Category Archives: Parks

South Pond, Lincoln Park

Posted on by

Frame your photos just so and you can achieve the appearance of wilderness.

Lincoln Park South Pond

Lincoln Park South Pond

Not only did I not visit the wilderness yesterday, I was smack in a densely populated city. Chicago, of course. Late in the morning I took a walk through the southern reaches of Lincoln Park — south of the better-trod zoo and conservatory and other parts of the park. Go far enough along this path and you reach the park’s South Pond.
Lincoln Park South PondIn August, it’s lush with vegetation, but also clearly urban.

Lincoln Park South Pond

Lincoln Park South Pond

Lincoln Park South Pond

I don’t remember walking this particular path before. No matter how many times you go somewhere, there’s always more.

Chance the Snapper Has Gone Home

Posted on by

I left for college for the first time 40 years ago today. So long ago that I flew on Braniff to get to Nashville, as I like to say. At least to anyone who might remember that airline.

Nothing so milestone-like happened today. At least I don’t think so. Sometimes you quietly pass by milestones and only realize it in retrospect, if then.

Sometimes that’s literally true. On the Trans-Siberian, I knew that some kind of post is visible from the train marking the “border” between Asia and Europe, as you cross the Urals. I missed it. I think I was concerning myself with lunch at that moment.

One place we went today was the former home of Chance the Snapper. That is, Humboldt Park in Chicago. Chance has been returned from the park’s lagoon to Florida. Presumably Florida Man brought him to Chicago at some point.

Humboldt ParkTemps today were warm but not too hot, so we took a walk around. Plenty of ducks and geese to see. Lilypads, too.
Humboldt Park without Chance the SnapperBut presumably no gators to bother the people who rent paddleboats.

Humboldt Park without Chance the SnapperWe’ve visited the park a number of times, including for a look at its various artworks, but today we discovered a curious snail sculpture near one of the footpaths, but also partly covered by bushes.

Roman Villarreal snail Humboldt ParkAccording to the Chicago Park District: “In 1999, teenagers involved in a Chicago Park District program known as the Junior Earth Team spent several months learning about nature in Humboldt Park. The JETs developed an interpretive trail and provided sculptor Roman Villarreal with notes and sketches for a series of artworks.

“For this project, Villarreal and the students produced three carved artworks that are scattered and remain relatively hidden throughout the park. The three pieces relate to the theme of air, water, and earth. Among the trio is a two-foot tall snail sculpture located northeast of the Humboldt Park Boat House that bears the inscription ‘breathe oxygen.’ ”

Pittsburgh ’19

Posted on by

Independence Day fell on a Thursday this year, creating a four-day window of opportunity to go somewhere. So late on the afternoon of July 3 we headed east, spending the night near Toledo, Ohio. On the 4th, we drove on to Pittsburgh, where we spent three nights and two full days, returning after an all-day drive today.

We stayed at a hotel in the pleasant Moon Township, Pa., not far from Pittsburgh International Airport. The days were hot and steamy and punctuated by vigorous rainfall in the afternoons — supposedly typical for western Pennsylvania in July, though it was a lot like home this summer. Anyway, even occasional heavy downpours didn’t slow us down much.

The road from metro Chicago to Pittsburgh, if you take the Indiana East-West Toll Road and then the Ohio Turnpike, takes you smack through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We spend a few hours walking its trails on July 4 as a stopover on the way to Pittsburgh.

Getting up early(ish) on July 5, we first went to the Duquesne Incline, one of Pittsburgh’s two funiculars, and rode it up and down. At the top we took in the hazy morning view of the city and the meeting of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. My thinking about funiculars: when you find one, ride it. My thinking about the Monongahela: that’s just a damned fun name to say.

Next we drove to the Oakland neighborhood and spent time at the University of Pittsburgh. Specifically, the Heinz Memorial Chapel — the church that ketchup built — and the Cathedral of Learning and some of its highly artful, internationally themed rooms, unlike anything I’ve seen before.

Lunch on the first day was at the the Original Oyster House on Market Square, which is known as Pittsburgh’s oldest bar and restaurant, and which serves up a mighty fine array of seafood. From there we repaired to Point State Park at the meeting of the rivers, site of a French and then British fort in the days before American independence, and the seed of modern Pittsburgh. That’s also where our lengthy guided walking tour of downtown Pittsburgh began, which took up the rest of the afternoon.

That should have been enough for the first day, but our momentum carried us on to the Andy Warhol Museum for a few hours in the early evening, taking advantage of its longer hours on Fridays. A suburban location of Primanti Bros., a local chain, provided a hearty dinner that night.

