The Spanish Governor’s Palace

Posted on March 3, 2015 by admin

Across Military Plaza (Plaza de Armas) from San Antonio City Hall is the Spanish Governor’s Palace. It too was a place I’d been before, maybe as long ago as the 1970s, so I dropped in for a revisit. It’s a well-done re-creation of the Spanish colonial period, including 10 rooms, some dating back to earlier centuries, others added in the 20th century.
Once again, from that fount of all things Lone Star, the Texas State Historical Association: “The Spanish Governor’s Palace, at 105 Military Plaza in San Antonio, was constructed in 1749. The name, something of a misnomer, is traditional; the building was not the home of the Spanish governor but served as the residence and headquarters for the local presidio captain. [So the governor didn’t live there, and while very nicely restored, it isn’t a palace. At least it was Spanish. At first.] The one-story masonry structure is built in the Spanish Colonial style; in the rear is a large patio.”

It’s a very pleasant spot on a warm day, this patio.

The association continues: “A keystone above the entrance bears the date of construction and the Hapsburg coat of arms. After the end of Spanish sovereignty, the building passed into private ownership. In the late 1860s it was purchased by E. Hermann Altgelt, founder of Comfort in Kendall County. He and his family lived there at various times, and the property was held by his widow, Emma Murck Altgelt, until the early 1900s. Then the building fell into a state of disrepair.

“In 1928, voters in San Antonio passed a bond issue for the purpose of purchasing and conserving the building, and in 1929–30 the building was restored under the supervision of architect Harvey P. Smith. Members of the San Antonio Conservation Society aided in restoring and furnishing the historic structure. In 1962, the building was registered as a recorded Texas historic landmark and is now a national historic landmark.”

This gentleman makes an appearance in the building, at least pictorially, looking every bit the Spanish nobleman of the early 18th century. The sign next to him said: “Jose de Azlor, the second Marques de San Miguel de Aguayo, was born in Spain and came to Mexico in 1712, where he owned a large ranch in Coahuila. After being appointed governor of Coahuila y Texas, Aguayo visited the site for the Presidio San Antonio de Bejar and ordered that the fort be built at this location.” That was just one thing. He had a busy time as governor of Coahuila y Texas.

The Old Spanish Trail Zero Milestone (One of Them, Anyway)

Posted on March 2, 2015 by admin

From San Fernando Cathedral, I made my way past San Antonio City Hall, which is a handsome Italian Renaissance Revival structure dating from the 1880s.
Among the other monuments and markers on the grounds is a boulder with a plaque stuck to it. I have to say I’m a sucker for boulders with plaques stuck to them. This one’s apparently been there over 90 years.

ZERO MILESTONE
OLD SPANISH TRAIL

St. Augustine – Pensacola – Mobile – New Orleans – Houston – San Antonio – El Paso – Tucson – Yuma – San Diego

Dedicated by Governor Pat M. Neff
March 27, 1924

Erected by the San Antonio City Federation of Women’s Clubs
Mrs. J.K. Beretta, President

Zero milestone, eh? Odd, considering that San Antonio is roughly in the middle of the route described by the cities on the plaque. This Old Spanish Trail, incidentally, has nothing to do with Spanish colonialism in North America, except that it passed through territories that were at one time or another part of the Spanish Empire. The OST was a 20th-century invention. (Confusingly, OST also refers to an earlier, non-motorized trail between Santa Fe and Los Angeles that did involve actual Spaniards.)

As this excellent article published by the Texas Transportation Museum notes, “…a very grand vision arose for a continuous highway from the Atlantic at St. Augustine in Florida to the Pacific in San Diego California, a distance of 2,817 miles…. The route was given a picturesque name, “The Old Spanish Trail,” as a marketing tool, much as naming the first Northern transcontinental route from New York to San Francisco, “The Lincoln Highway,” first proposed in 1912. The names were designed to capture the imagination of cities and counties along the proposed routes and encourage participation in the construction of the route, as the OST organization could not even begin to pay for all the roads and bridges that would be required.”

