A Tale of Two Kentucky Distilleries

Posted on January 11, 2024 by admin

Oh, boy.

Winter’s been pretty easy on us so far, but that’s almost over. We’re headed for the pit of winter now, maybe a little earlier than it usual comes (end of January, beginning of February, I always thought). It might be a long narrow pit that will be hard to climb out of.

Even so, I will enjoy Monday off, including all professional and nonprofessional writing. Back to posting on January 16.

Though not a drinking couple, we figured we couldn’t visit Bardstown, Kentucky, and not drop in on a distillery. Think of all the marketing dollars spent by the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, and the distilleries themselves, that have gone into making this part of the commonwealth a bourbon destination. Toward that end, the KDA established a “Bourbon Trail” in 1999, focusing on Kentucky, but also including operations in Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee.

First we drove to the gates of the Barton 1792 Distillery, which is in town and had a most industrial aspect to it. Also, the gates had a sign saying the place was closed to the public, in spite of what other information had told us.

So we headed out to another distillery on the map, Heaven Hill, on the outskirts of town. It’s a big operation. Off in the distance from the visitor center parking lot are clusters of enormous HH buildings – rickhouses, they’re called, a term used industrywide – to store barrels of the distillery’s products while they’re aging.

“Heaven Hill’s main campus [in Bardstown] holds 499,973 barrels and was also the site of the famous 1996 fire,” the HH web site says. “Fueled by 75 mph winds, the fire ultimately destroyed seven rickhouses and over 90,000 barrels of Bourbon, which was two percent if the world’s Bourbon at the time.”

Bacchus wept. His wheelhouse is wine, but surely he takes an interest in hard liquor too.

Wonder why the HH rickhouse designers didn’t add space for 27 more barrels, so the total would come in at an even half-million. Anyway, that’s a lot of hooch. As for the fire, I must have heard about it at the time, but have no memory of it. I understand that occasionally rickhouses collapse, too. Bad luck for any poor fool inside, who’d be victim of a freak accident. Alcohol kills a lot of people, but not many that way.

Heaven Hill was swarming with visitors, and all tours were sold out on the drizzly afternoon of December 29. We spent a little time at the visitors center looking at some of the exhibits, including about the fire, but also about the family that has run the distillery for many years, the Shipiras – originally successful Jewish merchants in Kentucky – and the original master distiller, Joseph L. Beam, who was Jim Beam’s first cousin.

Soon we went to the Willett Distillery, up the road a piece from Heaven Hill. It isn’t as large an operation, but it too is a family-run business, by descendants of John David Willett (d. 1914) and a Norwegian who showed up in America in the 1960s at a young age and eventually married into the family. Importantly for our purposes, spots were available on the last tour of the day.

Our guide was a voluble woman in her 50s, who perhaps has a sign in her house that says It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere. She was informative about distilled spirits, and herself, so we learned that she’s a widow with grown children and some grandchildren, and not originally from Kentucky. Or a bourbon drinker.

“I used to be a clear spirits gal, but since I’ve worked here, I’ve learned to love bourbon more,” she said.

I might not drink bourbon, but I appreciate the fact that distilleries have a lot of cool-looking equipment. Willett certainly does.

Best of all, we went into one of the Willett rickhouses.

Willett is small compared to Heaven Hill, with all of its barrels able to fit into one HH rickhouse, according to our guide. She said that more than once. But she also played it as a virtue, hinting — since it would be impolitic to say it outright — that the neighboring distillery was entirely too big for its britches.

Wickland, Home of Three Governors

Posted on January 10, 2024 by admin

From My Old Kentucky Home State Park, it’s a hop and skip, not even a jump, to another old Kentucky home, Wickland. Or as it is called on Google maps, Wickland, Home of Three Governors.

For good reason, it turns out. That wording is on the sign at the entrance.

Whatever else you can say about Google as a rapacious entity, you have to admire its maps. My affection for paper maps hasn’t dwindled, and I still use them, but sometimes things pop up on Google Maps that I instantly know I should visit, such as Wickland.

Though with a Bardstown address, it is a bit out of town.

Done in Georgian style, rather than Federal, Wickland is roughly a contemporary of Federal Hill (My Old Kentucky Home). We weren’t entirely sure it was open, but in we went, to be greeted by a woman perhaps 10 years younger than me whose name I forget, but who said she managed the place.

