The Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland

Posted on November 4, 2021 by admin

Have you really been to a city if you haven’t taken some form of public transit there? A subway or a bus, if those are available?

Maybe. But I can think of certain exceptions, such as Saigon, whose bus system was described as “user hostile” in a ’90s guidebook I had. Things might be different now, but in 1994 we got around using three-wheeled cyclos, taxis that tended to be Japanese cars, and — going to the airport — a Trabi functioning (barely) as a taxi.

I didn’t rent a car in the Bay Area, partly to cut costs, but also because I didn’t particularly want to drive around San Francisco or Oakland, put off by the prospect of steep hills, carjacking, etc. So I got around by foot, subway and bus. Last Thursday I caught a bus in downtown Oakland and took it to the shores of Lake Merritt. That’s still in the city, and not an especially long ride, but further than I wanted to walk at that moment.

One thing I wanted to see near the lake was the Cathedral of Christ the Light, seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of Oakland and a recent development.

The building was completed in 2008 to replace the Cathedral of Saint Francis de Sales, which was irreparably damaged in the 1989 earthquake and later razed. As modernist churches go, I liked Christ the Light better than the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in LA.

“Designed by the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), with Craig Hartman, FAIA, as the design partner (and Kendall Heaton Associates the architect of record), the glass, wood, and concrete structure reaffirms the power of an abstract Modern form to function as both a spiritual and civic presence,” wrote Suzanne Stephens in Architectural Record not long after the cathedral opened.

“It also evokes the manipulation of light and space memorably demonstrated by the modern religious architecture of Eero Saarinen, Louis Kahn, Jørn Utzon, and Frank Lloyd Wright.”

The manipulation of natural light is especially skillful, I’d say.

“The major surprise comes from encountering the 58-foot-high apparition of Christ, based on a Romanesque sculptural relief (1145–1150) on the Royal Portal of the west facade of Chartres Cathedral,” Stephens notes.

“Rather than erecting a stained-glass window behind the altar, the architectural team took a digital image of the Chartres Christ and created a mammoth artwork with 94,000 laser-cut perforations on 10-by-5-foot anodized-aluminum panels. Light admitted through the translucent frosted film on the glass of the north-facing Omega Window seeps softly through the panels. The process enhances the image’s ethereal quality: The Christ seems to float like a hologram above the circular altar.”

“Atop the structure, a vesica pisces–shaped oculus of dichroic glass admits more light to the sanctuary, albeit filtered by faceted aluminum panels.”

I spent some time in the side chapels as well, which sport older religious artwork.
Such as in the Chapel of the Suffering Christ.

In the Chapel of All Saints.

In the Chapel of the Holy Family.

I was glad to see Joseph holding Jesus. I might be wrong, but I don’t think that’s depicted as much as Mary holding Jesus.

Open House: Synagogues

Posted on October 20, 2021 by admin

One synagogue open for Open House Chicago last weekend was KAM Isaiah Israel in Hyde Park. It’s across the street from the Obama residence, in fact, though I’m certain that’s a coincidence, and besides, the synagogue’s been there a lot longer.

“KAM Isaiah Israel is the oldest Jewish congregation in the Midwest and its leaders, members and buildings have played an important role in Jewish history, American social justice movements, and architectural history,” Open House says. (KAM = Kehilath Anshe Maarav = “Congregation of the Men of the West.”)

“KAM was founded in 1847 and had several locations in Chicago before settling in Hyde Park… The synagogue’s architecture [Alfred S. Alschuler] was inspired by Byzantine structures and an ancient synagogue in Tiberias, Israel.”

There’s an impressive dome, but I didn’t capture it.

The entrance, also impressive.

“Although KAM began as an Orthodox congregation, our members began to reform their practice almost from the beginning,” the synagogue web site says. “In 1852, conflict over issues of Reform and traditional observances led to the creation of a new congregation, B’nai Sholom. In 1874, KAM became a founding member of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, now known as the Union for Reform Judaism.”

The ceiling.

Stained glass.

The other synagogue we visited was out in the near western suburb of River Forest: Temple Har Zion. It’s a modernist work of Loebl, Schlossman and Bennett, completed in 1953.