But why is there a zero milestone in San Antonio? Google “zero milestone Old Spanish Trail” and you’ll also find information about a plaque on a sphere in St. Augustine — dating from 1928.

Back to the Texas Transportation Museum article: “Governor Neff dedicated an OST zero milestone outside San Antonio city hall in March 1924. It is still there today… The first ceremonial drive across the 2,817 miles of continuously improved road, lined with signs put up by each state, began in San Diego, California on April 4 1929. Their arrival in San Antonio was ceremoniously greeted with a dinner at, of course, the Gunter Hotel.”

That doesn’t really answer the question. Maybe the San Diego-San Antonio stretch was finished first. Or more likely, the San Antonio City Federation of Women’s Clubs really wanted a marker.

San Fernando Cathedral

Posted on March 1, 2015 by admin

Where are the copy editors? Maybe the Chicago Tribune laid off all its copy editors. On Wednesday, the paper ran a review of The Royale, a play now on stage in Chicago, and it begins like this: “In 1910, Jack Johnson, a boxer who had long dominated the World Colored Heavyweight Championship, finally coaxed the formerly undefeated James J. Jeffries out of retirement… Johnson’s July 4 victory in Reno, Nev., over the white opponent was hailed as a singular moment for the advancement of African-Americans, many of whom felt enormous pride as they listened, huddled around radios, as the Galveston Giant laid his doubters, and, symbolically, white America, flat on the canvas.”

Is it too much to ask that someone at the Tribune know that there were no commercial radio broadcasts in 1910?

I didn’t remember the last time I visited San Fernando Cathedral, which is in downtown San Antonio — probably in the early ’80s — so I figured it was time to go again. A church has been on this site since the 1740s, though as usual with this kind of thing, the structure’s been modified and enlarged and restored and otherwise changed over the centuries.

In our time, it’s a handsome structure with a Gothic Revival nave, triple entrance portals, a gable roof, and twin bell towers and buttresses.

Just inside the entrance, in the narthex, you’ll find this marble coffin.

The nearby plaque asserts that:

Here lie the remains of Travis, Crockett, Bowie and other Alamo heroes. The Archdiocese of San Antonio erected this memorial May 11, AD 1938 R.I.P.

Formerly buried in the Sanctuary of the old San Fernando church

Exhumed July 28, 1936 Exposed to public view for a year Entombed May 11, 1938

If it’s written in stone, it must be true. Right? But not everyone’s so sure. Ashes and bits of bone were found buried in the sanctuary in 1936, and the archbishop at the time concluded that they were the defenders of the Alamo, whose bodies were known to be burned. This article posits that the archbishop pulled that assumption out of his miter, and that the remains might actually be casualties — Spanish loyalists, no less — of the little-known Battle of Rosillo fully 33 years before the Battle of the Alamo.

San Fernando’s lovely inside. The view toward the apse.

And back through the nave.

Not far from where I took this picture was a brass plaque embedded in the floor that said: Official Center of San Antonio by Ordinance of the City Council. Another plaque in the floor of the church said: Original Entrance to the Church of the Villa de San Fernando. Demarcation of the Center of the City 1731.

The Texas State Historical Society outlines the early history of the church: “Although information is contradictory, the cornerstone for the first attempt to build a stone church was laid most likely on May 11, 1738. In 1748 the viceroy approved a donation of 12,000 pesos to complete the church. With funds secured, two artisans from San Luis Potosí, Gerónimo de Ibarra (a master stonemason) and Felipe de Santiago (a stonecutter), were hired to continue the project. Ibarra razed the earlier construction and enlarged the dimensions of the building. He completed the church in 1755.”

After that, of course, came damage and repair and modifications and even a part for the structure in the Battle of the Alamo, when “Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna not only used the church as a lookout but ordered a red flag flown there to signal that the Texans at the Alamo would be shown no mercy.”

