it made me tired ahead of a walk through a museum. Such is the tourist experience, sometimes.

At first I thought the museum was in the multistory brick building.
Wrong again. That building houses the visitors center and a Civil War museum associated with the Richmond National Battlefield Park, a NPS entity that encompasses that part of Tredegar along with a dozen Civil War sites around Richmond.

The new building for the American Civil War Museum — opened just this year — is the modernist structure next to the brick building, though it incorporates some of the other Tredegar ruins. Designed by a local architectural firm, 3North, the museum isn’t overly large, coming in at 28,000 square feet.

We spent a couple of hours at the museum. Though a little frazzled when I got there, I soon got into the groove of the place and mostly enjoyed my time there. Ann did too. The permanent exhibits wind through the first floor, featuring things you’d expect in a museum devoted to the history of a war: military and civilian artifacts, photos, maps (though not enough), things to read, a few interactive kiosks, audio narratives and videos and so on.

Perhaps the most striking features are the large-scale photographic images placed on various walls or hanging over display cases. They are images of people alive during the conflict, and are all colorized. Only a few years ago, the colorization might have bothered me, but since seeing They Shall Not Grow Old, I appreciate artful colorization, which the museum manages to do.

Some of the artifacts were particularly intriguing, such as the carvings that prisoners of war made from whatever material they had at hand, some of them exceptionally fine — that they then traded for food or tobacco or whatever else they badly needed. Other artifacts edged into the realm of oddities, such as a fossilized biscuit from the siege of Vicksburg and a luckless soldier’s a pocket journal, split by the bullet that killed him.

As at a number of other museums I’ve seen focusing on the 19th century, the most unnerving artifacts are the medical tools. The American Civil War Museum has a collection on display, along with a some poor bastard’s primitive prosthetic arm.

I also encountered some incidents and stories about the war that I’d never heard. Of course, the Civil War is a sprawling subject, with countless untold or undertold narratives. The museum has a knack for illustrating some of them. For instance, the New York Draft Riot is covered in some detail. No surprise there. But so is the lesser-known Richmond Bread Riot of 1863. Always good to learn about something like that.

As interesting and informative as the museum was, I came away feeling a little unsatisfied. I wasn’t sure why. On later reflection, I worked it out. It isn’t that the museum eschews glorifying the Lost Cause, which I’m sure bothers some people. I wouldn’t have expected anything else from a museum created by serious historians.

Rather, I missed the generals ‘n’ battles approach to the story of the war. Though not as pernicious as the Lost Cause, modern historians usually shy away from that too.

The museum mentions many of the military engagements of the war, sometimes in some detail, but that isn’t the thrust of most of the exhibits. Rather, the American Civil War Museum takes an almost sociological approach to the war.

That is, how the war affected all of 19th-century American society. Soldiers, naturally, but also white civilians, male and female, blacks, free and enslaved, immigrants and others. Is that a good way to organize a civil war museum? Probably yes. Still —

That I felt the absence of generals ‘n’ battles says more about me, and how I’ve conditioned myself with the books I’ve read and the movies I’ve watched and the battlefields I’ve visited over the years, than it does any historic study of the period. Even so, that’s how I felt.

The Richmond National Battlefield Park facility next door, which we also visited (though for a much shorter time), seemed more traditional in that regard, if only because it focuses on the fighting around Richmond. There you can see large maps depicting the movements of armies, for instance.

I can’t be the only one who feels this way. Oddly enough, the American Civil War Museum acknowledges that, perhaps unconsciously, in its gift shop. Generals ‘n’ battles is alive and well there.

In the form of Lee and Grant bobbleheads, for one thing.

Models of the submarine boat Hunley and the ironclad Virginia.
Generals of the Civil War playing cards, but also Joshua Chamberlain playing cards.
The Chamberlain cards struck me as oddly specific. Wonder if the same card maker has a line of, say, Jubal Early playing cards?

