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.

Wall Street

Posted on December 20, 2021 by admin

Not too many streets get to be metonyms, but Wall Street does, which is a little remarkable for such a short street, only eight blocks from the East River to Broadway, or vice versa. During my walk along the street just before sunset, I wanted to take a closer look at the physical street, not its high finance subtext, which I hear about enough as it is.

I started at the East River Waterfront Esplanade, near where Wall Street meets South Street, which is partly under FDR Drive. You can catch a fine view of Brooklyn from the esplanade.

That’s as close as I got to Brooklyn this time around, as opposed to some other trips.

An enlargement of the sidewalk on the easternmost block of Wall Street forms Mannahatta Park, a pleasant place with bushes and trees and benches. Rose bushes bloomed there this December.

More than two centuries ago, the site was New York’s slave market, and surely not a pleasant place. The city erected a sign only in 2015 to mark the doleful history of the site.

At the corner of Water and Wall is 88 Wall Street, these days the Wall Street Hotel, very much an upmarket property (and not where I stayed) that opened only this year in a former office building.

The hotel’s web site has an unusually long and detailed history of the site, which is only fitting, considering the richly layered history of the street. One of the more remarkable snippets of 88 Wall Street history is the fact that a series of two buildings on the site from 1791 to 1870 were owned by a tontine, and known as the Tontine Coffee House and then the Tontine Building. Out of the 203 investors who had funded the coffee house, seven survived to be beneficiaries of the tontine.

The current building, a Beaux-Arts structure designed by Clinton Holton & Russell in 1901, was for a time home to an import company that was, among many other things, the world’s largest dealer in mother-of-pearl. When plastic buttons bottomed out the market for that material, the company went into cultured pearls.

By the time you pass 88 Wall Street, the thoroughfare takes on its famed canyon-like aspect.

Next to 88 is 74 Wall Street. Its entrance caught my attention.

The ever-useful New York Songlines says: “This round-arched building was put up in 1926 as the Seamen’s Bank for Savings Headquarters (hence the seahorses, mermaids and other nautical motifs); the architect was Benjamin Wistar Morris.”

Nautical motifs, all right, though Seaman’s Bank is long gone.

Almost as remarkable, the building seems to be vacant. Then again, maybe not so remarkable. Despite the persistence of Wall Street as an metonym, and the presence of the New York Stock Exchange, the street hasn’t been the hub of U.S. finance in many years; that moved on to Midtown.

Though not on Wall Street, 1 Wall Street Court — the Beaver Building, 1904 — is visible from there.

67 Wall Street, now a residential co-op.

Songlines again: “This 25-story triangular building, originally known as the Munson Building, was designed in 1906 by Kenneth M. Murchison for the Munson Steamship [Line]. From 1931 until 1972 it was the New York Cocoa Exchange.”

63 Wall Street.

60 Wall Street, a 1988 building designed by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo.

Originally Morgan Bank’s HQ, these days Deutsche Bank occupies it. I found the lobby impressive.

Soon after this point, it’s pedestrians only. Trinity Church isn’t far away.

40 Wall Street.

Lots of history here. A picture of the upper section.

Songlines: “Formerly the Manhattan Bank Building, this was designed to be the tallest building in the world, but was beaten out by the Chrysler Building’s surprise spire…

“The Bank of the Manhattan Company, which eventually became Chase Manhattan, opened its first office here in September 1799. It was founded by Aaron Burr against the opposition of Alexander Hamilton. The New York Stock & Exchange Board, as the NYSE was then called, had its first permanent office here in 1817.

“Donald Trump calls this the Trump Building; please don’t encourage him.”

37 Wall Street.

A familiar name, but Tiffany’s is a fairly recent occupant. Designed by Francis H. Kimball, a very busy New York architect, the building originally housed the Trust Company of America in 1907, and then a series of other banks. The upper floors are now residential.

Before long, one comes to Federal Hall National Memorial, which is behind some scaffolding now.

George looks a bit cut off up there. Looking down pensively, perhaps, on the nation he created.

There’s plenty else on Wall Street that’s perhaps a little less permanent. For instance, sources of affordable food to price-oppressed New Yorkers.

I bought a falafel at that first one, delicious and large enough to make part of dinner two nights in a row.

Also, men working.

Finally, I couldn’t very well come to Wall Street without a look at the NYSE (11 Wall Street), whose after-hours trading floor I got to visit in 2002.

“It’s a primary rain forest of electronic equipment — the guts of the capitalist beast — no, the sinews of the Invisible Hand,” I wrote at the time. Looking at the allegory-stuffed pediment, I’d also say Temple of Commerce.

Up Russian Hill & Back Down Again

Posted on November 9, 2021 by admin

What to do on a warm afternoon in San Francisco? On October 29, after leaving the Ferry Building, I spent some time wandering around downtown, which isn’t famed in song and story. It is, on the other hand, much larger than I remembered. Then again, the nine-county Bay Area metro population is about 7.75 million these days, and downtown SF is the main one for the region. Add metro San Jose and it’s even more.

I wasn’t particularly systematic in my downtown walkabout, or I might have sought out Salesforce Tower, for instance. Here’s 101 California St. instead. A Philip Johnson and John Burgee design from 1982.

Bank of America Center (555 California), completed in 1969.

An older structure in the shadow of BoA, nicely restored.

I couldn’t very well miss a shot of the Transamerica Pyramid, albeit at some distance.

Designed by the unapologetic modernist architect William Pereira, the building was spanking new when my family and I visited San Francisco in 1973, and I regarded it with some fascination at the time. Still do.