The building is divided into two large parts. The sanctuary.

On the other side of the wall is Gottlieb Hall, just as large, but without any seats. Its main feature are five stained glass windows designed by William Gropper in 1967, which my pictures do no justice to. Gropper’s best known as a cartoonist.

“Instead of traditional stained glass techniques, Gropper used one inch thick chunks of brilliantly colored glass which were cut to shape and chipped or faceted on the surface,” Temple Har Zion says. “Each window is two stories high and contain 11 panels of this chiseled glass set in a matrix… these vibrant windows which represent some of the most familiar stories of Genesis.”

One of the fascinations of the windows is working from top to bottom — and right to left — to pick out the stories of Genesis chronologically. This is the far right window, starting with Creation toward the top and working down to the creatures of the land and sea toward the bottom.

A detail of the next window: the Flood.

The end of the Flood.

Anyone who insists that the 1960s was a poor period for design isn’t looking hard enough.

Open House: Catholic Churches

Posted on October 19, 2021 by admin

During Open House Chicago on Saturday, we wanted to see a place called Boxville — “a 17-[shipping] container open-air marketplace full of art, music, food and a variety of entrepreneurial businesses,” the Open House web site says.

But it looked entirely too crowded as we drove by — people waiting for a tour, or a regular shopping crowd? — and there wasn’t anywhere to park close by. Since Boxville is at the E. 51st Street station on the CTA Green Line, that might be the best way to reach it some other day.

So we went on to Corpus Christi Catholic Church, which is at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. and E. 49th St., not too far away. Except that as a functioning Catholic church, Corpus Christi has seen its last mass, which was on June 27.

“Corpus Christi… along with St. Ambrose, St. Anselm, St. Elizabeth and Holy Angels churches, will merge July 1 into one new ‘Our Lady of Africa’ parish, under the Archdiocese of Chicago’s ‘Renew My Church’ initiative, ongoing since 2018,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported in June.

“Under Renew My Church, struggling churches and schools are being closed or consolidated, to cut costs for aging infrastructure, as well as to address a priest shortage.

“And while many parishes continue to struggle with challenges from the changing demographics of Catholic mass and school attendance, the sense of loss from closings and consolidations remains the same.”

Thus the future of the building is uncertain. One of the docents told me she hoped another religious organization would buy the property, but it would be an expensive proposition. Still, someone should consider making a deal with the Archdiocese. It’s a resplendent church, especially inside.

But maintenance is clearly an issue.

“This Renaissance Revival building by Joseph W. McCarthy has twin spires and a deeply-coffered ceiling,” says Open House. “Brightly colored stained glass windows, designed in Germany by F.X. Zettler, depict the original church members processing with Pope Pius X…

“During the Great Migration of the 1930s, the church went from serving a predominantly Irish-American community to serving an African-American community.”

Fine detail is evident, including small mosaics.

A few blocks south of the Midway Plaisance, in a block that’s clearly gentrifying, is the Shrine of Christ the King. This is how the exterior looked on Saturday.

This is a Street View from July 2017, a year and some months after a fire gutted the church.

“More than 150 firefighters were called the 90-year-old church, located in the 6400 block of South Woodlawn Avenue…” WLS reported in October 2015. “Chicago Fire Department detectives said spontaneous combustion from rags used to stain the floor of the choir pew is the mostly likely culprit.

“The Shrine of Christ the King was originally a Catholic church, known first as St. Clara and then as St. Gelasius. As the size of the parish diminished, the building faced demolition. However, the building was given historic status and taken over by a religious order in 2006.”

Namely, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, which has been around only since 1990 and whose U.S. national headquarters is in Chicago. The building is considerably older, the final work of ecclesiastical architect Henry J. Schlacks, completed in 1927 (and suffering a previous fire in 1976).

The interior is still completely unfinished. All you could do is look in from the entrance, and hear about its pending restoration from volunteers. I’m all for that, so I put a small donation in the box on the table at the door.

On Sunday, while Yuriko was busy creating a most delicious marble cake —

— I headed to the North Side to take a look at St. Vincent de Paul Church.