The shop also had a nice collection of flags. Such as this one, which you don’t see too often. I had to look it up.
The Battle Flag of the First Corps, Army of Tennessee.

Virginia ’19

Posted on October 20, 2019 by admin

Some time ago, I noticed that Ann not only had October 14 off — for Columbus Day, that barely there school and post office holiday — but the next day as well, one of those days on which the teachers come to school, but students don’t. According to the way I think, that meant an opportunity to go somewhere.

So on Friday, October 11, Ann and I flew to Richmond, Virginia, returning on the 15th, for what amounted to a U.S. history trip. Fitting for her especially, since she’s in an AP U.S. history class this year. Fitting for me, since the trip included destinations that I’ve wanted to visit for a long time, but never gotten around to.

On Saturday, we spent the day in Richmond — partly downtown, at Capitol Square, where we toured the Jefferson-designed capitol, and at the newly opened American Civil War Museum, which includes part of the ruins of the Tredeger Iron Works, cannon and locomotive maker of the Confederacy.

Navigating downtown Richmond in a car proved to be pain in the ass, with its high volume of traffic, limited parking and numerous one-way streets. Every other street seemed partially blocked by construction, either of buildings or the street itself. Also, the Richmond Folk Festival was that weekend — and a lot of folks showed up for it, crowding the area near the riverfront, where the American Civil War Museum happens to be.

Downtown, as seen from the steep banks of the James River.

Despite traffic snarls, Richmond struck me as an interesting city, full of life in the present and echoes of its storied past. A day wasn’t nearly enough, but there were other places we wanted to see in Virginia.

On Sunday, we drove to Charlottesville, with Monticello as the main destination. For Ann, a completely new experience. For me, a second visit. But the first time was in 1988, so I’d forgotten a lot. And some things have changed there.

We also visited the University of Virginia that day, which I didn’t do more than 30 years ago (not sure why not). See one famed Jefferson site, best to see another close by. Closer than I realized: from Monticello you can just see the white dome of the Rotunda, the school’s most famous structure.

On the third day, technically Columbus Day Observed, we drove the other direction from Richmond to Williamsburg. More specifically, Colonial Williamsburg, the open-air museum of large scale and ambition, an odd amalgam of past and present.

There’s a lot to Colonial Williamsburg, including structures and displays and artifacts and craft demonstrations, but also programs by reenactors. The high point of the visit was one such, held at a reconstructed 18th-century tavern and featuring the Marquis de Lafayette and James Armistead Lafayette.

Afterward, they were willing to pose for pictures.
On October 15, we flew home in the afternoon. In the morning, I drove by myself to a place I’ve wanted to visit for years, the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, a stunningly beautiful cemetery perched on a hillside above the James River, populated by numerous historic figures.

After Ann woke up and we checked out of our room, we visited one last spot in Richmond: the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, small but compelling, managing to convey the misery of his life and the legacy of his art.

The American Toby Jug Museum

Posted on August 20, 2019 by admin

Yesterday I spent some time looking into the origin of the word flabbergasted. It’s a fun word, and sometime it fits just so. I would have guessed that it’s an Americanism, and a fairly new one at that, but no. Origin obscure. First attested usage: 1773.

According to World Wide Words, “… flabbergasted could have been an existing dialect word, as one early nineteenth-century writer claimed to have found it in Suffolk dialect and another — in the form flabrigast — in Perthshire. Further than this, nobody can go with any certainty.”

That word came to mind after I visited the American Toby Jug Museum in Evanston on Saturday. The museum, which happily doesn’t charge admission, is in the basement of an office building near the corner of Chicago Ave. and Main St.
I’d known about the place for years, but not much about it. I didn’t do any reading before I went. Sometimes it’s better that way, because the element of surprise can still be in play. I vaguely expected a few cabinets, sporting mugs with faces.

There were cabinets all right.
And more.
And more.
And even more.
I was flabbergasted. I was also the only person in the museum during my visit, except for the woman managing the place. When the extent of the displays sank in, I asked her how many items the museum had. About 8,400, she said.