The second day, July 6, wasn’t quite as busy, but we got around. Late in the morning, we took an extensive tour of Carrie Furnace, a hulk of a former blast furnace complex on the Monongahela. It reminded me greatly of the Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama, though the scale was even larger. After all, Birmingham was the Pittsburgh of the South, not the other way around.

After lunch in a nondescript but decent Chinese restaurant, we visited the Frick Pittsburgh, whose grounds include his mansion, a museum with his art, a greenhouse, and a carriage and antique auto exhibit. We saw the greenhouse and the auto exhibit.

After treating ourselves to some hipster ice cream late in the afternoon, we went to one more place, despite thunder and rain: Randyland.
Randyland

It’s the kind of outsider art phantasmagoria beloved by the likes of Roadside America or the Atlas Obscura. For good reason. As Roadside America puts it, the place is a “circus-colored oasis of sunny vibes on Pittsburgh’s formerly grim North Side.”

Houston Water Features

Posted on by

Near the Galleria in Houston, which is a mixed-use property that includes the 1.9 million-square-foot mall of that name as well as office towers and a couple of hotels, is a local feature unlike any other: the Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park. Or more commonly, the Waterwall.

Waterwall is an apt name, with water cascading down the front.
Water cascades down the back as well.
According to a nearby plaque, 11,000 gallons of water spill over the walls per minute, from a height of 64 feet. John Burgee Architects, working with Philip Johnson, designed the massive water feature, apparently inspired by ancient Roman theaters.

This is a drone’s view. All we had were our own eyes to appreciate the place.

It’s a popular place to have your picture taken, front and back, but especially in the circle near the spray coming off the waterwall.
More than one person asked Lilly to take their picture at the site, including the young couple above, dressed to the nines.

Completed in 1985, Waterwall was privately owned until it looked like ownership might destroy it. In 2008, the Uptown Houston Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, a local nonprofit, acquired the Waterwall and the surrounding land. That might have been when I first read about the Waterwall, but then I forgot about it.

We stayed near the Galleria — in the nicest La Quinta I’ve ever stayed at — and when I was mapping out a route to visit the mall, I noticed the Waterwall nearby on Google Maps. I remembered it instantly and knew I wanted to go. We saw it late on the afternoon of May 11.

The next morning, we checked out and headed for New Orleans. But not before we spent a while near Buffalo Bayou, the main river through metro Houston. It’s another map feature that I wanted to see with my own eyes.

The park associated with Buffalo Bayou near downtown Houston has its charms, one of which is a view of downtown Houston.
That is the city’s original downtown, but at least in terms of office building density, the Galleria area now functions as another downtown for Houston. I knew that because I’ve read about the Galleria office market, but seeing it myself drove the point home.

Lilly and I walked along the Buffalo Bayou Park path for about an hour.

At one point, the landscape urged us onward.

At the tip end of Buffalo Bayou Park facing downtown is the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern. I can’t remember when I read about that. It wasn’t long ago.
Maybe in the likes of Atlas Obscura. That publication saves me the trouble of writing a description, along with the embarrassment of publishing the crummy pictures that I took inside the cistern.

“Built in 1926, this 87,500-square-foot… space was one of Houston’s first underground reservoirs,” the Atlas says. “The eight-inch-thick concrete roof is supported by 221 concrete pillars reaching 25 feet high that march in rows into the dim distance.

“A public works facility for decades, an irreparable leak was eventually found in the structures walls and thus it was subsequently decommissioned in 2007. The city was preparing to demolish it when it was found by the partnership developing Buffalo Bayou Park. After briefly considering using it for parking or mulch storage, the developers decided to keep it as an unusual and attractive space for park visitors.”

We took the 20-minute tour inside. “That was cool,” Lilly said afterward, meaning it metaphorically, not literally. I was expecting the inside of the cistern to be cool like a cave, but it was closer to room temperature. Anyway, I completely agree with Lilly.

Fallen Trees

Posted on by

Before any snow fell on Sunday, we enjoyed a fairly nice Saturday, sunny and not too cold. Warm enough to talk a pleasant wall at Spring Valley, our go-to place for short walks in the mixed woods and prairie when we don’t want to drive too far to do so.

I noticed that the park district had finally gotten around to removing the big white ex-tree near the edge of the Spring Valley’s largest pond.
This is what it looked like nearly five years ago, standing tall and dead.

A nearby fallen tree, which landed in the pond, is still there, but the years are taking their toll.
That inspired me to look around for some other fallen trees at Spring Valley. There are a fair number, including cut ones.

And those that look like the wind finally got them.
All very nice, but nothing as epic as I saw in Washington state, or as damaging as in the UP. Or as varied as you can find among these images.