“St. Vincent de Paul serves a parish founded in 1875 by the Vincentian order,” Open House says. “The present-day church was completed in 1897, considered to represent architect James Egan’s finest work… The church is constructed of Indiana limestone blending Romanesque architecture like rounded doorways and arcades with French Gothic details such as the large, soaring windows.”

Wonderful to see, but when I left I also took note of a more everyday wonder. Food. Across the street from the church is a joint called Jam ‘n Honey. People were sitting at tables out on the sidewalk, eating what looked like delicious breakfasts. I’ll have to keep that in mind for future reference.

Open House: Protestant Churches

Posted on October 18, 2021 by admin

During Open House Chicago on Saturday, we dropped by a number of open churches, as usual. Chicago has many. Our first religious site was the United Church of Hyde Park, a Romanesque Revival structure designed by Gregory A. Vigeant, dating from 1889.

“United Church of Hyde Park is a tri-denominational faith community (United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church USA, and United Methodist Church),” the church web site says. A Protestant parfait, I guess.

They’re barely visible, but the names of the Apostles are inscribed around the dome.

There are 12 places for names, and while I can’t read them, I assume they include Matthias rather than Judas. I’d hope so, anyway.

Elsewhere in Hyde Park is Augustana Lutheran Church.

It’s a mid-60s modernist design by Edward Dart, who is better known for Water Tower Place on Michigan Ave., though he did a lot of churches as well.

“A church more than any other building should reflect today’s culture, feeling, and the renaissance of our own era,” Dart said. That meant midcentury brick and concrete, and for all that not a bad design.

The Augustana grounds also include a spot of green space behind a brick wall near the street. Part of the space is given over to a columbarium.

Interestingly, the plaques on the wall (to the right in the above picture) don’t mark niches. Rather, they name people whose ashes have been scattered in the churchyard.

I suppose that’s Paul, though the only thing that tells me so is text on the wall nearby, from his Epistle to the Romans.

One more neighborhood Protestant church: Hyde Park Union Church, a 1906 design by James Gamble Rogers.

A bit dark inside, but I understand the acoustics are really good.

Plus some impressive Tiffany windows, such as one depicting Joshua and Moses.

As the name indicates, the current church was formed by a merger between congregations. In this case, American Baptist Churches-USA and United Church of Christ.

During the course of the day, we passed by a few other churches that I’d have peeked inside, had they been open. Such as a Baptist church in Bronzeville, which is otherwise home to a number of fine churches.

And a Unitarian church of considerable heft, back in Hyde Park.

I can’t remember visiting a Unitarian church before, though I probably have. Still, I was definitely curious to know how this one is decorated inside. Like this, turns out.

Two More Milwaukee Churches

Posted on September 30, 2021 by admin

Royal road to the unconscious, eh? Last night a pleasant elderly couple appeared in a dream: “Mr. and Mrs. Folger.” He didn’t look like anyone I knew, but she looked like Virginia Christine. I know, of course, that wasn’t her name in the commercials, but tell it to the unconscious.

The last two Doors Open places we visited in Milwaukee on Saturday were churches, not far from the cluster of churches we saw in 2017 along or near Juneau St. One this time was St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

A Richardsonian Romanesque design by the busy Victorian architect Edward Townsend Mix, completed in 1884 for the oldest Episcopal parish in Milwaukee. No Cream City brick this time, but rather another Wisconsin material: red Lake Superior Sandstone, found near the Apostle Islands, and (I think) similar to Jacobsville Sandstone up in the UP.

The church is known for its Tiffany windows, one of which is reportedly the largest opalescent glass window the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany ever made, at 22 feet x 28 feet. That would be “Christ Leaving the Praetorium.” My pictures didn’t turn out so well, but fortunately there’s a public domain image available.

A few blocks away is St. Rita Catholic Church. Its current iteration didn’t exist when we were nearby in 2017. The church was completed only last year.

“St. Rita Church at 1601 N. Cass St. began in 1933 as a mission outpost of the old Italian parish, the Blessed Virgin of Pompeii Church in Milwaukee’s Third Ward,” the Three Holy Women Parish web site says. “Its basement church was blessed as a new independent parish in 1937, then a building was erected and blessed in 1939… In 2018, the church was demolished with plans to build St. Rita Square, a six-story senior housing campus operated by Capri Senior Communities, along with a new St. Rita Church.”

