St. Helen Roman Catholic Church & St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral

Posted on March 29, 2022 by admin

During my walk around Chicago’s Ukrainian Village on Sunday, I also visited four churches, two of which I’d been to before: Sts. Volodymyr & Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church and St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral. Both have “stunning” and “striking” interiors, to quote myself from 2014, and were certainly worth another look.

A few blocks north of those two is St. Helen Roman Catholic Church, which has masses in Polish, Spanish and English.

“This Polish parish was formed in 1913, and in the early 1960s commissioned the present structure, which blends Art Deco, Modernism and tradition — with a Biblical fish motif,” Open House Chicago says, noting that the architects were Pirola & Erbach, who seem to have done a number of mid-century churches in Chicago.

When I arrived, a Polish mass was in progress. I made myself as unobtrusive as possible at the just inside the door, and admired the handsome interior.

“The spacious interior and ceiling are decorated to draw all eyes to the altar, which is illuminated by light coming through slits in the walls,” says Open House. “The stained glass contains mostly geometric patterns in small fragments of bright, unfiltered colors.”

Outside on a high pedestal, Jesus greets passersby on Augusta Boulevard.

Somewhat lower, but also on a pedestal outside the church, stands a bronze Pope St. John Paul II.

A little further north is St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral.

Again I stood at the back, taking it all in. Not just the marvelous beauty of the interior, but also the exoticism (to my ears) of an Orthodox service in Ukrainian. The priest’s voice, from behind the iconostasis, carried vividly all the way to the back of the nave.

“The cathedral is a remodeled German Lutheran church that exhibits the Medieval-Gothic style of ecclesiastical architecture, including pointed arches, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses,” Open House says. “The cathedral brings an Eastern-Byzantine interior design into a German-Gothic temple.”

Indeed, an iconostasis and pews. I’ve run across that before.

Noteworthy on either side of the main entrance.

The older inscription, presumably put there when the Ukrainians moved into the Worthmann & Steinbach-designed former Lutheran church (1945), uses the transliteration Vladimir. The newer plaque, put there in 1988 to mark 1,000 years of Christianity in Ukraine, uses Volodymyr.

I expect Vladimir is going to be out of favor among Ukrainians for a long, long time. But in any case, it’s also an example of recontextualizing, rather than tearing a thing down.

A Short Stop in Pontiac

Posted on March 23, 2022 by admin

We took Ann back to school Sunday before last, the first day of Daylight Saving Time, and since the day was tolerably warm, I insisted on a short stop in Pontiac, Illinois.

Despite Pontiac being on I-55 between Chicago and St. Louis, a route I’ve driven countless times, I’d never stopped there before, unlike such places as Coal City, Dwight, Lincoln, Atlanta, Litchfield and Mount Olive, just to name some of the smaller burgs along the way.

We didn’t spend that much time there. But time enough for us to walk all the way around the Livingston County Courthouse, which is impressive indeed.

It’s the county’s third courthouse; the first was a small wood-frame structure replaced by the second, which burned down in 1874 (pics of the two are here). Architect John C. Cochrane of Chicago, who also designed the Illinois and Iowa state capitols, designed the current Second Empire structure, which was finished in 1875 and restored recently. Technically, it isn’t a courthouse anymore, since the county’s judicial operations relocated to a new building nearby in 2011, but the county still has offices in the older building.

It wouldn’t be an Illinois town of any size without Lincoln acknowledged somewhere, and in the case of Pontiac, it’s a bronze resting on a bronze split-rail fence. It depicts young lawyer Lincoln, who visited the second courthouse periodically.

An Illinois sculptor named Rick Harney completed the work in 2006. Looking at his portfolio, I wonder if it’s easy to access his bronze of Adlai Stevenson in the Central Illinois Regional Airport. Lincoln is fine, but there aren’t that many Stevensons around, even in Illinois.

Looking around the courthouse square, there’s also a less conventional Lincoln.

The inevitable Route 66 mural.

Some handsome buildings from a time when handsome buildings were built in small towns. Before the Depression at the latest, and more likely before WWI.

And a time capsule underfoot.