The reredos. Maybe it would be a retablo in this context. In any case, a shiny bit of work.
To the right were a number of stone tablets embedded in the wall that looked they might have been burial stones that used to be part of the floor. One of them, in Spanish and English, was that of Eugenio Navarro, brother of Jose Antonio Navarro, who lived a lot longer.

HERE RESTS The Remains of EUGENIO NAVARRO Native of the City of Bexar who departed this life on the 6th of May 1838, Aged 34 Years, 5 Months & 21 days He fell an innocent victim, by a shot from the Pistol of a vindictive adversary, who also lost his life by the dagger of the brave defender, of his honour and person.

That is, someone shot Eugenio, but he was able to dispatch the attacker with his knife. In 1836, he’d had a critical part to play in the Texas Revolution, especially in warning the Texians in San Antonio that Santa Anna was coming, and in force. More about him here.

Two Ukrainian Village Churches

Posted on November 5, 2014 by admin

The Open House Chicago sites were only open until 5 pm on either Saturday or Sunday or both, and it was almost 4 when we headed to Ukrainian Village by El from the South Side and then a westbound bus. A little tiring, but I wanted to see the interiors of Sts. Volodymyr & Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church and St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral before the event finished. It was worth the effort.

Sts. Volodymyr & Olha is a massive brick presence just south of Chicago Ave.

Yaroslav Korsunsky, an architect from Minneapolis designed the church in the 1970s, reportedly in a Byzantine-Ukrainian style the early second millennium AD. I’m no expert on that, but I will say that the interior is stunning.

A few blocks north is St. Nicholas. It too is a striking church.

Note the 480-light chandelier.

And the fine stained glass.

Afterward, we didn’t feel like walking the additional blocks to see Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral, which we visited last summer when it happened to be open. It’s also resplendent, and has the distinction of displaying an icon that includes not only the founder of the parish, but the architect of the building, Louis Sullivan.

Three Bronzeville Churches

Posted on November 4, 2014 by admin

It was a first for me: a church with a lime-green interior wall, all the way around, and a large cross created by colorful lights, as a fixture on the ceiling. To find this church, you take the Green Line south to the 43rd St. station, and then walk west on 43rd. At Wabash Ave., turn left – to the south — and there you are, at 4315 S. Wabash: The First Church of Deliverance.

I’ve seen it described as a rare example of Art Moderne in a house of worship. I’ll go along with that. One Walter T. Bailey designed the structure toward the end of this career, which involved a practice in Chicago and Memphis, doing (among other designs) a number of Knights of Pythias buildings, including this one I’d never heard of near Nashville.

Lee Bailey, writing for WBEZ, says: “The church was built in 1939 and designed by Walter T. Bailey, the first African American to hold an architecture license in Illinois. Those terra cotta-clad twin towers were added in 1946, designed by Kocher Buss & DeKlerk. The building’s modernity wasn’t by chance. In the 1930s and 1940s, First Church was an exceedingly modern congregation.

“The Rev. Clarence H. Cobbs was only 21 when he founded the predominantly black First Church congregation in 1929. The church began its radio broadcast in 1934, giving Cobbs and his 200-member choir a national reach and influence. The congregation’s choir revolutionized the sound of gospel music in 1939 when its organist and composer Kenneth Morris convinced Cobbs to install the newly created Hammond electric organ at the church. The church’s gospel festivals in old Comiskey Park in the 1940s drew thousands.

“In 1953, the congregation became the first black church in the U.S. (quite possibly the world) to broadcast its services on television. WLS-TV carried those services live — a significant development, in retrospect — for 12 straight weeks. Songs that later became gospel standards made their debut at the church under Hobbs, including the staple ‘How I Got Over.’ ”

The interior is auditorium-style, and green is the first thing that strikes you. Then the details, especially the luminous ceiling cross.