That meant taking taking down some of the Christmas decorations at that moment, but she paused that activity to tell us about the mansion for a few minutes, intimating that it was just as interesting as Federal Hill, but received much less attention. I’ll go along with that. She was the only other person there, and said that we were the only visitors so far that day.

Its original owner, one Charles A. Wickliffe, built the house in the 1810s from a design by a Baltimore architect named John Rogers, and later Wickliffe became governor of Kentucky. His son Robert C. Wickliffe grew up at Wickland but moved to Louisiana, where he was governor of that state just before the war. John Crepps Wickliffe Beckham, Charles’ grandson and John’s nephew, was also born at Wickland and he too was a governor of Kentucky, taking office in 1900 after the death of four-day Gov. William Goebel, who was assassinated. That’s an entirely different story, and one I won’t get into, but more about it is here.

John Rogers, incidentally, designed the Basilica of Saint Joseph Proto-Cathedral in Bardstown, which was locked when we came by the same day.

After our brief chat, the manager of Wickland turned us loose for a self-guided tour. That is, we wandered around the mansion’s three floors, completely unsupervised. Also, unlike at Federal Hill, we could take pictures, so I did.

Nice. Not all of the Christmas decorations were down yet.

Wickland doesn’t charge anything to visit, but we made a donation equal to what we paid to see the more ballyhooed My Old Kentucky Home. Seemed only right.

My Old Kentucky Home State Park

Posted on January 8, 2024 by admin

When John Rowan began work on a house for his family in north-central Kentucky in the 1790s, he called it Federal Hill. Finally completed in 1818 largely by slave labor, it stands today as the centerpiece of My Old Kentucky Home State Park in the outskirts of Bardstown, a handsome structure in a pleasant setting.

Besides surviving an 1801 duel in which he killed the other fellow, and beating the rap, Rowan went on to be an important politico in early Kentucky, including a term in the U.S. Senate as an antagonist to Henry Clay and the Whigs, being a Jackson man. He died in 1843, missing the later unpleasantness, and even the war the Mexico.

We visited around noon on December 29. We were the only ones on the tour, in contrast (later that same day) to the distilleries we visited. I hadn’t read much about the place before the visit, and vaguely assumed that there was some good reason that the property’s current name evokes the famed Stephen Foster song. It inspired him in the composition in some way, perhaps.

The house museum doesn’t exactly discourage this line of thinking. At the visitors center is this portrait of Foster.

There he is, in a 1939 painting by Howard Chandler Christy, receiving the gift of composition from a muse – Euterpe, I suppose, muse of music and lyric poetry and, perhaps, the modern popular song. To the left of the muse’s wings (did muses have wings?) is the entrance of Federal Hill, and there are visual references to some of Foster’s other songs as well.

The Kentucky Colonels’ organization commissioned the painting for the world’s fair in New York that year, and “My Old Kentucky Home” had become the official state (commonwealth) song not too many years earlier. So I assume the Colonels wanted to emphasize a Kentucky connection with the famed song, aside from the fact that the name is in the title and opening lines.

An aside: I know that a Kentucky Colonelcy is an honor bestowed by the commonwealth, but I’m still a little surprised by some of the names on this list, such as Princess Anne, Bob Barker, Foster Brooks (well, he was from Louisville), Phyllis Diller, George Harrison (actually, all the Beatles, even Ringo), David Schwimmer, Red Skelton, and both Smothers brothers (RIP, Tom).

The museum (at least in our time) doesn’t explicitly claim that Federal Hill was an inspiration for the song, since the evidence for that seems to be gossamer thin. I’ve read conflicting reports about whether Stephen Foster, described as a “cousin” of the Rowan family – which could mean various levels of consanguinity in the loose definitions of 19th-century America – even visited Federal Hill from his home in Pittsburgh.

It is clear, however, that “My Kentucky Home” was inspired by Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and as such, sympathized with slaves separated from family members without pity or recourse. The song’s association with a particular mansion in Kentucky, namely this particular one, apparently came later – well after the Civil War. The idea seems to have been promoted by, among others, the last member of the Rowan family to own the mansion, an elderly granddaughter who managed to sell the property to the commonwealth in the early 1920s.

Can’t really blame her if she took a little creative liberty with the history of Federal Hill, since she probably wanted to live somewhere with less expensive upkeep. Also, such a thing would be firmly within the American (and entirely human) tradition of historical storytelling known as “making things up.”