Glos Memorial Park, Elmhurst

Posted on by

I’d like to say that I discovered Glos Memorial Park in Elmhurst on Saturday via serendipity, but I learned about the place from that exceptional travel tool, Google Maps.
The park is a strip of land, a little less than an acre, near Elmurst’s main shopping district and just east of Robert T. Palmer Dr. Mostly it’s a pleasant strolling sort of place, with sidewalks and benches and a rose garden, but there’s also a single structure.
It’s the Glos Mausoleum.
Glos Memorial Park, Elmhurst“Lucy Glos, wife of Henry L. Glos, banker and first Village President, donated the land to the City of Elmhurst,” explains the Elmhurst Park District.

“The land was donated to the City of Elmhurst in the 1940s, but was not developed into a park until 1979, with dedication in 1981. The City began leasing the property to the Park District in 1978.”

Explore Elmhurst fills in a few other details: “The Village of Elmhurst passed an ordinance in 1892 giving Village President Henry Glos permission to build a mausoleum on his property. The mausoleum was built in 1899. Henry Glos (1851-1905) and Lucy Glos (1852-1941) are buried there.”

The Wilder Park Conservatory

Posted on by

Near Elmhurst College in west suburban Elmhurst is Wilder Park, a mid-sized suburban park that includes the Elmhurst Public Library, Elmhurst Art Museum, Lizzadro Museum, Wilder Mansion and the Wilder Park Conservatory and Formal Gardens.

This is the Wilder Mansion, named after the last family that owned the place, before the Elmhurst Park District acquired it and the surrounding land in the early 1920s.
I understand that for most of the 20th century, the building housed the Elmhurst Library, but these days it’s a wedding and event venue. Even though it was late Saturday morning, the place was closed. I was a little surprised. I expected someone to be there, setting up for a wedding.

Not far away is the modest Wilder Park Conservatory and Formal Gardens. The gardens were around back and not growing much yet.
At one room and a non-public greenhouse, I believe the Wilder is the smallest public conservatory in metro Chicago, smaller even than the one in Mount Prospect, but it has a nice array of plants. Especially when outside is still mostly brown.

Along with a few rock formations.

Outside the conservatory is a public oddity.
The sign says:

Elmhurst Landmark
1870
Urn-Adorned
Cook County Court House before Chicago Fire
of 1871

According to the ElmhurstHistory.Org: “Following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, many people from the Chicago area collected ruins from the fire as a souvenir [sic]. Seth Wadhams, who lived in what is now known as the Wilder Mansion, brought two roof finials (decorative pieces) from the Cook County Courthouse, which had burned in the fire. One of the finials deteriorated over time. The second one remains in Wilder Park.”

It looks like you can see many of the courthouse finials in this pre-Fire photo. Strange thought that one of them might be, probably is, the obscure stone relic now miles from its original perch.

Bughouse Square & the Newberry Library in the Snow

Posted on by

You have to like a place nicknamed Bughouse Square. The city of Chicago has just such a place on the Near North Side. I quote at length from the Encyclopedia of Chicago.

“Bughouse Square (from ‘bughouse,’ slang for mental health facility) is the popular name of Chicago’s Washington Square Park, where orators (‘soapboxers’) held forth on warm-weather evenings from the 1910s through the mid-1960s.

“Located across Walton Street from the Newberry Library, Bughouse Square was the most celebrated outdoor free-speech center in the nation and a popular Chicago tourist attraction.

“In its heyday during the 1920s and 1930s, poets, religionists, and cranks addressed the crowds, but the mainstays were soapboxers from the revolutionary left, especially from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Proletarian Party, Revolutionary Workers’ League, and more ephemeral groups.

“Many speakers became legendary, including anarchist Lucy Parsons, ‘clap doctor’ Ben Reitman, labor-wars veteran John Loughman, socialist Frank Midney, feminist-Marxist Martha Biegler, Frederick Wilkesbarr (‘The Sirfessor’), Herbert Shaw (the ‘Cosmic Kid’), the Sheridan twins (Jack and Jimmy), and one-armed ‘Cholly’ Wendorf.”

The Speakers’ Corner of Chicago, it was. But by the 1980s, when I first saw Bughouse Square, whose formal name is Washington Square Park, the place had quieted down. A number of homeless people were always in residence, however temporarily. Considering the way gentrification goes, those ragged souls might be regularly chased away now, a circumstance that would surely disturb the shade of Ben Reitman.

On Saturday morning, snow fell on Bughouse Square and most of the other people we saw there were walking dogs.
At the center of the square is a modest fountain, a recreation of an early 20th-century fountain on the site.

That morning fairly early, against our usual habit, Ann and I had gotten up and made our way to the city for an event across the street from the square at the Newberry Library.

As always, the library’s an impressive pile of stones.