Some elements of the new church were part of the old St. Rita, and a few were even part of the Blessed Virgin of Pompeii, which was razed in 1967 for highway construction.

“One of those artifacts, an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Gabriel, is already visible to passersby,” Urban Milwaukee reported in early 2020. “Sculpted in 1904, the year the pink church [Blessed Virgin of Pompeii] was constructed, it had been on the top of St. Rita since 1969. It now rests atop its third church.”

St. Rita has an inviting but relatively spare interior.

The church also has some nice stained glass.

I didn’t know much about the saint. Anything, actually. She’s Rita of Cascia (1381-1457).

Now I know a little more, such as she’s the patron of abused spouses and difficult marriages, among many other awful situations.

Two Churches in Bay View, Milwaukee

Posted on September 27, 2021 by admin

Just at first glace on Saturday morning, the Bay View neighborhood in Milwaukee seemed alive with small businesses and pedestrians along S. Kinnickinnic Ave. (long ago, an Indian trace). I was glad to see it.

The place has a long history, founded separately from Milwaukee. “Captain Eber Brock Ward of Michigan opened his third rolling mill, the Milwaukee Iron Co., in Bay View in 1868,” the Bay View Historical Society says.

“Within a year the village of Bay View sprung up as a company town around the steel mill. Cottages erected for mill workers became the center of the village. Many of these cottages are still occupied today and are a part of the diverse architecture of the Bay View neighborhood.

“With village incorporation in 1879, its rapid growth and demands for city services were so great that a vote was taken and the village was annexed to the city of Milwaukee in 1887.”

Rising at a bend on Kinnickinnic is St. Lucas Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Originally, Evangelische Lutherische St. Lucas Kirche zu Bay View, since it is yet another Midwestern church founded by German immigrants, with the building completed in 1888.

Built using good old Cream City brick, a local specialty.

“The church commissioned architect Herman P. Schnetzky (1849-1916) to design its new place of worship,” Architecture of Faith says. “Schnetzky was born in the town of Wriezen in the Kingdom of Prussia… He came to Milwaukee as a young man and worked in the office of H.C. Koch and Company from 1874 or a bit earlier, [establishing] his own office in 1887.

“Schnetzky’s design for St. Lucas Lutheran is quite similar to his design for St. Martini Lutheran, built just a year prior to St. Lucas on Cesar Chavez Drive and Orchard Street on the South Side. He went on to design at least five other churches in Milwaukee by 1896, under his own name and in partnership with Eugene Liebert.”

A few blocks northwest of St. Lucas is St. Augustine of Hippo Catholic Church, finished in 1908. More Cream City brick.

It too was developed for a German-speaking congregation, with a design by Brust & Philipp, a very busy firm 100 years ago.

A volunteer told me that the platform extending out from the apse (a term he didn’t use) was added after the Catholic church “changed a bunch of things” in the 1960s (not using the term Vatican II). I guess he was used to talking to people who had no notion of that bit of ecclesiastical history. Anyway, the platform was thought better to facilitate priestly interaction with the congregation, now that they faced each other.

He didn’t know who had made the stained glass windows, except that they were original to the church and not added later. They’re wonderful.

The Stations of the Cross on the wall, on the other hand, were salvaged from another Milwaukee church that closed some years ago, though they look like they belong in their current place.

Emerging from the church, I noticed a couple of men on a porch across the street from St. Augustine.

Just a couple of regular Milwaukee guys getting ready for their Saturday doings?

Doors Open Milwaukee ’21

Posted on September 26, 2021 by admin

Warmish weekend, good for walking around. We did that in Milwaukee yesterday, because the Doors Open Milwaukee event has returned after last year’s cancellation. We drove up in mid-morning and returned not too long after dark, as we did in 2019 and 2018 and 2017. One difference this year was that a few — not all — places required a mask.

Another wrinkle this time is that we took the dog. Leaving her at home alone for more than a few hours is just asking for a mess to clean up upon return. So that meant for most of the places we went, we took turns, as one of us stayed with the dog, either in the car or walking her around.

