St. Francis Sculpture Garden

Posted on August 9, 2022 by admin

The last day of July proved to be warm and clear in Grand Rapids, after a storm had rolled through the night before. Mid-morning breakfast proved to be at a place called Lucy’s, an adaptive re-use of a large neighborhood grocery store made into a restaurant, where I had a delicious meat-vegetable-egg creation. Everyone else enjoyed their breakfast orders as much as I did.

We planned to visit the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park after breakfast. The last time I’d been there was more than 14 years earlier, and I’d strongly suggested we see it.

While looking for the Meijer location on Google Maps, we noticed a different sculpture garden on the way: St. Francis Sculpture Garden. None of us, me included, had heard of it, but we were intrigued enough to add it to the day’s destinations.

In full, Saint Francis of Assisi Sculpture Garden.

The 11-acre site is owned by the Dominican Sisters at Marywood, whose buildings are visible nearby.

A nonprofit created the garden, with sculptures by Mic Carlson, a Grand Rapids artist. Twenty-four bronzes of St. Francis, in fact. Some are life-sized.

That is supposed to a joyous dancing Francis, which I’ve run across before, but he looks more demented than anything else.

Actually, so does that one. Mic might be a talented sculptor, but those faces of his are a little odd.

Other depictions of the saint — most of them — are small enough to be on a tabletop. At at the sculpture garden, they are on various kinds of pedestals, with signs nearby explaining which aspect of Francis is being illustrated.

Such as Francis and Brother Wolf, telling the famed story of Francis persuading a vicious wolf to change his ways.

Francis and Clare, founder of the Poor Clares.

Besides the artwork at the sculpture garden, one can enjoy pathways through lush grounds, at least in the summer.

A grotto.

And a gazebo-like structure.

Must be an ecclesiastical gazebo.

Downtown Fort Wayne

Posted on July 7, 2022 by admin

RIP, Will Friend. I didn’t know him well, but did meet him at events over the years, and we got along. I didn’t realize he was quite that young.

Toward the end of the afternoon on Saturday, we took a walk in downtown Fort Wayne. Not long after parking the car, this caught our attention.

Not just any pedestrian bridge, but the historic Wells Street Bridge over the St. Marys River. A sign on the 1884 truss bridge names the Wrought Iron Bridge Company of Akron, Ohio, as the bridgebuilder.

For nearly 100 years, vehicular traffic crossed the bridge, but in 1982 it became a pedestrian walkway. A view from the bridge, toward a less-developed part of the city.

After you cross the bridge, there is another elevated walkway, this one over a small section of riverbank. The blue building in the background is a block of riverside apartments, under construction. Move to Fort Wayne, young members of the laptop class. While rents don’t exactly seem cheap there — I don’t think anywhere counts as that anymore — there have to better deals than in the large cities.

The walk offers a view of the Fort Wayne — skyline isn’t quite the word. A view of a few larger buildings in the background, with Promenade Park in the foreground. We soon rested a while at that park, lounging around on iron chairs at an iron table, drinking soda. Rest: always an essential part of any walkabout.

Occasional party boats ply the St. Marys.

Away from the river is Freimann Square, home of the aforementioned Anthony Wayne statue, as well as a fountain and flower beds.

Not far is the Allen County Courthouse, designed around the turn of the 20th century by Hoosier architect Brentwood Tolan.

The figure on top, I’ve read, is a copper Lady Liberty that turns, as a vane does, with the wind.

A few decades pass and you get art deco. In this case, the Lincoln Bank Tower, another of those structures started just in time — 1929. Design by another Hoosier architect, Alvin Strauss.
It could have been the German American Bank Tower, but for some hard-to-figure reason the bank changed its name in 1918.

The Japanese Friendship Garden, on a tenth of an acre near the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, was gift of one of Fort Wayne’s sister cities, Takaoka. I had to look it up, even though I probably passed through it on a train the fall we went to Hida-Takayama. I suspect most Japanese, faced with the name Fort Wayne, would have to look it up, too.

The museum was closed when we got there, but the garden is always open. Bonus: the garden also features a 2002 time capsule under a rock, slated for a 2027 opening.

Elsewhere downtown: Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. Dating from 1860, it is the oldest church building in Fort Wayne, with its Gothic design attributed to Rev. Msgr. Julian Benoit.

Vigil mass was about to start, but we got a peek.