Be that as it may, Federal Hill is well appointed inside with period items, and our guide, a young woman dressed antebellum style, knew her non-made-up stuff. She also sang the first verse of “My Old Kentucky Home” for us, in a pleasant and practiced voice, which I understand is part of all the tours. Of course, the first lines weren’t quite the Steven Foster original, being:

The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home/
‘Tis summer, the people are gay.

The Kentucky legislature mandated the change, at least for official renditions, after an embarrassing incident in 1986 when a visiting group of Japanese students sang the song, original lyrics and all, to the legislature.

Our guide mentioned, almost in passing, an horrific incident from the time of John Rowan. In 1833, the family, or many of them, ate or drank something contaminated with Vibrio cholerae, and three of Rowan’s children (he had nine), a son- and daughter-in law, a granddaughter, and his sister and brother-in-law all died of cholera in short order, as did a similar number of slaves.

Many of these Rowans are buried within sight of the mansion, and the visitor center, for that matter.

Sen. Rowan himself joined them later, marked by the obelisk. The memorial behind his, with the grieving figure and lyre, is that of Madge Rowan Frost (d. 1925), the granddaughter who sold the property to the state.

The park, in the form of its guided tour, and written material on signs, doesn’t ignore the enslaved population, as no historic property of this kind would do any more, possibly following the lead of Monticello. Sen. Rowan owned as many as 39 people at one time. A sign near the Rowan cemetery details what is known about them.

But not their burial sites; that remains unknown. Likewise, their cabins, along with most of the other outbuildings, are long gone. Mostly what you’ll see at the state park is a picturesque mansion retroactively tied to an enduring song.

Churchill Downs & The Kentucky Derby Museum

Posted on January 4, 2024 by admin

Even before you enter the grounds of Churchill Downs, you encounter bronze horses. Both are winners of the Kentucky Derby. One is Aristides, at the Paddock gate, who came in first in the first Derby in 1875 – long before it was a Run for the Roses,® or the first race of the Triple Crown,® or the Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports,® or the object of 21st-century renovations.

The Derby was about drinking and gambling from day one, I believe, and not in moderation, yet genteel enough (at least in the stands) for the monied elite — traditions that grand event upholds to the present, all the other trappings notwithstanding. What better for a spring day in Kentucky?

The other horse, and statue, is more recent: Barbaro.

I suspected right away that some physical remains of Barbaro were there as well, and yes, his ashes are, I read later. I’ve pretty much ignored thoroughbred horseracing most of my life, and even my limited interest in the ’80s was because I enjoyed going to the Derby in person. So I wondered about Barbaro. I must have heard the news story in the 2000s, but it had evaporated, gone amid the backdrop of a household with little kids.

Still, I figured, as a Derby winner his birth and death years (2003 to 2007) pretty much got to the heart of Barbaro’s career – a shooting star among race horses, brilliance to ashes. Later I looked up the details, including in a succinct, eulogizing video, and that’s about the size of it.

A thoughtful comment from the video’s comment section: Not making an anti-racing statement but, if you feel bad for Barbaro, take a moment to think about all of the other horses that broke down and died, on/off the track, too. Barbaro got kind letters, flowers, signs and even gift baskets with horse feed sent to his veterinarian centre, because he was a champion. Just seems sad that we only do that for the gifted athletes of the sport, even though every one of those incredible animals gave it their all for our entertainment.

@catarena8031

Near Barbaro is the entrance to the Kentucky Derby Museum, and near the admission desk is a countdown clock.

(As it appeared on December 28.)

While we were still in the parking lot, headed for the entrance, we passed by a young couple leaving. Out of the blue the man said to us, “Take the Barn and Backside Tour. It costs more, but it’s worth it.”

“Really?” I said, in a friendly tone. They both nodded their agreement.

“You get to see a lot more,” he said, gesturing with his hands a bit, sort of making parentheses around his sizable beard. “Some of the stables and other places behind the track.”

We agreed that that sounded good and parted ways. I asked about it at the desk. Sorry, sold out. So we got the basic tour and museum admission, a spot over $20 per person. The museum, well organized and informative but not overtaxed with dense reading, was worth a look, for a small glimpse into a whole other world.

Also, you get to see a facsimile of Mage, last year’s winner.

And the trophy War Admiral received in 1937 for winning the Derby.

Along with a good many other items. Other displays included Triple Crown winners – each one had a kiosk – how thoroughbreds are raised, the building of the track and the early races, video screens to call up and watch previous televised races (I watched ’86; I only heard it when there), images of the flamboyant hats and dresses worn by female racegoers, and the part African-Americans have played in the event, especially as jockeys: a good many in the early years, including Oliver Lewis; nil as Jim Crow solidified; some since the legal end of segregation.