First we went to the Bay View neighborhood south of downtown, a place that got its start as a 19th-century company town. In our time it seems pretty lively. There we sought out St. Lucas Evangelical Lutheran Church and St. Augustine of Hippo Catholic Church, both late 19th-century/early 20th-century edifices themselves, distinctly built of cream brick.

In the Burnham Park neighborhood of Milwaukee, southwest of downtown, you can find the Burnham Block. In fact, an organization called Frank Lloyd Wright’s Burnham Block, which is part of Wisconsin’s Frank Lloyd Wright Trail, very much wants you to come see the six small houses on that block, designed by The Genius.

Who are we to resist the call of FLW? We went there next. So did a fair number of people late that morning, more than at any other place we saw yesterday. This was part of the line to get in.

Taking turns looking at FLW’s work took up a fair amount of time. Afterward we repaired to a park for a drive-through-obtained lunch. Then we went to Forest Home Cemetery. Usually, I can’t persuade Yuriko to visit cemeteries, but the Doors Open feature was its chapel, which she was willing to visit.

Then, to my complete surprise, she wanted to walk the dog through the cemetery as I stopped here and there among its many stones and funerary art. Forest Home is an historic rural cemetery movement cemetery, as fine an example as I’ve seen anywhere.

We had time enough after the cemetery for two more churches in East Town — or maybe the Lower East Side, hard to tell — St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and St. Rita’s Catholic Church.

By the time we’d finished those, it was 5 pm and Doors Open was done for the day. But I didn’t quite want to head home. I wanted to find a place to see the Milwaukee skyline, something I’d never done in all the years I’ve been coming to that city.

It didn’t take long.

That’s the view from Veterans Park on Lake Michigan, and it illustrates one of the advantages of the Milwaukee MSA (pop. 1.57 million) compared with the Chicago MSA (pop. 9.6 million).

The logistics of getting to that view of Milwaukee were exactly this: drive to Veterans Park, park on the road for free, and walk about two minutes. To reach a similar vantage to see the vastly larger Chicago skyline, I shouldn’t have to point out, is much more complicated, and free doesn’t enter into it.

Veterans Park in Milwaukee also has some nice amenities, such as a place called Kites.

At Kites, you can buy kites, as well as snacks. We got some nachos.

People were out flying kites. The wind was up but it wasn’t too cold, so it was a good afternoon for it. If we’d gotten there earlier, we might have as well.

We walked the dog again, this time a little ways along the lake.

It was a good afternoon for that, too.

Green Bay: State & Church

Posted on September 14, 2021 by admin

The town of Green Bay wasn’t our primary destination over Labor Day weekend, but when I stay somewhere, I like to look around if I can. Never know what you’ll see, such as a bit of history of the Green Bay Packers.

Moreover, the sign said there’s a Packers Heritage Trail. A little further investigation reveals information posted by the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay.

“The Packers Heritage Trail consists of 22 commemorative bronze plaques. The trailhead is located at the front entrance of the Neville Public Museum. On the journey, you can see Curly Lambeau’s childhood home, as well as the birthplace of the Packers. Visit the train depot that sent off the team for road games. Stop at City Stadium, where the Packers played home games from 1925 to 1956. You will also see the hotel that Vince Lombardi held his first press conference as Head Coach, and the church where he attended daily mass.”

By golly, that’s quite a trail. The plaque pictured above is on the grounds of the Brown County Courthouse, itself a sight to see.

A Charles E. Bell design. He did other courthouses around the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the Montana and South Dakota state capitols. This courthouse dates from 1910, and with its Beaux Arts-ness, reminded me of the Palacio de Belles Artes in Mexico City.

Also on the courthouse grounds is “The Spirit of the Northwest,” by Sidney Bedore and dedicated in June 1931. Looks good for being out in the Wisconsin elements for 90 years; maybe it’s been restored at some point.
The trio are an unnamed Fox Indian, Jesuit missionary Claude Allouez, who arrived in the area in 1669, and Nicholas Perrot, an explorer who arrived about 1664 and claimed the lands around the bay for the King of France.