It isn’t the only sizable church around. A few blocks away is St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Not open. Too bad, looks like quite a looker inside.

Northern Indiana Dash

Posted on July 6, 2022 by admin

Ah, high summer.

That’s in Dallas. I’m not there. Today’s high here was 79 F., a dip from a hot and muggy 90s-day on Tuesday. Several degrees of latitude will make that difference.

One of these days, the times might catch up with Gen. “Mad” Anthony Wayne, leader in the Revolution and scourge of the Northwest Territory Indians, but for now, you can find him on horseback in bronze at Freimann Square in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana, in a work by Chicagoan George Etienne Ganiere (1865-1935).

We gazed a Mad Anthony for a few moments as part of our trip through northern Indiana. I wanted to take a short trip over the long Independence Day weekend, but I didn’t want it to consume the entire three days.

So on Saturday, we left in mid-morning and made our way to Fort Wayne, where we stayed overnight. On Sunday, we returned across northern Indiana to get home, which took up most of the day.

We arrived in Nappanee, Indiana, for lunch on Saturday. I’m glad to report that Main Street Roasters (not so new anymore, it seems) makes a fine pulled pork sandwich. Yuriko said the ingredients in her Cobb salad tasted very fresh, and I sampled some, and agreed. The place was doing a brisk business.

We figured the main source for both fresh pork and fresh greens was the Amish farms in the area. Nappanee is considered the focus of one of the country’s larger Amish populations, though that’s a little hard to tell in a casual look around downtown, which isn’t so different from other Indiana towns its size (pop. nearly 7,000). Out away from town, though, you can see from the road farm houses and other buildings, clustered closer than in other rural areas, which is characteristic of Amish settlements.

In town, Plain People in carriages rolled by now and then. Some female store clerks wore the small head coverings common among Mennonites. The Amish tourist attraction in Nappanee known as Amish Acres closed in late 2019, and a more upmarket property re-opened the next year — in an example of bad timing, though it seems to have survived — as The Barns at Nappanee, Home of Amish Acres. Maybe all those extra words are going to cost you more.

Across the street from Main Street Roasters (and not Amish Acres).

On Sunday, our first brief stop was at Magic Wand, home of the Magicburger, which can be found in Churubusco, Indiana.

We didn’t have a magic burger, but rather shared a strawberry milkshake to go. Among strawberry milkshakes, it was the real deal. The real tasty deal, straw-quaffed as we speed along U.S. 33.

Churubusco was a name I took an instant liking to. The town fathers apparently read in their newspapers about the battle of that name, and wanted the town to borrow a bit of its martial glory. According to some sources, it gets shortened in our time, and maybe for a long time, to Busco. I also noticed references to the place, on signs and the like, as Turtletown. Really? What was that about? I wondered.

The Beast of Busco, that’s what. Quite a story. A giant among turtles that the townsfolk never could quite capture. I haven’t had this much fun reading hyperlocal history — lore — since I chanced across a small lake in Wisconsin that is supposedly home to an underwater pyramid. Turtle Days was last month.

Another spot for a short visit on Sunday: Warsaw, Indiana. It’s the seat of Kosciusko County, with a handsome Second Empire courthouse rising in the town square.

Designed in the 1880s by Thomas J. Tolan, who died during construction, the Indiana Historical Society says. The project was completed by his son, Brentwood S. Tolan.

The square sports some other handsome buildings, too.

Warsaw is also home to a garden the likes of which I’d never imagined, and the reason I stopped in town, days after spotting it on Google Maps and then looking it up: the Warsaw Biblical Gardens.

The brainchild of a local woman back in the 1980s with access to the land. “It would be no ordinary garden — not a rock garden, nor a rose garden, nor a perennial garden — it would be a truly unique and beautiful Biblical Garden,” the garden’s web site says.

“Actually, we say ‘gardens’ because the Warsaw Biblical Gardens has a variety of areas: the Forest, Brook, Meadow, Desert, Crop and Herb gardens; the Grape Arbor; and the Gathering site. Warsaw Biblical Gardens is ¾-acre in size, and there are very few gardens like this in the United States.

“The term ‘biblical’ refers mainly to the fact that the plants, trees, flowers, herbs, etc., are mentioned in the Old and/or New Testaments of the Bible. These have been carefully researched to preserve the integrity of the Gardens’ uniqueness.