The Henry C. Palmisano Nature Park (Mount Bridgeport)

Posted on by

Not long ago, I found myself looking up this hill.

I climbed the steps, since I still have the energy for that kind of thing sometimes, and at the top of the hill is this vista.
That only goes to show how easy it is for an image to mislead. How would someone merely looking at the first image know that the hilltop has a fine view of downtown Chicago from the southwest?

Anyway, I was at the Henry C. Palmisano Nature Park, though I have a good source that tells me its informal name is Mount Bridgeport, after the surrounding neighborhood, and it rises 33 feet above street level.

“In the late 1830s, the land was purchased by the Illinois Stone and Lime Company which began quarry operations,” says the Chicago Park District. “Within a short time, one of its partners, Marcus Cicero Stearns, took over and renamed the quarry. Stearns was an early Chicago settler who got his start by opening a supply store for workmen who blasted out rock to build the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

“Even after Stearns died in 1890, the quarry continued operating under his name until 1970. For the next few decades, the site was used as a landfill for clean construction debris. After the dumping ended, the idea of transforming the site into a new park emerged.”

The transformation took some time, but a park finally opened on the site in 2009, named for a man who died in 2006. It’s more than a grassy hill with a view, though that’s a standout feature in flatland like Illinois.

The path goes off in other directions.
Other parts of the city are visible from the hill.
Part of the old quarry hole is now a pond, available for catch-and-release fishing, according to a nearby sign.
This may be the closest waterfall to downtown Chicago. Modest, but nice to look at. The stream goes to the quarry-pond.
“This is a dynamic park, with a fishing pond, interpretive wetlands, preserved quarry walls, trails, an athletic field, a running track, and a hill that offers dramatic views,” the Park District notes. “Over 1.7 miles of paths, including recycled timber boardwalks, concrete walks, a crushed stone running path, and metal grating walkways traverse the park.”

The Stevenson Expressway is visible, and very much audible, from the park. How many of the many drivers on that highway have any notion of such an excellent park nearby?

I never did for some years. “What’s that park?” I wondered some time ago while looking at a map of Chicago, making a mental note to visit when I would be nearby, which happened to be just before Labor Day. Being a map enthusiast has its rewards.

Allen J. Benson Park. Or, the Illinois-Indiana Border Obelisk.

Posted on by

I have a certain fascination with borders, probably dating back as long as I’ve been looking at maps just for fun, which is a long time now. I seem to have written about them a lot as well, something I didn’t realize until I checked.

Such as the posting about the meeting of British Columbia and Alberta; of Banff National Park and Kootenay National Park; and on the Continental Divide. Or the U.S. Canadian border just south of Vancouver. Or the borders we crossed in 2005 and 2006 and another posting about them again. Or the Tennessee-North Carolina border. Or Missouri-Kansas. Or Texas-Louisiana.

Not long ago, I had an encounter with a closer border: Illinois-Indiana. But not just any point on that long line — as far northwest as you can go in Indiana and still be on land, because the NW corner of the state is actually a point in Lake Michigan.

This is what you see at the Illinois-Indiana line just a few feet from Lake Michigan, while you are standing in Indiana.
A weatherworn, graffiti-scarred limestone obelisk. This is a closer view.
“In 1833, as Chicago and the Midwest were starting to grow, Congress ordered a new survey of the boundary between Illinois and Indiana,” says Chicago History Today, which asserts that the obelisk is the oldest public monument in Chicago. “When the survey was completed, a 15-foot high limestone obelisk was put in place on the shore of Lake Michigan, straddling the state line.

“By the 1980s the marker was isolated and neglected among the rail yards. Allen J. Benson, a ComEd executive, convinced the company to sponsor its restoration, in conjunction with the East Side Historical Society and other interested groups. In 1988 the marker was moved 190 feet north to its present location, just outside the [ComEd coal-fired power plant] gate. A new base was added at that time.”

Though moved into an area created by landfill, I understand that the obelisk still straddles the north-south Illinois-Indiana border, which a few feet further north heads out into Lake Michigan. It’s also the border between the city of Chicago and the city of Hammond. (Chicago extended out this far in massive 1889 annexation, which is yellow on the map.)

There’s a plaque near the obelisk that says the small area (maybe inside the fence) is Allen J. Benson Park to honor the exec, who has since died. The power plant closed in 2012, and its former site, a brownfield on the Indiana side of the line, is being redeveloped to be home to a data center.

When the plant was up and running, the marker didn’t look quite so forlorn: in the 2011, according to a Wikimedia image, three flagpoles and some trees were in the vicinity — but no metal fence — and there were plaques on the side of the obelisk with the state names. Guess they were stolen. Such is life in the big city, but I’m glad this curiosity from the 19th century still stands.