One more: an unusually modest memorial to the Civil War veterans of Brown County. Late, too — erected in 1934 by the Woman’s Relief Corps No. 91 of the GAR.

A few blocks away from the courthouse is St. Francis Xavier Cathedral, the cathedral church of the Diocese of Green Bay, completed in 1881.

“The original cost of $35,000 was contributed by the immigrant population of the area, the Bavarian Mission Society in Germany, including a donation from King Ludwig I and friends of Bishop Francis Xavier Krautbauer, the second Bishop of the Diocese of Green Bay,” the cathedral web site says. “The architecture is Romanesque in form and was modeled on the Ludwigkirche in Munich, Germany, where then Msgr. Krautbauer was pastor before immigrating to the United States.

“Bishop Krautbauer is interred under a granite slab in the floor at the Bishop Wycislo entrance. A 40-by-25-foot mural entitled ‘The Crucifixion’ is painted on the rear wall of the sanctuary. It was painted in 1883 by Johann Schmitt, a German immigrant.”

Immaculate Conception, St. Matthew’s & Other Fairbanks Churches

Posted on August 12, 2021 by admin

On the Chena River across from Fairbank’s Golden Heart Plaza is Immaculate Conception Church, built by Father Francis Monroe, S.J. early in the city’s history (1904) south of the river, but moved to its present position (north of the river) across the frozen Chena in the winter of 1911-12. Modern moving techniques weren’t available, so townspeople were taking bets as to whether the building would actually make it across.

The view of downtown from the church.

Nice flowerbeds, too.

Immaculate Conception is the oldest Catholic church in the interior of Alaska, and at one time counted as a cathedral. That title and the seat of the Diocese of Fairbanks is elsewhere these days, at Sacred Heart Cathedral, which I drove by but didn’t stop at.

I was glad to find the church open.

That was the only Fairbanks church I ventured inside of, but I did stop for a look at a few other exteriors, such as First United Methodist, just outside downtown.

The more modernist First Presbyterian, not far from city hall.

And the Episcopalian St. Matthew’s, founded in 1904.

“St. Matthews is one of the three oldest churches in Fairbanks, located on First Avenue, across the street from the Chena River,” the church web site says. (South of the river.) The view of the Chena at that point:

“The original church building burned in 1947, but the great wooden altar and other carvings were saved, and were replaced with the present St. Matthew’s Church building. First services in the new church were held Christmas Eve, 1948. Its congregation numbers about 1,200, over half of which are Alaskan Native. The Lord’s Prayer is prayed nearly every Sunday (if a speaker is present) in the Gwitch’in, the Athabaskan language, as well as in English.”

The church also has a deep and unexpected (to me, anyway) connection with the first ascent of Mt. Denali. The Episcopal Archdeacon of Alaska and the Yukon, Hudson Stuck, held the first service at St. Matthew’s on October 16, 1904.

Less than nine years later, in the spring of 1913, Stuck led the first expedition to summit Denali, or McKinley, as it was known at the time. Three other men were with him: “Walter Harper, the youngest at age twenty, half Alaskan Native, fit and confident; Harry Karstens, thirty-four, calmly competent from his years in the Alaskan backcountry; and Robert Tatum, twenty-one, the greenest member of the team,” the Daily Beast notes.

The final push came on June 7. “They had launched this expedition eight weeks earlier, enduring bitter cold, severe altitude, and the loss of key supplies to a campfire…

“How did an Episcopal Archdeacon, well into middle age by the standards of the time, come to find himself in the freezing final summit push on the highest, coldest peak on the continent? The answer lay in two equally potent forces, woven into his being. Just as strong as Hudson Stuck’s belief in doing good — “I am sorry for a life in which there is no usefulness to others,” he once wrote — was his love of wild places.

“For Stuck, Alaska was a place where his physical and spiritual aspirations, his goals for himself and for his mission, could be united into a single purpose. ‘I would rather climb Mount McKinley than own the richest gold mine in Alaska,’ he claimed. He was not alone in his desire.”

A fascinating tale about someone I’d never heard of. Stuck was not, however, the first to the summit that day. He tapped Walter Harper for that honor.