The tour started with a short presentation on a 360-degree screen well above eye level: part movie, part still images with a sound track, and about what the horses and the jockeys and all the many other support staff do to put on the Derby. Quick-moving, it idealized the event somewhat, but who would expect otherwise?

The cinematography was exceptional sometimes, giving me the sense that whatever else the racehorses are, they’re massive, powerful beasts of tremendous energy. And what manor of men would perch themselves atop these beasts at their top speeds? Besides relatively small men and a few women, that is. I have a new-found respect for jockeys.

Also, it got me to thinking, a little along the lines of the comment above. Sure, it’s fine to know about the winners down the years, and I’ll go along with the notion that, say, Secretariat was a very great racer indeed. But what about the also-rans? Not just also-rans, but last rans?

Back when Aristides took the prize to the crowd’s acclaim, a horse named Gold Mine proved not to be one, coming in 15th and last. When Sir Barton won on his way to the first Triple Crown in 1919, Vindex was 12th and last.

Vindex? After the Roman who rebelled, unsuccessfully, against Nero? Could be. I can imagine the owner reading about the bold Vindex in the works of I forget which Roman historian. It would have been a thing for a horse-owning Kentucky gentleman to do in his youth in late 19th century, possibly even in the original Latin.

One more. When Secretariat won the day in 1973, before a national audience (including a 12-year-old me), Warbucks was 13th and last.

From the museum, the tour group moved to under the grandstands, guided by a competent employee of the track. She told us a capsule history of the race and the Downs.

Out to the lowest level of the grandstand. It’s a good view, I have to say.

When was the jumbotron added? About 10 years ago.

The guide provided more history and some physical information about the track itself, and about the enormous stable complex on the other side of the track, way off in the distance, which sounded big enough to have its own zip code. (It doesn’t seem to.)

Then we headed back to the museum for a few more minutes, and that was that. Chintzy, Churchill Downs. That was more like a $12 museum + tour package. Not even a few minutes up in the grandstands? Did some whiz in the organization, or maybe a computer program, determine that eliminating the small but measurable cost in elevator maintenance and maybe slightly higher insurance premiums was worth shorting the patrons in their experience? Just speculation.

All I know is that the view from the grandstands should have been part of it. One visit to the Derby, I had access to the grandstands, and wandered around quite a while. You really get caught up in the thing looking down on the lively, colorful crowds and the active racetrack. Even on an empty winter day, I think you’d feel an echo of those festive times.

Three Louisville Churches

Posted on January 3, 2024 by admin

A friend on Facebook – and actual friend, known him 35 years — signed off with HNY today. Dense fellow that I am, that didn’t register, so I Googled it and found Happy New Year and Hot Nude Yoga. I’ll assume he meant the first one.

Fairly early on our first day in Louisville, we found our way to St. Martin of Tours, a Catholic church that rises in the Phoenix Hill neighborhood, among clusters of shotgun houses, more than I’d seen anywhere else.

Must be St. Martin himself. He holds his basilica in Tours (I assume) as if on a serving plate.

I heard about him in a VU history class, but after so many decades, it was all a little fuzzy, so I looked him up. I remember now: Martin and his mentor Hilary of Poitiers kicked butt when it came to fighting the Arian heresy in the fourth century.

Patron of France, Martin is, but so much more: beggars, cavalry and equestrians, hotel and inn keepers, reformed alcoholics but also vintners and wine growers, quartermasters, and the Swiss Guards at the Vatican, among many others.

I suppose the saint was popular among the antebellum German immigrant population. They were on the receiving end of a Nativist mob attack not long before the war, a serious enough atrocity that it might have encouraged the waves of German Catholics to go to Chicago, St. Louis and other cities instead of Louisville.

The mighty-looking organ was silent during our visit.

A side chapel is a site of perpetual adoration, but I didn’t want to bother the man in there, who looked pretty intent. Closer to the altar are the bones of Saints Magnus and Bonosa, fourth-century figures and the subjects of the sort of vague saintly stories common in that period.

Later that same day, we parked across the street from Cathedral of the Assumption.

It too was new in the 1850s when the Know-Nothings nearly burned it down. In our time, it’s closed on Thursday afternoons. So I took a short stroll in that part of downtown. Yuriko had sense enough to wait in the warm car.