“The Warsaw/Winona Lake area of Indiana has a long religious history. That history begins perhaps with the Chatauqua times of Winona Lake, now being revived. [Really?] Many other famous historical religious figures made their home’s here, from Homer Rodeheaver to Fanny Crosby to Billy Sunday.”

I won’t pretend I didn’t have to look up the first two of those three. Regardless, it’s a stunning little place.

Go far — always good if you can manage it. But also go near.

Along the West Branch of the DuPage River

Posted on June 28, 2022 by admin

Naperville, the second-largest Chicago suburb by population at nearly 148,000, has much to recommend a casual visitor, either in warm months or colder ones. (Way-far west Aurora, surprisingly, is number one at nearly 200,000 souls.)

Sunday was warm, but not hot enough to keep us from a stroll along West Branch of the DuPage River, which passes through downtown Naperville, and is in fact one of the village’s main amenities. The river is broad at that point.

But not that deep. A foot or two at most, yet deep enough for ducks and kayaks.

The walkways along the river are fairly narrow.

Both banks are connected by wooden foot bridges.

With small parks and other features on either side.

Including some artwork. Such as “Wall of Faces,” whose plaque says that it was “created by Naperville school children and molded by local artists to represent the casualties of September 11, 2001.”

And a bronze Dick Tracy. I don’t think I’d noticed that before.

It’s been there since 2010, so I just wasn’t paying attention. But why Naperville? I associate the comic policeman with Woodstock, Illinois, home of creator Chester Gould. The plaque explained that Dick Locher (1929-2017), who was one of Gould’s successors in writing and drawing the comic, lived in Naperville. In fact he was a multi-talented fellow, creating this statue as well.

Colorado Plateau ’22 Leftovers

Posted on June 9, 2022 by admin

I’ve changed the name of this trip. What, doesn’t everyone name their trips? No? Anyway, Colorado Plateau ’22 is better than the ridiculous NV-AZ-UT 22, which looks like a part number in a tool-and-die factory.

But not quite all on the Colorado Plateau. Just outside Las Vegas, maybe five or so miles from where that city finally peters out on I-15 toward Los Angeles, is Seven Magic Mountains.

Magic, maybe, mountains no, at least not in any literal sense. An art installation by Ugo Rondinone, a Swiss artist.

We only passed through Zion NP, stopping only for a few minutes on the side of the road.

Near the entrance.

At the entrance.

A different entrance: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. A small bit of the vastness of the place, more than 1.8 million acres.

I knew that was a road I wanted to drive a little ways at least, to check out the views. My instincts were right.

When we were nearly in Page, Arizona, we stopped for a few minutes at a viewpoint over Lake Powell. I was flabbergasted by how low the lake looks.

And so it is. The lowest level since the lake was built. Lake Mead is low as well, so much so that (possible) mob hit victims have been discovered. Apparently the idea of draining Lake Powell to fill Lake Mead is being entertained by officialdom, I read, though it’s hard to know how seriously.

The cookers at Big John’s Texas Barbecue in Page.

Man, Big John made some mean ‘cue in those cookers.

The Lake Powell Motel, also in Page, where we stayed. For the second time. We were there in 1997. A one-minute walk to Big John’s.

When we stayed there 25 years ago, the property was called Bashful Bob’s Motel. Sometime in the 2010s, new ownership changed the name and spent a fair amount renovating the interiors so that they are pretty nice two-bedroom apartments. Back in the late ’90s, the rooms were old, but pleasant. I wonder if I have the ’97 bill somewhere to compare rates. Maybe.

Also, it’s clear that the owners had to renovate to compete with the numerous chain hotels in the town. Bashful Bob didn’t a lot of that kind of competition in the old days, just smaller properties, a few of which linger still in Page.

The Red Rock started as housing for workers building Glen Canyon Dam, built in 1958 by the Bureau of Reclamation. Actually, I suspect Bashful Bob’s started out that way as well.

In Moab, Utah, we stayed at the Apache Motel. We found it a most pleasant place to stay, and with a touch of movie history to it.

Clean, comfortable, not particularly cheap or expensive, feeling very much like a ’50s motel, though with a few modifications. The motel doesn’t let you forget that the Duke stayed there when filming movies nearby. Other stars did too.

One more feature at Temple Square in Salt Lake City: the Handcart Pioneer Monument.