“Harper was born in late 1892 and was the son of a Koyukon-Athabascan mother, Seentaána, and a legendary gold prospector father, Arthur Harper,” the NPS says.
“Walter was raised by his mother and was fluent in Koyukon-Athabascan. Tanana was his home village and he eventually attended the Saint Mark’s Mission school in Nenana before becoming a guide for Missionary Hudson Stuck. Stuck’s faith in Harper as a skilled guide and outdoorsman eventually led to his participation in the Denali summit expedition.”

Harper might well have become an important figure in the Alaska Territory, but he had the great misfortune to be aboard the Princess Sophia in October 1918, which sank en route from Skagway to Vancouver after striking Vanderbilt Reef, with the loss of all 350-plus souls — another story I’d never heard.

Alaska 3, Nenana & Warren Gamaliel Harding

Posted on August 8, 2021 by admin

One way to get from Fairbanks to the entrance of Denali NP is to ride the Alaska Railroad. In fact, that was the original route for tourism into the interior of Alaska, though I suspect from the 1920s to the early ’70s, most people came up from the port of Seward to access the grandeur of McKinley NP, as it was then known.

I considered taking the train down from Fairbanks myself — the wonderfully named Denali Star. That would have been a cool ride. But the pandemic bollixed up its schedule. Last year, the passenger trains didn’t run. This year, at least as I planned things back in April, service was more limited than it had been before 2020, such that I couldn’t make the train work for me logistically.

That’s how, on July 28, I came to be in a rental car heading west and then south from Fairbanks on the route Alaska 3. I picked the car up at the airport in Fairbanks at noon that day. Along with the other documents, the rental company gave me a list of proscribed roads.

Mostly gravel roads. During my ride on the Dalton Highway the day before, the driver told us that if you look closely, you’ll notice that a lot of cars and trucks in Alaska have cracked windshields. Insurance typically doesn’t cover that kind of damage, since gravel roads tend to dish it out too regularly.

The list is interesting for another reason, in that it gives names instead of route numbers. Most Alaska highways, it seems, are known by their names rather than numbers. I asked the bus driver on the Dalton whether that road had a number, and he had to think before he told me. It’s Alaska 11, but no one calls it that, and I didn’t see any signs along the way using the number.
In Fairbanks and a little ways south, I also drove on Alaska 2, but the signs called it the Steese Highway (not to worry, I was well south of Mile Post 81).

Later I learned that Alaska 2, the Steese, is the Alaskan portion of the Alaska Highway. I smile at the thought that I’ve driven on the Alaska Highway, even if only about 12 miles of it between Fairbanks and the town of North Pole.

As for the road between Fairbanks and Denali NP, its name is the George Parks Highway, named for a mining engineer and governor of the Alaska Territory in the 1920s and ’30s. Remarkably, he lived to see his name attached to the road, since he died at age 100 in 1984.

I didn’t see too many signs calling it the Parks Highway, though. Mostly I saw the Alaska 3 signs, featuring the state name, the number, and the Big Dipper and Polaris, arrayed as they are in the northern sky and the Alaska flag. An excellent design, one that made me think, damn — I’m in Alaska. For miles at a time, those were the only signs I saw. The road the was remarkably free of most the signage you might see elsewhere: directional signs, mileage signs, billboards and so on.

Alaska 3 was mostly a two-lane shot through the boreal forest. The terrain between Fairbanks and Denali NP, which runs about 125 miles, follows the Tanana River, and then passes by the Minto Flats and the Tanana Flats, so it isn’t a mountainous crossing. I suppose that facilitated the road’s construction, completed only 50 years ago.

That isn’t a long drive, certainly not for someone who learned to drive in Texas. But it was mesmerizing in a way that few roads are. Traffic was light, so my eyes were able to wander sometimes from the road ahead to the forested expanse on either side.

The were a few directional signs. My favorite.

That was at an intersection with Alaska 3 in the town of Nenana, the only settlement of any size (pop. 341) between suburban Fairbanks and the tourist town of Healy, just north of the entrance to Denali NP.