We returned to the cathedral on Sunday for another look. Near the entrance, a baptism in progress.

The Coronation Window.

How many windows have proper names?

“Original to the Cathedral, the Coronation window depicts the crowning of the Virgin Mary as the Queen of Heaven,” the church web site says. “Designed by the Blum Art Co. in 1883, it is one of the oldest and largest hand-painted glass windows in the United States. The window was removed in 1912 and stored in the Bell Tower until 1994, when it was restored to its original position.”

A few blocks away is the Christ Church Cathedral, seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky, and at just over 200 years, one of the oldest buildings in Louisville.

Homily in progress. We didn’t stay for it. The priest was probably not denouncing Arianism, but who knows.

Northern Kentucky ’23

Posted on January 2, 2024 by admin

Among our collection of physical prints, most of them pre-2005 or so, is this image.

I’m standing in front of my in-laws’ house on January 1, 1994 (one feature of the camera was to imprint the date, but for whatever reason, it is wrong on this print). I spent most of winter break there. Much of the time I was in their kitchen, the warmest room in the house, where I read War and Peace. My in-laws considered this slightly peculiar, but not so much that I didn’t hear about it until much later.

Forward almost 30 years and we found ourselves in Louisville. We arrived late on Wednesday, actually past midnight on Thursday, late enough that the night clerk at our hotel was the only person around when we got there. He had been putting together a model figure from a kit before we arrived. Some pieces were arrayed on the desk near him, but he was mostly finished. Yuriko recognized it: an action hero from an anime, something I would have never recognized.

“I got it for Christmas,” the clerk, a large young man with a large beard and collection of pimples, told us when Yuriko mentioned that she recognized it. “He’s my favorite.”

“Helps pass the time on the night shift?” I said. He agreed that it did.

Otherwise it was a standard check-in process, but the momentary interaction made the experience more memorable. The property was part of a behemoth hospitality outfit, and if the company had any imagination (such companies seldom do), it would instruct its clerks to have some kind of conversation-piece project at hand that would engage more curious patrons. You know, to build the brand by associating a mildly memorable and pleasant experience with the place one stays.

Maybe that isn’t such a good idea. Such a company could be counted on to mandate their clerks detail in reports the interactions thus generated – fill up that spreadsheet, tick those boxes, remember that documenting the process is as important as the results – and press them to meet some sort of quota of being memorable to their customers.

Thursday was the first of three full days in northern Kentucky, returning on New Year’s Eve. Rather than venture somewhere by plane this year — with last year’s dud in mind — we opted for a drive. As long as no blizzard was forecast, we’d be good to go. Head somewhere to the south. We focused on Louisville because it occurred to me in November that I hadn’t spent much time there in more than 30 years, since my visits to attend the Kentucky Derby in the late ’80s, and Yuriko had never spent any time there.

Since then, I’d also heard it on good authority, namely from someone who used to live there, that Louisville is a city of distinctly interesting neighborhoods, perhaps more than you’d expect from a metro its size (1.3 million). Something like Nashville, though that metro is larger. In fact some similarities with Nashville are fairly close, such the downtown street grid that, away from downtown, soon devolves into as non-grid as a pattern of streets can be, wandering this way and that at odd angles through hilly territory, and changing names without warning.

We first encountered Crescent Hill, a well-to-do neighborhood east of downtown, stopping for a few minutes to look in a few of the shops of Frankfort Avenue. I’ve read that the area was formerly known as Beargrass, after a nearby creek. A name the area should have kept, if you asked me.

Included are the sorts of places well-to-do neighborhoods support, such as Urban Kitty Consignment Boutique, Wheelhouse Art, Era Salon, Eggs Over Frankfort, Carmichael’s Bookstore and Margaret’s Fine Consignments. Temps were maybe 10 degrees warmer than at home, so not bad for a short stroll.

The imposing Crescent Hill Baptist Church is on Frankfort Ave. Closed.

The local library was open, so we went in.

Inside was a table with books for sale, and I picked up a paperback for $1 entitled The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice by Michael Krondl (2008). The cities in question are Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam. I started reading that night and it’s good. He brings up a few interesting points right away, such as that the hoary old explanation about the medieval use of spices, namely that they covered up rot, is nonsense.

“But what if the meat were rancid?” Krondl asks rhetorically. “Would not a shower of pepper and cloves make rotten meat palatable? Well, perhaps to a starved peasant who could leave no scrap unused, but not to society’s elite. If you could afford fancy, exotic seasonings, you could certainly afford fresh meat.”