More Mormons in metal: The centerpiece of the This is the Place Heritage Park, which is on a hill at the edge of the city, where B. Young reportedly told his followers This is the Place, as in, to settle. We dropped by for a short look.

At the base of the memorial are six figures depicting important in the history of this part of Utah who weren’t Mormons, such as a couple of fur trappers, a chief of the Shoshone, plus adventurers and explorers.

Including this fellow, John C. Fremont.

That’s my presidential site for the trip. Ran for president in ’56, after all.

The Utah State Capitol

Posted on June 7, 2022 by admin

Back in August 2011, I wrote: “Among the National Statuary Hall Collection — each state gets to place two, except Virginia, which gets an extra one for Washington — I spied Ronald Reagan, Jack Swigert, Caesar Rodney, Kamehameha I, Dwight Eisenhower, Ephraim McDowell, Huey Long, Hannibal Hamlin, Samuel Adams, Gerald Ford, William Jennings Bryan, Po’pay, John Burke (of North Dakota), James Garfield, Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, Washington and Jefferson. I looked in vain for Philo T. Farnsworth, since who wouldn’t want to see him?”

Yet when I saw the lanky statue of boob-tube inventor Philo T. Farnsworth in the Utah State Capitol last month, I was sure I’d seen him at the U.S. Capitol more than 10 years earlier. Memory’s that kind of trickster.

Philo’s among a number of Utahans honored in the capitol, both as statues and in paintings. Curiously, I don’t remember seeing Brigham Young there, who is (unsurprisingly) the other statue in the U.S. Capitol from Utah. Must have missed him.

Utah being a late-blooming state (1896), its capitol is an early 20th-century edifice, designed by Richard K. A. Kletting, a local architect who did a lot of Utah projects.

The capitol has an expansive lawn. When we were there, we watched a man throw frisbees and two dogs catch them in mid-air, again and again.

Speaking of tricky memories, before visiting the capitol this time, I wasn’t sure whether I’d seen it in 1980. I got a good look this time.

Detail inside the dome. Note the seagulls in the sky.

Lots of nice detail in the building. Some allegories.

Some display cases on the first floor depicting Utah history, including one calling the state “America’s Film Set.”

One exhibiting beehive items.

Beehives are worked into the architectural detail, too.

Now I’m sure I didn’t see this place 40-odd years ago, because even after that long I’d remember such a magnificent capitol.

Temple Square

Posted on June 6, 2022 by admin

The wide balconies of the LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City look over at the rest of Temple Square and its centerpiece, the Salt Lake Temple, which happens to be behind scaffolding right now. Not the first noteworthy place I’ve seen in that condition.

On the morning of May 21, we caught the temple at a moment of reconstruction, or rather a few years of it: a restoration and seismic refitting that will continue into the mid-years of this decade at least. Standing there for about 130 years now, the church must have decided it was time, despite earlier renovations. The building next door is the handsome Joseph Smith Memorial Building, built as the Hotel Utah in 1911, now an event venue.

We started our walk around Temple Square that morning on the other side of the Temple. This schematic by the church was posted on site to let you know that much of the area is closed for the reconstruction.

The other side of the Temple.

There was more to Temple Square than I remembered. There was more to Salt Lake City, for that matter. Considering that the last time I visited was 1980, that isn’t much of a surprise. After that much time, you might as well be visiting for the first time.

Yet I remember parts of the first time fairly well: an overnight excursion from Logan, Utah, not far to the north, in the company of Tom Jones. He attended Utah State University in Logan in those days, and that June I took a bus from San Antonio and back to visit him and — of course — see that part of the country for the first time. Two years later, I visited again as part of a much longer trip, also by bus, but didn’t go to SLC that time.

Salt Lake Temple stands out in my memory of 1980, as it stands out in the heart of the city for reasons other than mere height. I’m sure it loomed even larger 40-plus years ago than now, when downtown wasn’t as populated by as many tall buildings as it is now.

I checked — you have to love Wiki, this is the kind of thing it excels at — and fully 21 of the 39 tallest structures in SLC were developed after 1980, and another two were completed that year. The Salt Lake Temple wasn’t the tallest structure in the city then either, a distinction it held only for about a year in the 19th century.

The Temple might be closed, but it’s closed all the time to non-Mormons anyway. In 1980, we visited the North Visitors Center, a multistory building full of murals depicting the church’s novel theology, culminating in 11-foot replica of Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Christus statue in front of a celestial background.