Looking a little further into that today, I learned that the International Time Capsule Society is a real thing. I knew I got out of bed for a reason.

Savannah Walkabouts

Posted on March 14, 2022 by admin

Unusual, for a U.S. city anyway, the streets of the Savannah Historic District form a grid linking a series of large green squares, meaning that in our time you’ll encounter a pleasant city park every few blocks, once you’re in the city center. The modern streets and squares hew to a plan implemented by James Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia.

“Oglethorpe laid out the city around a series of squares and laid out the streets in a grid pattern,” the Georgia Historical Society says. “Each square had a small community of colonists living around it and had separate lots dedicated to community buildings.

“Noble Jones was the first surveyor in the new colony and helped Oglethorpe fulfill his dream of a planned city. Oglethorpe also worked with Colonel William Bull to lay out the new city. Bull came from South Carolina and served as the city’s first architect, overseeing the design and construction of the earliest buildings.”

We did two long walks through the historic city, one each last Sunday and Monday. The first walk was guided, following a straight course on Bull Street from Johnson Square through to Wright Square, Chippewa Square, Madison Square — crossing the remarkably picturesque Jones Street — and Monterey Square, ending at the rectangular Forsyth Park and its impressive fountain. We also crossed Oglethorpe Street; like in many cities, old pioneers later became streets.

Our second walk was more meandering, starting near Colonial Park Cemetery and heading north toward the Savannah River, which we eventually reached, exploring the cobblestoned streets and alleys and brick buildings that used to be the heart of the waterfront cotton market. These days, the place attracts tourists en masse to its restaurants, bars and shops, and we joined the masse for a little while, taking in the view of the Savannah River and the Talmadge Memorial Bridge.

Savannah has one of the lusher downtowns I’ve ever seen, marked by a profusion of tall trees and bushes and ground cover. The squares were especially lush places.

Flowers, too, though I think there will be more as spring matures into summer.

Some of the streets were almost as lush. This is Jones Street, famed for its handsome houses, but also shady trees. You’re going to need shade most of the year in Savannah.

Many of the squares feature memorials of one kind or another. In Johnson Square stands a memorial to Nathanael Greene, Quaker general of the Revolution who had a gift for inspiring pyrrhic victories among his British opponents. Not only is this a memorial to Greene, he’s buried under it.

A design by William Strickland, the Philadelphian who moved to Nashville who did the Second Bank of the United States, Tennessee State Capitol and a lot else besides.

In Chippewa Square, Gen. Oglethorpe stands looking out toward the state he founded, maybe enjoying the shade as well. Designed by Daniel Chester French, dedicated in 1910.

Casimir Pulaski, swashbuckling Polish cavalryman who died during the Siege of Savannah, is honored in Monterey Square with a memorial by Robert Launitz.

A number of other historic figures are honored in the squares, some of whose memorials we saw, such as that of William Jasper, a soldier who also died in the Siege of Savannah; John Wesley (as mentioned yesterday); and railroad exec William Washington Gordon, who was also a mayor of Savannah.

Gordon’s sizable late 19th-century memorial was built on top of the grave of Tomochichi, the Indian chief who allowed Oglethorpe to settle the site that would become Savannah. Tomochichi’s grave had previously been the site of a memorial to Native leader, but that had been lost to time before the Gordon memorial was erected. An interesting, if convoluted story, is told in academic detail here. Tomochichi has a separate memorial near the Gordon memorial.

A good many other memorials are scattered here and there in the squares and in between.

At the southern edge of the historic district is Forsyth Park, at 30 acres much larger than any of the city squares.

The park’s centerpiece is a splendid fountain, installed in 1858 and a creation of the same Bronx foundry that did the U.S. Capitol dome and, later, railings for the Brooklyn Bridge, among many other projects.

As charming a park as you’ll find anywhere. Sometimes life is a walk through the park, or better yet, through a lush historic district.

Savannah ’22

Posted on March 13, 2022 by admin

What to do during spring break on a three-night jaunt? Go somewhere that’s actually experiencing spring. A week ago Saturday, Ann and I flew to Savannah, Georgia, where the grass is green and the air warm, and the azaleas are in profuse bloom —

— and Spanish moss festoons tree after tree after tree, silver-gray and airy by day, slightly sinister by night, in the right light.