From Crescent Hill it’s a short pop over to the Louisville Water Tower, including a short drive on Zorn Avenue, which instantly became my favorite street name in Louisville.

For a bit of water infrastructure, it’s impressive, rising 185 feet over the banks of the Ohio River and dating from 1860. And still in use. It’s also being renovated, so we couldn’t get that close.

In its own way, the nearby smokestack – I took it to be a smokestack – is just as impressive.

Note the iron ladder rising up the side of the stack. Note also that its bottom section is missing. Removed, I bet, after one too many moron teenage boys decided to take a climb, sometimes resulting in a sudden and shattering loss of their youthful health and vim.

Rialto Square Theatre

Posted on December 20, 2023 by admin

Years ago, as I crossed a pedestrian bridge in Shanghai, a young man with construction paper and scissors paralleled me across. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see he was trimming the paper quickly as we walked, and toward the end of the bridge, he showed me the result, which he probably wanted to sell me: my silhouette in black paper.

I only glanced at it for a moment before brushing him off. Yuriko saw it too, and not long after, she said, “That was pretty good.” I agreed, he’d captured my outline during those seconds on foot in a moderate crowd of other people. I should have bought it, I realized, since it would have made an absolutely unique souvenir. Unless of course Shanghai is a hotbed of silhouette artists with roots in Ming dynasty aesthetics or some such, but somehow I doubt it.

No, I think it was just that talented guy. He came to mind when we spotted a couple of silhouettes in metal next to the street in Joliet, not far from the Rialto Square Theatre.

I didn’t need a sign to tell me that was Groucho Marx leading the way, and a few second’s examination told me that Harpo followed. Groucho has, or had for earlier generations, a famed silhouette. How many famed silhouettes are there, anyway? More than I probably realize.

A nearby sign said that the Marx Brothers had played the Rialto when it was new in the 1920s. I don’t doubt it for a minute, but wait – where’s Chico? Did the city not have the budget for a complete complement of Marxes? (Zeppo could have been left out, however.)

I had Ann pose in place of Chico.

Sure, Chico’s silhouette might not be as distinctive, though his hat might be. But so what? Those in the know would spot Chico right away, considering the context. There’s no excuse for no Chico. As Chico would have said, “That’s-a no good.”

We’d come to town to see the majorly entertaining Christmas movie Elf at the Rialto.

I knew it was a grand old movie palace. I’d known that for years, but never got around to stepping inside. Just how much of a grand old movie palace we didn’t find out until we entered.

One minute we were in Joliet; the next we stepped into a piece of Versailles, adapted to the needs of early mass entertainment in my grandparents’ time.

“Joliet, Illinois, having a published population of 38,400, today has what is unquestionably the finest motion picture theatre for a city of this size in the country,” crowed the Exhibitors Herald on June 12, 1926. “In fact, the new Rialto Square theatre… is a playhouse which it takes no stretch of the imagination to place on a par with any of the picture palaces of Chicago or New York.

“Further, the Rialto was designed by C. W. & Geo. L. Rapp which makes it a foregone conclusion that it can lack nothing in beauty of appointment or modern comfort.”

The ’20s was a time of boosterism and its prose, but I’m going along with the Exhibitors Herald on this one.

“At the west end of the inner lobby is an arch of mirrors and along the walls between marble pilasters are huge mirrors, eight feet wide and 20 feet high, three on each side. The vaulted ceiling, 45 feet in height, is paneled with figures cast in plaster from clay models made by Gene Romeo, a sculptor.”

The theater itself is certainly grand, too, but not quite like the inner lobby.

Over the stage, gilded myth.

A theater organist expertly ran through a Christmas song medley in the minutes before the screening.

When the time came, the organ and organist slowly disappeared, as a mechanism lowered them past sight of the audience, level with the orchestra pit. Nice organ. Aural icing on the lavish visual cake of the theater.

I couldn’t find a fitting Chico quote to laud the Rialto, so I’m making one up: “Atsa-some theater, eh boss?”

City of Champions?

Posted on December 19, 2023 by admin

The air was chilly, but still above freezing when Ann and I arrived in Joliet on Sunday just after noon. Not bad for December.

I’d never heard Joliet called the City of Champions, but there it was in a new-looking mural facing one of downtown’s parking lots. The city’s web site says, unhelpfully, that “[Joliet] is known as the ‘City of Champions’ for it’s [sic] world class bands. Music, art, theatre and history are found throughout the city.”