That building lasted from 1963 to last year, when it was torn down as part of the work at Temple Square. The statue will be located elsewhere in the square, though for now a smaller-sized model is on view at the Conference Center.

The first place we saw at the square was the Salt Lake Assembly Hall.

Not a church building per se — or maybe it is — but in any case various LDS functions have been held there down the years since the early 1880s. A Gothic design by an early Mormon convert, one Obed Taylor. That’s a good old Biblical name that needs to be brought back, millennials. It’s not to late to name a kid or two of yours Obed (or Boaz, for that matter).

Impressive, but the Salt Lake Tabernacle is even more so, though its exterior reminds me of nothing more than a silver pill bug.

“Brigham Young, who was the Church President at the time of construction, proposed the original design idea of a large dome building with no columns to interfere with the line of sight to the podium,” the LDS web site says. “Bridge builder Henry Grow used a lattice truss design so the Tabernacle roof was able to span its 150-foot width without center supports.”

The building used to be used for mass general meetings of the church, but they were moved to the Conference Center in 2000. The Tabernacle Choir — known to the world as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — still performs in the silver pill bug. While we were visiting, an organist noodled bits of a few tunes on 11,623-pipe organ, such as (naturally) Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. An epic sound.

“The current instrument – the fourth organ to sit inside the organ case – was built in 1948 by the Æolian-Skinner Organ Co. of Boston,” notes the Tabernacle web site FAQ. “One hundred and twenty-two pipes from the original Joseph Ridges organ and another dozen from the 1885 Niels Johnson additions to the organ remain in use today. The 10 largest façade pipes, which date back to the original Ridges organ, do play.”

The last place we visited at Temple Square was the impressively large Conference Center, which as far as I can tell is simply The Conference Center. At 1.4 million square feet, it’s a whopper, including its 21,200-seat main auditorium, where the church holds its biannual general conference and other major gatherings. Design by ZGF Architects of Portland, Oregon.

Though not the size of the Tabernacle organ, the auditorium organ is no slouch at 7,708 pipes. I have no way to judge whether the following Wiki statement is true, but I’m passing it along anyway because it sure sounds impressive: “This organ is internationally significant… in that it is the only organ in the world that has 2 registers of pipes extending down into the 64′ series, the 64′ Contra Trombone and 64′ Contra Gamba, which both extend 4 pipes down to GGGGG#, 13 semitones below the lowest note on a standard piano.”

The Christus statue formerly at the visitor center may be in storage, but a smaller replica is on view on one of the Conference Center floors, along with busts of LDS luminaries and murals of Jesus in the New World.

Did I forget to mention the presence of Mormon missionaries in all of these buildings? Not skinny young men in white shirts and black ties, but pleasantly dressed young women, in pairs like the men, and from different parts of the world, according to their badges.

We were greeted by them in each building, and in the case of the Conference Center, each floor of the building. I chatted a few minutes with the first of these, in the Assembly Hall. I knew perfectly well they were missionaries, out to assess my interest in things LDS and put a fresh young face on this most successful sect of the 19th-century American effusion of creative religious enthusiasm. I’m no expert on Mormonism, but they probably found that I knew more about it — including the Golden Tablets, the early church goings-on in Nauvoo, the migration west — than most non-Mormons wandering in.

Before long, though, I was telling the first pair about how I like to visit religious sites anywhere I go, and recommended a few obvious ones to them, such as St. Peter’s in Rome, St. Paul’s in London, the Daibutsu in Nara and Borobudur on Java, but also not to ignore the smaller sites you happen across. Maybe not something they hear all the time from visitors, either. Yuriko had much less patience with the missionaries, and whenever I happened to speak with a pair, she usually was on her way.

The Road to Salt Lake City

Posted on June 5, 2022 by admin

On the afternoon of May 20, we drove from Canyonlands NP to Salt Lake City by way of U.S. 191 (including a short stretch of I-70), U.S. 6 and I-15. The reds and oranges of southern Utah were soon left behind for a more monochromatic sort of desert.

We stopped briefly in Green River, Utah (pop. a little less than 1,000), to find a bathroom and change drivers. I also spotted something unexpected in the small but green O.K. Anderson City Park.

An Athena missile casing, a relic of the nearby Green River Test Site, where the Air Force shot off 141 such missiles from 1964 to 1973, all aimed at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico (though one hit Mexico once. Oops).