Besides pleasant flora, Savannah has much else to recommend it. I’ve known as much for years, but sometimes it takes years to get around to visiting even the most intriguing places.

We took long walks in the Savannah Historic District, which is enormous and very much lives up to its title, with street after street lined with the sort of aesthetic and storied buildings that speak of earlier times, both more genteel and more cruel. They also speak of restoration in the 20th and 21st centuries, and a new affluence for the city in our time.

We also spent time out from Savannah, as far afield as drives through the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge and through the beach town of Tybee Island, with a longer visit to Fort Pulaski National Monument.

Naturally, I had to visit Bonaventure Cemetery, famed in book and movie, and alive with other tourists and explosions of spring azaleas. And Spanish moss. Lots of Spanish moss on towering southern live oaks.

We ate well: plentiful seafood, kolaches as delightful as in Texas, hardy diner fare, innovative sliders and amazingly delicious fried chicken at a regional chain in suburban Savannah, our first meal after arrival and a tiresome experience in the long line to claim our rental car.

We slept well: I think I surprised Ann by booking a room at a one-of-a-kind inn a mile or so from the historic district, a sizable 1906 house renovated in the early 21st century for guests like us. Each room had its own theme, and the common areas were comfortable and ornate. Best of all, it really was an independent hotel, not a faux unique property of a high-priced boutique chain, and so I didn’t pay the moon.

We were also did a kind of Methodist pilgrimage, odd as that sounds. First, the only Savannah church we were able to enter during our visit was Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church, completed in 1890.

During our visit to Fort Pulaski NM the next day, we encountered the John Wesley Memorial.
The memorial says (among other things): John Wesley landed in America on this island, February 6, 1736. He was still an Anglican priest at the time.

That evening at dusk, we strolled into Savannah’s Reynolds Square, and there he stood.

The pilgrimage wasn’t planned. I don’t belong to that denomination, though of course I know that in earlier days, they ran with a pretty rough crowd.

St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral & The Holodomor Memorial (Again)

Posted on February 27, 2022 by admin

A few years ago, I visited St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral (of the Kyiv Patriarchate in the USA and Canada) in Bloomingdale, a suburb not far from us. The church was closed, but I was able to look at a number of things on the grounds, including the Holodomor Memorial. Seems like a good time to post more of those images.

The church exterior.

The Holodomor Memorial.

It was dedicated in 1993, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Stalin’s famine. Nearby is a newer memorial.

“This monument is dedicated to ‘Heaven’s Brigade’ and all heroes of Ukraine who sacrificed their lives for a free and independent Ukraine,” explains a plaque on this memorial, which was dedicated in 2015, the year after the Revolution of Dignity.

Charlotte 2017

Posted on February 20, 2022 by admin

Has it been five years since I visited Charleston? It has. Seems like an age ago, but so does everything before about two years ago. Still, it was a good trip, and it reminds me that I ought visit that part of the country again.

To facilitate my visit to Charleston, I flew in and out of Charlotte, driving from there. That was another place I’d never been but, interestingly, had been writing about as a real estate market for a few years at that point (I don’t any more).

I was able to spend a few hours looking around downtown Charlotte, which is actually known as Uptown Charlotte. It was a hopping real estate market at the time, with a lot of construction.

Along with fairly recent developments, such as this apartment tower (VUE, completed in 2010).

I also spotted some Uptown Charlotte artwork, such as “Grande Disco” (1974) by Arnaldo Pomodoro, a Milanese sculptor who’s still alive, at last report, at 95.

It’s in a plaza near the intersection of Tryon and Trade streets. At the four street corners of that intersection are four sculptures — allegories representing Commerce, Industry, Transportation, and The Future, by Raymond Kaskey.

I only have presentable pictures of two of them. Apparently this is Commerce, which was kicked off in the area in the 1830s when gold was discovered.

For Industry, a woman wearing textiles. Because that was an early industry in the region. More about the sculptures is at an article published by WCNC the same year I visited.