A line vague enough that could have been AI generated, except that a robot writer probably wouldn’t use it’s for its. That’s a human-style mistake. Just a hunch.

Champions or not, Joliet was a prosperous place once upon a time, and its downtown reflects that. The city could well be a growth hub again someday, once the Sunbelt gets just a little too sunny, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Rather than put it in a park, Joliet situated this sizable tree on the edge of a parking lot, near a dry fountain that I hope runs in the warm months. The tree does make the spot look a little less forlorn.

Downtown Joliet sports some interesting buildings, and we spent a few minutes taking a look. Such as a bank building from a pre-FDIC time when banks dwelt in sturdy-looking edifices with Corinthian columns.

Dating from 1909 with a design by Mundie & Jensen of Chicago, most of whose work wasn’t far from the metro area. It’s still a bank, incidentally.

Nearby are other works of similar vintage.

Even older: the Murray Building, 1886.

A giant guitar marks the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum. I didn’t know Illinois had one of those.

That is because it’s new. So new, in fact, that the galleries aren’t open yet, according to its web site, but the gift shop is. Next time I’m in Joliet, if it is all open, I might drop in.

A look at Google Street View tells me that the guitar was fixed to the exterior sometime after November 2022. There have been museum promotional materials in windows since 2018 at the earliest. Before that, a pinball/video game arcade called The Game Show, of all things, occupied the ground floor (in 2017). Back in 2007, the earliest image available, the building was occupied by Phalen’s Fine Furniture. Guess the Great Recession proved to be the end for that business, as Phalen’s was gone by ’13.

The Illinois Rock & Roll Museum has been inducting artists since 2021, with an inaugural roll that year that included Chicago, Cheap Trick, Ides of March, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, REO Speedwagon and the Buckinghams. Most of those I could see, but Cheap Trick and REO Speedwagon had an Illinois connection? Cheap Trick was from Rockford and REO Speedwagon from Champaign. Shows you what I know.

The connection doesn’t have to be that strong, apparently. As long as the performer was either born in Illinois; started a musical career in Illinois; was based in Illinois; or recorded in Illinois, then he, she or they can be inducted. Note that as of this year, there’s no “she.” That is, not a single female inductee. Better get on that, IR&RM, before someone more vocal than me calls you out on it.

Next to the museum is the former Ottawa Street Methodist Episcopal Church, a structure dating from 1903.

“The Ottawa Street Methodist Church is a two-story, Neoclassical Revival style structure built by George Julian Barnes in 1909 on a Joliet limestone foundation,” says the city. “The structure is a wonderful and bold interpretation of the Triumphant Arch motif as applied to a Neoclassical Revival institutional building.”

These days, the building serves as part of the Joliet Area Historical Museum.

My fingers were getting a little cold, so we didn’t linger for a picture of the former church, as grand as it is. Except for this detail.

For The Good Of Man is inscribed under the side pediment. The church didn’t realize it in 1903, of course, but it’s a good thing it didn’t read To Serve Man.

A block away is another former church building.

Old St. Mary’s Carmelite, which hasn’t been an active religious structure in 30 years. New owners are currently rehabbing the property and by next summer it will be an event venue for “weddings, corporate events, fund-raisers, proms and more,” Patch reports. Good to know. I’d say that’s a good re-use for a neglected church, much better than destroying its unique beauty.

One more pic from our short Joliet walkabout: Joliet himself in bronze, beside the local library.

Seen him before, and I probably will again.

Refrigerator Magnets

Posted on December 13, 2023 by admin

The web site of CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), of all places, has a page on refrigerator magnets. This from an organization that otherwise concerns itself with Higgs and other bosons, antimatter, and other arcane nature, though I suppose magnetism is an essential interest of the org.

“Fridge magnets only ‘stick’ to the fridge on one side, not on the other,” CERN says. “This is because the magnetic field they create is very different from the one of simple dipole magnets… instead of having only one North pole and one South pole, these fridge magnets consist of strips with alternating polarity. We call them multipolar magnets. This setup, called a Halbach array, generates a magnetic field on one side which is two times as strong as it would be if not arranged in this particular way, and on the other almost zero.”

Something I didn’t know. This site purports to offer a short history of the refrigerator magnet. Invented at the dawn of household refrigerators and mass tourism, it seems. In the 1920s, that is — why am I not surprised?

I was inspired to look into refrigerator magnets after taking pictures of our refrigerator the other day.