The road crosses the Tanana River at the town of Nenana, very near where the Nenana River — which I would see later, near the national park — joins the Tanana, on its way to the Yukon River.
The other bridge in the town of Nenana (across the Tanana River) is the Mears Memorial Bridge, which takes the railroad across the river. More about that shortly.

Nenana seemed like a good place to look around. Near the highway is a cluster of tourist and memorial structures, including a boat out of water, the Taku Chief.
The nearby sign says: “The last commercial wooden tug to ply the Yukon and Tanana River Basins, the Taku began her career in 1938 in Southeast Alaska. After 7 years in service she was requisitioned by the CAA for use on the rivers of the Interior. In 1956, she joined the fleet of Yutana Barge Lines, and after a colorful history, the sandbars and sweepers finally took their toll. On July 18, 1978, she was condemned. She rests in her last port, Nenana, a tribute to the heartbeat of Alaska transportation.”

Near the ship is another casting of the James Grant work memorializing the Alaska Territorial Guard, 1942-47.

The town’s main street (besides the highway) is A Street, with a scattering of houses, buildings, abandoned buildings and empty lots. The pandemic might have done in this business; or maybe it closed before then.

St. Mark’s Mission church.

“The Episcopal Church, continuing work done by Episcopal and Anglican missionaries along the Yukon River, envisioned a series of missions throughout the Tanana basin to serve its Native population,” Sketches of Alaska says. “Eventually four missions were established: St. Barnabas at Chena Native Village, Luke’s at Salcha, St. Timothy’s at Tanacross (near Tok), and St. Mark’s at Nenana…

“The picturesque church is similar in design to other Episcopal mission churches throughout Interior Alaska — a log structure with gable front and bell tower. The 22-foot by 28-foot building is constructed of logs squared on three sides, with the bottom courses of logs flaring outwards. Gothic arched windows contain stained glass, and the building is topped by a shake roof.”

At A Street and Front Street near the Tanana River is a curious tower.

I didn’t look that up till I got home. I’d assumed it was some kind of winter sporting event, but no. Wiki: “The Nenana Ice Classic is an annual ice pool contest held in Nenana, Alaska. It is an event in which individuals attempt to guess the exact time the Tanana River ice will break up at Nenana.

“The ‘tripod,’ which actually has four supports, is planted on the river ice between the highway and railroad bridges in Nenana, 300 ft from the shore… A line is attached to the top of the tripod and once that end is anchored the other end is taken to the Ice Classic tower nearby on the banks of the river. Attached there to the clock inside the tower, when the ice goes out and moves the tripod 100 feet the line breaks and stops the clock.”

The pool is no small potatoes. According to the pool web site, the prize money in 2021 totaled $233,591. The clock stopped on April 30 at 12:50 pm and the prize was split among 12 winners. The rest of the funds generated by the pool go to local charities.

The Wiki photo of the tripod looked awfully familiar. Then I remember that I’d seen the tripod, standing next to the tower (and there was another one near the Taku Chief). There was nothing to explain what they were. Tourist photographer that I am, I took a picture of one of them anyway.

Finding out what it was produced a bit of mild amazement, here during the post-trip writeup. What a fun thing to learn about, like the Sopchoppy Worm Gruntin’ Festival. How often do we look at things on the road, or near home for that matter, without the slightest idea what they are?

At the meeting of A Street and Front is the handsome Nenana depot, which still seems to be a stop on the Alaska Railroad, but it’s also the State of Alaska Railroad Museum. It was closed when I got there.

Next to the depot is a plaque and, I assume, the same golden (colored) spike that Warren G. Harding pounded on July 15, 1923, to mark the completion of the railroad. The last part completed was the Mears Memorial Bridge.

The Anchorage Daily News published an article a few years ago about presidential visits to Alaska. “The most ambitious trip to Alaska, by far, was Harding’s,” the article says. “He departed from Seattle on July 5, 1923, and returned to Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 16, 1923. During his tour he spoke in Metlakatla, Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Valdez, Seward, Anchorage, Nenana and Fairbanks, among other stops.”

At that moment, he was running out of days, though neither he nor the nation knew it. President Harding died in San Francisco on August 2, 1923, not long after his visit to Alaska.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Religious Sites