I can’t track down this memorable image, and I didn’t take notes, but it was on a brick wall not too far from Tryon St. Maybe it’s gone now.

Something that’s definitely not on Tryon St. any more, but it was when I wandered by in 2017: a memorial to Judah Benjamin.

“Though Benjamin had no connection to Charlotte — his only tie was a week he spent hiding there after the end of the Civil War — the United Daughters of the Confederacy presented the granite monument to the city [in 1948], choosing the spot of his supposed few days in hiding,” Smithsonian magazine says.

It was a dowdy thing, and I feel certain that the memorial was ignored by almost everyone until the summer of 2020. Then it got some attention.

“Steps away from the monument, a new Black Lives Matter street mural, commissioned by the city, burst into colorful view this summer [2020],” Smithsonian continues. “Around the same time, city workers finally extracted the Benjamin stone after a protestor spray-painted it with ‘BLM’ and took a sharp implement to it, though a spokesman says the city is ‘evaluating how best to preserve’ it.”

February Stroll

Posted on February 7, 2022 by admin

Sunday afternoon temps were just a little below freezing, so the snow cover didn’t melt. There wasn’t much ice underfoot either. We went to the partly trod trail behind the Robert O. Atcher Municipal Center.

Dog included.

The path runs through an open field to a small patch of wooded land.

The path also meanders through the Chicago Athenaeum International Sculpture Park, which Google Maps simply calls The Sculpture Park.

The park’s most recent bit of work, Thiruvalluvar, has been adorned recently.

Not a bad day for a walk, but the conditions that made it so lasted only a few hours. The Romans had a right idea about February: make it the shortest month.

Main Street, Bloomington

Posted on January 18, 2022 by admin

Seems like the pit of winter has arrived. That’s not necessarily a time of blizzards or ice storms, though it can be. Mainly the pit is unrelenting cold, and some years the pit is deeper than others — more unrelenting, that is.

So far this year, winter has been bleak-midwinter-ish enough, but not viciously so in my neck of North America. There’s still time enough for northern Illinois winter to turn more vicious, of course.

Ann returned to ISU on Sunday, facilitated by me driving her there. It’s a task I don’t mind at all. We had a good conversation en route and listened to music we both like. I won’t go into the details of that right now, but there is a Venn diagram that includes some intersection. Larger than one might think.

Just before I returned her to her dorm and drove home, we visited part of Main Street in Bloomington. It’s an impressive block. Bloomington should be glad it has survived down to the present.

Not only survived, but the buildings are home to one kind of shop or another, mostly nonchain specialty retailers. In fact, all nonchain as far as I could see.

The 400 block of Main between Market and Monroe Sts. has the strongest concentration of late 19th-century commercial structures, with facades looking well-maintained in our time.

Featuring artwork from our time as well.

Not a lot of plaques that I saw, but I did spot one.

An organization that’s still very much around, but these days, the Harber Building is home to Illinois Tattoo. Ralph Smedley lived quite a long time (1878-1965), mostly in California, where the organization really took off.

Over a storefront occupied by Ayurveda for Healing, which promises a “holistic path for wellness and optimal health,” there’s a remarkable set of metal figures.

Detail.

Ayurveda for Healing, which I assume takes its inspiration from South Asian practices, has three locations, including this one in Bloomington, along with Chicago and Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Just a block over, the 500 block of Main isn’t what it used to be. This is what it used to be, in an image borrowed from the McLean County Museum of History.

This is what I saw, let’s say roughly 90-odd years later.

To take that image of the mural, I was standing in a parking lot where a Montgomery Ward store used to be. Too bad for what has been lost, but fragments are mostly what we have of the past anyway, and it’s good to spot them.

Little Island

Posted on December 22, 2021 by admin

We arrived footsore at Little Island late on Saturday morning. Or at least my feet were a little sore and warmer than usual, since Geof walks a good deal more than I do, and faster as well. Along the greenway on the Hudson that morning, he modulated his pace, partly because he wanted to see certain things himself, but also to accommodate my slower gait — but not too slow. I can still walk three miles without serious difficulty.