Toby jugs, it turns out — according to people who collect them — depict a full human figure. Head-and-shoulder or head depictions are “character jugs” or “face jugs.” Though decorative, the original toby jugs were also used as jugs, with their tricorner hats convenient for pouring.

The museum is organized chronologically, so near the entrance are the oldest toby jugs, those of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Staffordshire Potters, who had easy access to clay, coal and other raw materials, apparently developed the toby jug in the 1760s, as part of the area’s overall ceramic industry.

The form caught on in England and then other parts of the world. Soon character mugs were being produced along with the traditional tobies. They took on an astonishing (flabbergasting) variety of forms, including standard drinking characters, perhaps inspired by Falstaff or local barflies, but also occupational figures (soldier, sailors, bandits), faces from history, literature, myths, the Bible, and folk stories, along with animal figures, fanciful or stereotypical notions of peoples of the world, and — especially in the 20th century — lots of Santa Clauses, musicians, entertainers, sports stars, and more.

Early 20th-century UK prime ministers, made in Czechoslovakia, no less.
There were a lot of Winston Churchills besides these two.
U.S. presidents, too.
Musicians and entertainers of various periods.
And so much more.
Though I didn’t take its picture, I got the biggest kick out of the Col. Sanders mug, which didn’t seem to be any kind of advertisement. Someone simply considered him, as a chicken mogul, worthy of tobyfication.

Why is this collection in Evanston? Like many good small museums, it was the work of one obsessive man. Namely, Stephen Mullins of Evanston, who died only in June at 86, after a lifetime of collecting toby and character mugs. “He built his collection through dealers, private aficionados and eBay,” the Chicago Sun-Times said.

Mullins also had some tobies commissioned, including what the museum says is the world’s largest one, “Toby Philpot,” created in 1998.

Time for Pixar to get to work on a new franchise, Toby Story.

Three Decatur Museums

Posted on July 30, 2019 by admin

Near (or on) Eldorado St. — one of Decatur, Illinois’ main streets — are three small museums. Two are former mansions, one is attached to a factory. I figured we had time for two on Saturday afternoon, but in the end we visited all three.

This is the former mansion of three-time Illinois Governor, U.S. Senator and Civil War General Richard J. Oglesby (1824-99).

I’ve encountered Oglesby, in bronze anyway, in Chicago. He grew up in Decatur and had a successful run as an Illinois lawyer, Union Army officer, and politician. He panned for gold in California, traveled in Europe in the 1850s, married at least one wealthy woman (not sure about his first wife) and knew Lincoln well — was in fact at the Petersen House in Washington City when the Great Emancipator died.

Designed originally in the 1870s by William LeBaron Jenney, father of the skyscraper, in the 21st century the mansion is resplendent, the work of decades of restoration.

The museum’s web site says: “The Library is the most significant room in the house regarding authenticity. It remains as it was built. All the wood is of native black walnut, with the exception of the parquet floor. The original shutters have been reproduced, and glass doors were added to the shelves which were on the architect’s drawings. The books in the cases are Oglesby family books.

“The dining room is the other area that is known to be correct. During the restoration, the complete decoration of the room was found, even the color of the ceiling and all the faux finishes. This room has been reproduced as it was during the Oglesbys’ time in the house.

“The dining room wallpaper was reproduced by a company that was making authentic Victorian wallpapers. All the walls with the exception of the hall and the library are covered with Bradbury and Bradury Wallpaper copied from papers of the time period.

“Furnishings in the home have been chosen for the time period 1860-1885. Most came from old Decatur families. Many of the pieces and the artifacts have come from Oglesby descendants.”

My own favorite artifact is tucked away behind glass: a 19th-century prosthetic leg, that is, a primitive wooden item purported to belong to Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, Napoleon of the West, and captured at the Battle of Cerro Gordo in 1847 after said Napoleon badly mismanaged things.