Up closer to the front.

Nearby, at 4359 S. Michigan Ave., is the Centennial Missionary Baptist Church. Once upon a time, it was the Eighth Church of Christ, Scientist. Actually, not that long ago.

It too is an auditorium church, but more semicircular. In that way it reminded me of the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist, which is downtown.

Centennial Missionary Baptist Church, Oct 18, 2014

A nice woman named Doris gave us a tour, including not only the main part of the church, but some back rooms. Open House Chicago notes that “Designed in 1911 by architect Leon E. Stanhope, the Centennial Missionary Baptist Church was originally home to the Eighth Church of Christ, Scientist. Designed in the neoclassical style, with a striking red domed roof, it was one of the longest-running African American Christian Science congregations.

“The building only recently became home to Centennial Missionary Baptist Church – which itself boasts a distinguished history. Their first house of worship was a building owned by Lorraine Hansberry, and numerous gospel music greats performed over the years.”

The third church we visited in Bronzeville, Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, 4600-4622 S. King Dr., began as the Chicago Sinai Temple in the early 1910s, designed by the prolific Alfred Alschuler. I didn’t take any exteriors, but Design Slinger has some good images.

The exterior is stately, while the interior is gorgeous.

Design Slinger says: “In 1910 architect Alfred Alschuler drew up plans for a Chicago Sinai building complex that would include an auditorium for worship and a large community center which would house offices, classrooms, meeting spaces, a gym and a pool…. as members moved further south, a large corner lot was purchased at 46th and Grand Boulevard to serve as a new home base.

“Since the congregation was part of the Reform tradition, Alschuler followed a design scheme that was popular at the time with other congregations in not proclaiming that the building was a house of worship, by choosing a historical classic architectural style. The restrained sophistication of Greco/Roman refinement would convey to the passerby that this was a substantial edifice, it could be a bank or a library, but not wear its religious affiliation on its sleeve.”

By the 1940s, the Jewish population in the area couldn’t sustain a synagogue, and the structures became part of the high school run by Franciscans. In 1961, Mt. Pisgah Missionary Baptist congregation acquired the property.

Open House Chicago 2014

Posted on November 3, 2014 by admin

On October 18, the day after I got back from New York, I should have done the reasonable thing and puttered around the house. The weather that morning, cool and drizzly, encouraged that. But it was Open House Chicago weekend. No time to stay home. Yuriko and I drove to Oak Park, parked the car, and took the El downtown.

I quote myself from last year, since the event was essentially the same this year: “The CAF describes it this way: ‘A free, citywide festival that offers behind-the-scenes access to more than 150 buildings across this great city. Explore historic mansions, hidden rooms, sacred spaces, private clubs, offices, hotels, iconic performance venues and more much – all for free.’ Note the emphasis on free.

“Sounds like my kind of event. At each place there were volunteers at folding tables taking attendance in the form of asking you your zip code. At a few places, you had to join a short guided tour, but most of the time you just offered your zip code, walked in, and looked around. Not all of the spaces were open 9-5 on both Saturday and Sunday, so it was worthwhile to check the CAF guide to the event, which had such details, as well as useful maps.”

Last year, I went by myself, and hit sites downtown and points north. This year, we also saw downtown sites, but then went south and west. In order, we visited the Lyric Opera, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 190 S. LaSalle, the Inland Steel Building, and the Kemper Building (all downtown); the Forum, the First Church of Deliverance, the Centennial Missionary Baptist Church, the Welcome Inn Manor, and the Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church (all Bronzeville); and Sts. Volodymyr & Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church and St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, both in Ukrainian Village (and both places that were closed when we visited this summer).