“The program was developed to study missiles’ re-entry behavior and test anti-ballistic missile defenses through the simulation of the full flight dynamics of an ICBM within the confines of the U.S.,” notes the sign near Green River’s missile. Later (until 1975), the Air Force tested 61 Pershing missiles from Green River and trained U.S. and West German troops on their use at the site. Bet that was a plumb posting for the Germans.

Also in the park: a memorial to Bert Loper, whom I’d never heard of. A pioneer in whitewater river-running. Died at 79 on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon doing exactly that.

Further north, we made a spontaneous stop in Helper, Utah. Originally a railroad junction, and supposedly named after helper engines kept there by the railroad, Helper thrived on coal mining for many years — it is, after all, in the aptly named Carbon County.

Main Street in Helper.

Mining still goes on in the county, but these days Helper seems to be evolving into an arts and tourist town, presumably having been discovered by hipsters from Salt Lake City, only 100-plus miles away. Mormon hipsters? Why not? With the way SLC is growing these days, it’s probably producing more hipsters than it needs locally, and so can export them to Utah towns with colorful histories.

But Helper isn’t going to forget mining. Not if Big John has anything to say about it.

The fiberglass miner has been standing in Helper since the 1960s. He’s in front of the Streamline Moderne municipal building, built by the WPA.

Main Street Helper has examples of both buildings renovated for our time —

— and those with that potential.

At one end of Main Street is a handsomely restored Conoco filling station.

A sign on the door says the place is listed on Airbnb, so you can stay there.

Helper is also home to the Western Mining and Railroad Museum, which was closed when we passed through town. But some of its exhibits are outdoors, on a small lot nearby: mining equipment.

Further north from Helper, at a rest stop on U.S. 6 — Tie Fork Rest Area — is one of the more elaborate historical displays I’ve ever seen at such a place.

Go for the bathroom, stay to look at the locomotive and the other displays about railroading in Spanish Fork Canyon, which unsurprising involved hauling a lot of coal.

We made it to greater SLC in time for dinner at a place specializing in Korean-style fried chicken. We had a number of inexpensive options for dinner, because we were in a college town.

Provo, that is. We took a drive around the BYU campus, a sprawling presence at the base of the Wasatch Mountains: 560 acres with more than 300 buildings. Got the barest glimpse. At that moment, finding and feasting on Korean fried chicken was the priority instead. Travel is like that sometimes.

Notre Dame Stroll

Posted on April 26, 2022 by admin

Along with the rest of northern Indiana, the campus of the University of Notre Dame is just beginning to turn green, with grass fully that color, and bushes and trees budding. We began our walk on campus on Saturday afternoon as one does, at a large parking lot. But the lot had good placement, not far from St. Mary’s Lake.

A nearby lake is St. Joseph’s. You’d think there would be a Baby Jesus Pond somewhere, but I don’t see it on the map.

Next to the basilica is Norte Dame’s magnificent Main Building. Serving as the administrative center for the school, the structure dates from 1879, replacing a building that burned down early that same year, and was designed Willoughby Edbrooke. Its gold-leaf dome was added a few years later, complete with a massive gilded statue of Mary atop it.

The interior looks pretty spiffy. Unfortunately, it was closed for an event. So we headed south along the well-manicured lawns of Notre Dame, eventually reaching the Eck Visitor Center and the Hammes Bookstore, which would be more accurately called the Hammes ND-Themed Clothing Store.

Jesus faces the Main Building.

This isn’t the Touchdown Jesus Notre Dame is known for, however. That, alas, we didn’t see (or First Down Moses, either).

Further down the lawns is the founder and first president of Norte Dame in bronze, created by Italian sculptor Ernesto Biondi and unveiled in 1906.

Namely, the Very Rev. Edward (Édouard) F. Sorin (1814-93), who also had time to found St. Edward’s University in Austin and have a mighty oak named for him. The plinth is inscribed with Latin, lauding Sorin.

South along the lawns is a raft of collegiate buildings with collegiate names: Sorin Hall, Lafortune Student Center, Hayes-Healy Hall, Walsh Hall and the Norte Dame law school. Formally, it’s the Eck Hall of Law. I was impressed by how new the building looked, despite its traditional stylings. It is fairly new: 2008, a design by Cardosi Kiper.