The authenticity of the leg hasn’t been confirmed, however. Unlike the other one in Illinois. Per Wiki: “Santa Anna, caught off guard by the Fourth Regiment of the Illinois Volunteer Infantry, was compelled to ride off without his artificial leg, which was captured by U.S. forces and is still on display at the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield, Illinois.”

Not far from the Oglesby mansion is the Hieronymus Mueller Museum, a different sort of place.
Mueller, as in the Mueller Co. These days headquartered in Tennessee, but for a long time a Decatur company. Even now the company has a factory in Decatur, which is next to the museum. Mueller Co. made, and makes, metal parts and structures and machines. Half of the fire hydrants sold in the United States are Mueller made, for instance.
But that’s just a part of the output. Many examples of the company’s products are on display at the museum, along with various exhibits about the German immigrant Hieronymus (1832-1900) and his many children and grandchildren.
The company dabbled in horseless carriages, but didn’t go whole hog into that.
It did its part in WWII.
Here’s Hieronymus in bronze. He was a whiz during the golden age of American invention.
The museum says: “He started his business with a small gunsmithing shop but soon added locksmithing and sewing machine repairs. He had a knack for understanding mechanical devices. This led to his appointment as Decatur’s first ‘city plumber’ in 1871 to oversee the installation of a water distribution system.

“The following year he patented his first major invention, the Mueller Water Tapper who [sic] is, with minor modifications, still the standard for the industry.

“He and his sons went on to obtain 501 patents including water pressure regulators, faucet designs, the first sanitary drinking fountain, a roller skate design, and a bicycle kick-stand. In 1892 Hieronymus imported a Benz automobile from Germany and, together with his sons, began refining it with such features as a reverse gear, water-cooled radiator, newly designed spark plugs, and a make-and-break distributor – all leading to patents.”

Our third and final small Decatur museum for the day: the Staley Museum, one-time house of Decatur businessman A.E. Staley.
Staley was neither politician nor inventor, but had considerable talents as a salesman and ultimately boss man of A.E. Staley Mfg. Co., which started out as a starch specialist and expanded into many other products, mostly made from corn and soybeans. As a child, I ate Staley syrup.
Among other causes, Staley (1867-1940) was a soybean booster. In the spring of 1927, he organized a train to publicize and facilitate soybean cultivation in Illinois, the Soil and Soybean Special.
As the promotional material with the map says, “This is a farmers’ institute on wheels. If the farmer can’t go to college, this college will come to him.”

Staley is also known for founding the football team that evolved into the Chicago Bears: the Decatur Staleys, a leather-helmet company team. Here they are in 1920.
The origin of the team isn’t forgotten. Even now, the team mascot is Staley Da Bear.

Here’s the boss man himself.
Looking every bit the ’20s tycoon. He also developed an office building for his company a few miles from the home. The structure was one of the largest things in Decatur at the time, and a stylish ’20s design it is (see page 5).

Later in the day, we drove by for a look at the office building from the street. It’s still a commanding presence in its part of Decatur, though like the A.E. Staley Mfg. Co., it’s part of Tate & Lyle, a British supplier of food and beverage ingredients to industrial markets.

The Joliet Area Historical Museum

Posted on July 23, 2019 by admin

RIP, Debbie DeWolf. One Monday morning in 1988, when I was working at the Law Bulletin Publishing Co. in Chicago, the company receptionist — whose name I forget — reportedly called the company long distance from Kansas or Nebraska or the like and said she wasn’t coming to work that day. Or ever again.

Shortly thereafter, a young woman named Debbie DeWolf took her place. She was one of the more effervescent people I’d ever met and she ultimately make a career at the LBPC well beyond answering phones. I hadn’t spoken with her for many years before her death, but it was sad news.

On Sunday, Ann and I spent some time in Joliet. We noticed that the Blues Brothers pop up in odd places around town, such as on the wall of an auto parts business and at the main entrance to the Joliet Area Historical Museum.