Little Island is in fact an island, an artificial one built on the ruins of Pier 55 (in full, the place’s name is Little Island @Pier 55). Even before Hurricane Sandy slapped the pier, it was in poor shape, and the blow brought complete ruin. Redevelopment took years, as it does in Manhattan sometimes, with one plan sinking into a legal quagmire.

A second plan finally came to fruition with the opening of Little Island, managed by a nonprofit, in the spring of this year.

We entered at the south entrance bridge.

The 132 concrete structures supporting the park are called “tulips,” and I guess that’s a reasonable description. Tint them green and they could form the supports for Marvin the Martian’s summer home, but in any case, they’re big and heavy: each weighing as much as 68 tons and measuring from 16 feet to 52 feet high.

The British architectural firm Heatherwick Studio (designers of the Tower of Silence in India) and the New York-based landscape architecture firm MNLA collaborated on designing Little Island. I’ve read, and Geof confirmed to me — he has made a good many visits or at least walk-bys of the park this year — that the place is a hit. During the warmer months, you have to register for a specific time to get in, though at no charge. This time of the year, you can just wander in.

Good to hear that a new public space is popular with the public. I can understand that. Even in winter, it’s a pleasant place to wander around.

It’s lush too, at least this mild December.

With views of the city. In the foreground is the construction site on another old pier, which will be an extension of the Whitney Museum.

I took these to be homages to The Time Tunnel.

I might be one of the few to think of that, since you have to be of a certain age to do so, besides mildly eccentric.

William Street

Posted on December 21, 2021 by admin

Less famous than Wall Street and a bit longer, William Street snakes through non-grid Lower Manhattan, another faint echo of New Amsterdam. I didn’t walk the entire way during my recent visit, but did cover a fair amount of the street, starting at the back of the fortress-like Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Beneath my feet, roughly, more than 6,000 tons of gold, more than even old Croesus himself could imagine. Above street level, a building that evokes Florentine palaces, though larger even than a Medici could imagine. Designed by a NY firm that did a lot of bank buildings, York and Sawyer.

A block away is Fosun Plaza, which surrounds the 60-story 28 Liberty Street, formerly One Chase Manhattan Plaza, a midcentury creation. The plaza is a story above street level, accessible by a wide staircase. The first thing you see on the plaza is a Jean Dubuffet sculpture, “Group of Four Trees,” commissioned by David Rockefeller and completed in 1972. Almost instantly, it reminded me of “Monument With Standing Beast” in Chicago.

Deeper in the plaza is an Isamu Noguchi rock garden fountain, back down at street level and naturally dry this time of year.

“Windswept” came to mind when I was at the plaza, the adjective that’s often attached to such midcentury artificial flats, even though there wasn’t that much wind. Still, the plaza offered some good views of surrounding buildings, such as 84 William Street, the Howell apartments. In front of the Howell (from this vantage) is a small park featuring steel sculptures by Louise Nevelson.

A wonderful old office building at 62 William Street, dating from 1900.

Down at street level at that building, a Greek restaurant that didn’t survive the pandemic. Or simply didn’t survive.

From that vantage, there’s also a good view of the non-Wall Street side of 40 Wall Street.

At William and Pine streets, one of two churches I was able to visit this time in NYC, Our Lady of Victory. I popped in for a few minutes to enjoy the sacred-space quiet.

Further south.

Delmonico’s, by gar.

Or at least its 21st-century iteration, though in a fine old building. I understand there have been a few Delmonico’s down the centuries, since like the Dread Pirate Roberts, the name is the thing. I’m pretty sure the first time I ever heard of the place was years ago in this Charles Addams cartoon, when I didn’t really understand the joke.

I ducked over to Stone Street at this point.

It’s a happenin’ place, on Thursdays anyway.

At South William and Broad is the former International Telephone Building, once occupied by IT&T and designed by Buchman & Kahn in 1928.

Your voice goes wingedly around the world? Notice that underneath the winged figure, there are people using 1920s-style telephones, along with ’20s-style telephone poles with multiple crossarms.

One more place, this one on Broad.

Designed by Kirby, Petit & Green, the American Bank Note Company building dates from 1908. I’m always delighted to see a physical presence of something I’ve only ever read about.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Public Art