I later took the streetcar along the Embarcadero to Fisherman’s Wharf, another place of fond recollections. As tourists, we went there in 1973 and ate at one of the restaurants — Jay had the squid — and in 1990, I stayed a few days at the Fisherman’s Wharf Holiday Inn.

Good to see that the place still attracts people. The sign at Jefferson and Taylor Sts. would have also been fairly new the first time I saw it, since it dates from 1968. It was featured during the jazz montage intro to The Streets of San Francisco, as I recall.

But I didn’t want to spend much time there in 2021, so I decided to climb Russian Hill. Specifically to reach the famed crooked stretch of Lombard St.

That I did. At my age, it wasn’t a steady walk, but walks followed by rests along the way.

Lombard St. attracts tourists too. I understand it’s even busier in the summer.

The scene at the bottom of the famed section, on Leavenworth St., which crosses Lombard at that point.

“The switchbacks design, first suggested by property owner Carl Henry and built in 1922, was intended to reduce the hill’s natural 27 percent grade, which was too steep for most vehicles to climb,” Wiki says.

“As it is one of the most visited tourist attractions in the city, this section of the neighborhood is frequently crowded with tourists. Tourists also frequent the cable car line along Hyde Street, which is lined with many restaurants and shops.”

The switchback street itself is paved in brick.

The rest of the slope is heavily landscaped, with stairs on either side of the switchback.

The road might have been created to help vehicles climb the grade, but in our time Lombard is one way on this block — going down.

I stood watching for a while, and noticed that every other car or so that went down Lombard had someone in the passenger seat taking a video with their phone. So if you are a tourist with a car in SF, this is clearly a thing to do. The city wanted to make tourists pay for the experience, but Gov. Newson said no.

At the top of the block is Hyde St.

A cable car line runs along the street. It stopped at the intersection and people got out.

I didn’t ride any cable cars this time. I did so in ’73 and ’90, but more importantly, it now costs $8. Sure, it’s an expensive system to maintain, but all transit is subsidized — including the roads themselves. Just another example of gouging tourists.

One thing San Francisco cannot charge tourists for are the views, though perhaps some mid-level functionary is working on figuring out how to. The view from Lombard and Hyde, looking over at Telegraph Hill, is wonderful. And free.

I walked down Hyde St. toward the Embarcadero. The view from just over Russian Hill Park is pretty good as well. Been a good year for vistas, I’d say.

More good views closer to the shore, at Aquatic Park.

Down on Beach St., I chanced into this space.

Umbrella Alley. Besides featuring the umbrella installation and murals, the place is the starting point for such sightseeing as guided Segway tours, Jeep tours, electric scooter tours, and Lucky Tuk Tuk Private Group Tours. All very well, but after making a small donation for the art project, I continued on foot.

Jack London Square

Posted on November 3, 2021 by admin

Not too many authors have their names attached to places, but Jack London does, at least until someone points out loudly enough that he was an enthusiastic supporter of eugenics. But for now, if you cross under I-980/I-880 from downtown Oakland — part of whose underside is an informal neighborhood —

— you will arrive before long at Jack London Square, which is part of the larger Jack London District. Formerly a warehouse and port district, the rise of container vessels mostly made the area obsolete as an industrial zone. Various rehab projects began in the late 20th century, but I understand that adaptive reuse really got underway around 2000, with residential redevelopment especially pushed by former mayor Jerry Brown.

The sign on site says JACK LONDON SQ.

I understand the area was a good deal rougher when Jack London himself lived around there, but these days it’s an entertainment district, with shops, restaurants, hotels and a movie theater, as well as a marina where you can catch a ferry to San Francisco.

There’s also London in bronze by Cedric Wentworth, a Bay Area artist.

Not far away is a non-bronze, “Golden Stomper,” by one Jeff Meadows. It’s an Oakland A’s thing, and I can’t get that excited about it.

London lived in a cabin in the Klondike during his gold-seeking period. On the North Fork of Henderson Creek, to be more specific. Much later (1968) half of the cabin was brought to Oakland and a replica created using those and newer materials at the behest of a wealthy Jack London enthusiast. The other half went to Dawson City, where another replica was created. So now there are two London cabins, one much easier to reach than the other.

And what would a Jack London cabin be without a nearby bronze of White Fang?

Or maybe that’s supposed to be the dog in The Call of the Wild. No sign is attached to say which. I couldn’t hazard a guess, since I never did get around to reading either of those books, though I did read the Classics Illustrated version of The Call of the Wild.

Illinois Wesleyan University

Posted on October 13, 2021 by admin

College campuses, at least when the weather is temperate, have a lot to recommend them as walking destinations. Green space with expansive trees, good-looking or at least interesting buildings, the possibility of public art, inexpensive museums sometimes, a youthful vibe but also historical tidbits, and overall no admission charge.

And the certain knowledge that you (I) don’t have to show up for class, finish assigned reading or write papers. That’s all done.

Before we dropped Ann off at her dorm on Sunday and returned home, we all took a stroll through Illinois Wesleyan University, which is in Bloomington, though not to far south of ISU. I’m glad to report that its motto is still in Latin.

Even better, I knew what it meant without looking it up because of the long-ago Latin teaching efforts of Mrs. Quarles and Dr. Nabors. But I have to say that even a little knowledge of the etymologies of the English words “science” and “sapient” would be enough to guess “knowledge” and “wisdom.”

Illinois Wesleyan, which as far as I can tell is only tenuously connected to the Methodist church, is pleasantly green though not quite the arboretum that is ISU.