That’s pretty remarkable traction for not only fictional characters, but for characters created more than 40 years ago. Then again, Jake’s nickname was “Joliet,” and he was seen being released from the Joliet Correctional Center when The Blue Brothers opened (and come to think of it, he was back in the jug at the end of the movie), so I guess Joliet can claim him.

Better than the city being associated forever with the prison. The museum doesn’t particularly downplay the long history of the prison, but it isn’t exactly celebrated either. In any case, it will probably be a few more decades before “prison” stops being the first answer in a word association game with “Joliet.”

It’s a longstanding tie. In 1972, Chicago songwriter Steve Goodman recorded a song called “The Lincoln Park Pirates,” about an aggressive Chicago-based towing service that regularly ransomed cars. It included the following lines:

All my drivers are friendly and courteous
Their good manners you always will get
‘Cause they all are recent graduates
Of the charm school in Joliet

The Joliet Area Historical Museum is a well-organized example of a mid-sized local history museum, with thematically grouped artifacts and reading material. In its main exhibition hall, the centerpiece re-creates a section of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which passed through Joliet. The view from the first floor.
The view from the second floor, with stained glass from a demolished local church in the background.
Another transportation-related artifact: a Lincoln Highway signpost.
As it happens, the Lincoln Highway still runs through Joliet, half a block south of the museum, as U.S. 30. There’s also a sign in downtown Joliet marking the intersection of the Lincoln Highway and a branch of the former U.S. 66.

The museum does acknowledge the prison. In fact, there’s an entire gallery devoted to artwork made from material and debris and found objects from the former pen, or paintings inspired by it.

Even here, there’s no getting away from Jake Blues.
“Fight Girl,” “Caught” and “Jake” by Dante DiBartolo. Interestingly, the images are painted on metal shelving scavenged from the prison.

Part of the former prison burned in 2013 — arson — and some of the burned items were later used for art as well. Such as a scorched TV set for “Ren-ais-sance Man” by Terry M. Eastham.
I didn’t see a title for this one.
Remarkably, the work is by a 7th grader named Sophia Benedick. The words on the work are, “It’s Never Too Late to Mend.”

There is also a room in the museum devoted to John Houbolt. He was the NASA aerospace engineer who pushed successfully for lunar orbit rendezvous for Apollo, a concept that made the landing possible by 1969. I’d read about him before (and seen him depicted in the superb miniseries From the Earth to the Moon), but missed the detail that he went to high school in Joliet.

Besides the museum, we spent a short time in downtown Joliet. One of these days, I want to attend a show at the Rialto Square Theatre. Supposed to be pretty nice on the inside. The outside’s not too bad either.
On the grounds of the Joliet Public Library downtown is Louis Joliet himself.
Unlike Jebediah Springfield, he didn’t purportedly found the town or anything. Joliet just passed this way.

More Bits of Pittsburgh & West Virginia Too

Posted on July 18, 2019 by admin

The street that follows the edge of Mt. Washington in Pittsburgh is the aptly named Grandview Ave., featuring some truly grand views overlooking downtown and the three rivers. There are some multifamily properties and office buildings on the road that take advantage of the vista. But not that many. Am I missing something about the Pittsburgh market? Why, for instance, is this building in such a prime spot?

Maybe the lot’s too narrow for an apartment tower — like the one behind it — but what about a large house? I’d imagine that would command a handsome price.

The March 1936 flood in Pittsburgh was a bad one. How do I know this, beyond it being in the historical record? In downtown Pittsburgh, I encountered this wall. Note the plaque way up there.

“Nearly two inches of rain fell on March 16, which added to the 63 inches of snow that came throughout the winter,” the Heinz History Center says. “Warm temperatures melted the snow, swelling creek beds along the upper Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.

“On St. Patrick’s Day, the rising rivers reached the North Side and washed into the streets of Downtown, wiping out historic businesses within hours. River levels reached a peak of 46 feet at the Point, more than 20 feet over flood stage, leaving more than half of Downtown businesses under water.”