A lot of the buildings looked newish, which tells me that Notre Dame has the dosh in our time — or can source it from donors like Mr. Eck — for capital projects. As indeed it does: the university’s endowment is about $12.3 billion, putting it at number 8 on this U.S. News & World Report list.

That kind of money also buys some nice details, or at least it should.

Further on, the “bookstore” didn’t let you forget where you were.

Finally, I don’t want to forget Chaplain William Corby, who rates a statue not far from the basilica and Main Building.

A plaque near the bronze says: The first bronze sculpture of Chaplain William Corby by Samuel Murray was dedicated on the Gettysburg battlefield by Civil War veterans of the five regiments of the Union Army’s Irish Brigade. His statue is on the same boulder of Cemetery Ridge where he stood to give the soldiers General Absolution on July 2, 1863, the second day of the three-day battle

Minutes later the Irish Brigade went into action at Little Round Top and the Wheatfield. The Brigade lost 27 killed, 109 wounded, and 62 missing. Gettysburg’s individual statues are of generals, except President Lincoln, Chaplain Corby, and a civilian.

This duplicate statue was dedicated here in 1911. Father Corby was president of Notre Dame twice: 1866-72, 1877-82. He planned the Grotto, finished in 1896, and died in 1897.

Chicago Avenue Stroll: Buildings & Murals

Posted on March 31, 2022 by admin

No chance to see the aurora borealis here in northern Illinois last night, even if it was there to be seen. Yesterday was overcast all day, producing light but steady rain late in the evening and throughout the night, as far as I could tell.

Today was overcast as well, with light snow in the morning and again in the evening. So much for March going out like a lamb.

On Sunday, which was chilly but sunny, I took a stroll down Chicago Avenue for a few blocks. Chicago is a major east-west street, crossing the city and into the suburbs and running more than 12 miles, according to a Google Maps estimate. The eastern terminus is at Lake Shore Drive, but not before you pass such notable places as Michigan Avenue, the Chicago Water Tower and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Where I walked, roughly 2300 W. to 2000 W. Chicago — about four miles west of Lake Michigan — the street is the commercial hub of Ukrainian Village, though not everything on the street has anything to do with Ukraine or its diaspora. Such as Fatso’s Last Stand. That’s very Chicago; it could be just about anywhere in the city.

One of two locations of this name in Chicago, owned by an entity that has other restaurants and bars in the city, but also in New York and Charleston. I ought to try it sometime. I like a hot dog stand that has its own mural.

It’s on the wall facing Oakley Blvd., which crosses Chicago Avenue at that point. The artist, one Felipe Solorzano, has some images on Instagram. It didn’t occur to me until I looked at them that people pose in front of the wings. I’ve seen that before, but not in Chicago.

The wings form the center panel in a triptych of paintings, if that term is correct for murals. Anyway, there are three distinct paintings on the Fatso’s wall. I didn’t take a picture of all of them, but Google did.

The new mural is dated 2019. That synchs with the always-useful Street View, which tells me that the current mural appeared between June 2018 and August 2019. Before that, there was a different mural.

How to describe that? A Ukrainian-Custer-hot dog stand vibe. Perhaps the owners felt obliged to cancel Custer, though I doubt most passersby gave it much thought. In any case, the earlier mural appeared some time after October 2015. Before that, just a red wall.

Across Chicago Avenue from Fatso’s is another mural. I don’t have any information about its creator, but he or she has some talent.

This one appeared between August 2019 and July 2021. I believe the mural vogue that seems to be under way in Chicago is a good thing. Spices up the city.

Elsewhere on the street, I took a look at some smaller commercial buildings, which are sinews of an urban neighborhood like Ukrainian Village: a shop on the first floor, an apartment or two or more above, perhaps where a shopkeeper used to live, and might still live in some cases. These buildings usually don’t command much attention, and maybe they don’t need to, but they can actually be fairly aesthetic.

I like that small one, tucked in the middle.

Another mural. Little information on this one either, but that’s hardy necessary to enjoy it.

I see on Street View that the mural appeared between August 2019 and August 2021, the same span when the first floor of the building went from being occupied by a hair salon — knocked off by the pandemic, probably — to being a vintage clothing store called the Stoop.

Not on Chicago Avenue, but a block to the north on Rice St. I wandered by it as well.

This is home to St. Nicholas School of the Arts, which is affiliated with the St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral. A cornerstone gives the building date as 1935, but that’s all I know. Handsome structure, though.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Public Art