Left door top.

Left door bottom.

Right door top.

Right door bottom.

Freezer door.

Side (the other side is flush against the wall).

I documented the magnet-bedecked surfaces because soon we’d be getting a new refrigerator, since this one had quit working last month, after – how many years? We weren’t sure. The purchase documents are in a file downstairs, probably, but I didn’t feel like looking for them.

The magnets are in a paper bag. Each is light, but together they weigh several pounds. The refrigerator came today. It stands in the kitchen, naked for now. Soon the magnets – some, most? will migrate to the new appliance.

Billy Goat Tavern & Grill ’23

Posted on December 7, 2023 by admin

I can’t say whether Billy Goat Tavern & Grill looks exactly the same as it did in the ’80s, but it sure felt the same on Monday night. The walls of photos, neon, beer taps, rows of bottles, knickknacks and basic restaurant tables and chairs, and plenty of worn red bar stools. The vibe is Chicago tavern clutter, comfortable as an old shirt.

Now that I think about it, I had the most Greek experience I’ve ever had at the Billy Goat, having never yet made it to Greece. Shortly before the 1988 presidential election, the Dukakis campaign staged a campaign parade on Michigan Avenue, and after work I went to watch, on a spontaneous quasi-date with a fetching Greek-American woman I knew. Was it a torchlight parade? In my memory, there were torches, but probably no: that seems like a 19th-century thing.

We were within feet of the candidate as he walked by, his expression a little stiff and discouraged. Later we repaired to the Billy Goat, which was wall-to-wall packed, including many Greek Americans – wearing the colors of the Greek flag, some of them — with everybody feasting on cheeseburgers and beer, the place alive with talk, and the clank of spatulas on the grill, and the hissing burgers and onion air, and the clouds of cigarette smoke still common in bars and restaurants.

I’m pretty sure the workers called out Cheezborger! Cheezborger! in those days, which might be an example of life imitating art, or more likely, life and art reinforcing either other.

Rumor was that Dukakis himself would make an appearance, and well he should have, but he never did. He should have shown up in his tank helmet, shaking hands and mugging for cameras. Rather than be embarrassed by it, he should have leaned into it, but no.

Back here in the 21st century, there are reminders of goats at Billy Goat. How could it be otherwise?

You can see a wall of bylines at Billy Goat. Once upon a time, both major Chicago newspaper buildings were within easy walking distance, even in winter, so newspapermen hung out there.

Best known was Royko, who worked the place into his column from time to time. From there, the place went on to wider notice, sort of.

I expect the number of journalists is fairly low these days, outnumbered by other kinds of downtown residents and workers, plus tourists. On Monday night at least, no one called out when you ordered your cheeseburgers; they just went to work at it.

Except for the vegan in our group – she was a good sport about it — we had cheeseburgers and chips and beer. What else? In theory, a few other things are on the menu, but we didn’t test it. No fries, either.

We also sipped from a single glass of Malört. It’s a Chicago thing to do.

Around the corner from the entrance of the Billy Goat, directly facing Lower Michigan Ave. and just north of the Chicago River., is a mural and a tavern sign.

The mural is a work by Andy Bellomo, “a self-taught artist who began her creative interest as a young teen studying the color, light, shapes, and lines of traditional stained glass in churches,” according to the the Magnificent Mile Association, as part of a number of murals known as Undercurrent (at least to the Mag Mile Assn.).

It’s been there about a year, which would account for me never noticing it before. Haven’t been down to Lower Michigan Ave. in a some years, but I can assure the world that it’s still the hard urban space it’s always been.

There’s more of the Undercurrent mural on the other side of the tavern’s entrance, not captured in the below image.

But I did capture, without realizing it, part of a different mural, one that’s been there for decades, by an artist mostly lost to time in Chicago, even though his heyday was only about 50 years ago. It’s on the extreme right edge of the image: a rainbow goat.

“Many people ask about the rainbow goats painted on the walls outside of The Goat,” notes the tavern web site. “They were painted in 1970 by Sachio Yamashita, known as Sachi… Billy [Sianis, original owner of the tavern] made a deal with Sachi. Every day after Sachi and his helpers finish their work, beer and borgers are free! Unfortunately Billy Goat Sianis passed away on October 22, 1970 just days before the paintings were complete.”

I might have noticed the goats before, but didn’t give them much thought. I didn’t notice them this time, or I’d have taken a full image, since how many rainbow goats could there be in the world? On walls, that is.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: History