In front of the Andy Warhol Museum is this street sign.
Not sure whether the museum had anything to do with that, but it’s a nice sentiment anyway.

PNC Park was on the way to the Warhol. July 5 was a game day.
The Pirates played the Brewers that day, losing 7-6 in 10 innings. But that was still in the future when we wandered by. If you look closely, you can see a statue of J.P. “Honus” Wagner, beloved Pirate of yore, just in front of the main entrance.

On Independence Day weekend, Pittsburgh is always host to Anthrocon, a national convention I’d never heard of before we took our Pittsburgh walking tour. Anthrocon attendees were out and about that day, and they were easy to pick out.

Here’s an attendee waiting to cross the street.
He had his headpiece off at that moment, but others walked by in full costume, defying the heat. Just what is Anthrocon?

The organization’s web site says: “Anthrocon began as Albany Anthrocon in 1997, and since then has grown into one of the largest anthropomorphics conventions in the world with a membership in 2018 of over 8,400 attendees… All of the finer aspects of anthropomorphic, or more commonly, ‘Furry’ fandom, are celebrated here.”

For local hotels, including the storied Omni William Penn Hotel, a convention’s a convention.
That other black-and-gold flag, by the way, is the Pittsburgh city flag.

The Frick Pittsburgh includes an exhibit of antique carriages and auto-mobiles. Cool little collection. Including the likes of a 1909 Stanley Steamer Model R Roadster.
And a 1929 Ford Model A, open to sit in. At some point, my mother’s father had a Model A. She told me about riding short distances — in their driveway — on its running board. I told that to Ann, not just to tell her about her grandmother, but also so she might know what a running board is. Seems like a good detail to know about the world.
I’m sitting in the back of the Model A because I’m too fat for the driver’s seat. Americans generally were more svelte 90 years ago.

A 1940 Bantam Roadster. I doubt that I’d fit in there either.
In a suburban Pittsburgh grocery store — the local brand, Giant Eagle, because you should visit grocery stores wherever you go — I saw local greeting cards.

On the way to Randyland, I stopped at a parking lot on the North Side to consult my map, and noticed an intriguing former church.
Until 2015, it housed the New Bohemian, an arts venue. The last time it housed a religious organization was 30 years ago. From the looks of it, nothing is going on there now.

At the Cathedral of Learning of the University of Pittsburgh, the International Rooms weren’t the only interesting features. At one point we entered a classic early 20th-century academic auditorium.
The kind of place where Indiana Jones might teach Archaeology & Derring-Do 101. Even he had to teach freshmen sometimes.

Missed Weird Al, who played Pittsburgh’s Benedum Center the evening we left town. Sold out anyway.
I think I’d pay money to see him, once anyway. But probably not as much as the tickets are priced now, in these gouging days for top acts. The time to see Weird Al would have been ca. 1981. I’m pretty sure “Another One Rides the Bus” was the first song of his I ever heard.

We returned home on July 7 via Columbus, Ohio, and Indianapolis — only a little longer than the all-tollway route we used to get to Pittsburgh from metro Chicago. The main consideration: I was especially annoyed by the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which charged $7.90 to go 11 miles. To compare, the entire Indiana Toll Road, about 136 miles, cost $8.70. Is the Pennsylvania Turnpike paved with gold? If only. I’ll never drive that road again.

I-70 west from Washington, Pa., takes you across the northern panhandle of West Virginia, a route of about 15 miles. We stopped and I put my feet on W. Va. soil for only the second time.

In 1988, I spent Labor Day weekend tooling around parts of Virginia — Shenandoah NP, Staunton, Monticello, etc. A meandering drive along back roads back to greater D.C. took me briefly into West Virginia. No one else was on the road, so I stopped and relieved myself. That was my total experience in W. Va. until 2019. What did we do at the West Virginia Welcome Center near Wheeling? Relieve ourselves.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Museums