I used to work in the Lyric Opera Building – 35 N. Wacker, but that’s the office component of the structure. The Lyric Opera of Chicago, while in the same structure, is actually a separate entity, with the theater space owned by the opera company. It’s a lavish place. Looking toward the stage, where work was under way on the set for the next production:

Away from the stage:

Opulent as it is, the Lyric wasn’t my favorite downtown space this time. Rather, we were surprised to find a former law library on the 40th floor of 190 S. LaSalle

The story is that the developer built out the space for a major law firm tenant when the building was first developed in the 1980s. Thirty years later, law libraries of this kind are obsolete, and the original tenant’s gone anyway (I noticed that a major commercial real estate company occupies the offices on the same floor as the library space). The former two-level law library’s now a posh meeting space.

It has some great views, all four directions.

That’s looking south, with the Chicago Board of Trade and its Ceres statue prominent in the view to the left and the South Branch of the Chicago River to the right.

First Baptist Congregational Church

Posted on September 25, 2014 by admin

By the time we got to the last church on the tour, we were feeling the overload. At least I was. It’s the kind of feeling that drives you back to your room for an evening of television – a bad movie in another language is just the thing — after spending the day looking at grand churches or magnificent museums or arresting ruins or even just intense, one-thing-after-another cities, or some combo of all these.

Well, one more. We can handle that. The last one for bus #4 was the curiously named First Baptist Congregational Church at 60 N. Ashland Ave. Its Gothic Revival outside hinted that it was going to be another big, spectacular church inside. That’s a good thing, of course. But the effect wears off a little after four others.

It was spectacular inside. But not in the way I expected. It perked me right up and made me want to look around. It wasn’t like any of the other churches. For one thing, First Baptist Congregational is an auditorium church, trimmed in dark woods, a very inviting design.

The view toward the front, facing the powerful organ, among other things.

Toward the back.

It’s also the oldest of the churches we saw that day, built as the Union Park Congregational in 1869, long enough ago that the congregation who built it had been abolitionist before the war, and active in resisting the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. After the war, the congregation counted Mary Todd Lincoln as a member for a time.

They hired one Gurdon P. Randall to design their church. He was active in Chicago both before and after the war, but apparently a number of his structures were lost in the Chicago Fire. Union Park Congregational survived, since the fire didn’t reach this far west. Through a number of shifts in congregation whose details I’ll skip, the modern congregation is affiliated with both the United Church of Christ and the National Baptist Convention.

It isn’t lavish in an in-your-face way, but the detail is remarkable.

Got pretty stained glass, too.

About three years ago, a snowstorm sent one of the smaller spires crashing through the roof and the false roof over the nave (if that’s the right term for an auditorium church). That was bad enough, but apparently the wind then carried soot that had accumulated between the two roofs over the years inside the church, covering everything. The restoration was only recently completed.

St. Paul’s Catholic Church

Posted on September 24, 2014 by admin

At St. Paul’s Catholic Church at 2234 S. Hoyne in Chicago, Paul is there to greet you.

Or at least a mosaic St. Paul does, looking absolutely certain of his mission to the Gentiles. He’s above the front entrance, and while the church has many brilliant mosaics – and who doesn’t like a brilliant mosaic? – note the bricks around the Paul mosaic. The entire church is an enormous, artful mass of those bricks. As this view from the rear makes clear.

“St. Paul’s Church was established by a small German community in 1876, with its cornerstone laid in 1897,” the CAF says. “Designed by Henry J. Schlacks, the church was built entirely by its own parishioners — many of whom were professional bricklayers. Singled out in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not as ‘the church built without nails,’ the structure underwent a long-term restoration project completed in 2013. The gothic-style building is visible from all sides of Pilsen due to its exceptionally tall spires and dark brick.”

Schlacks, of course, is the fellow who did St. Adalbert (see yesterday). But St. Paul was an astonishingly early work in his career, since he was only 28 at the time. “Schlacks himself took on the role of general contractor and hired men of the parish…” the CAF says. “He wrote, ‘We could find no builder in Chicago acquainted with the proposed method of construction, or who could give even an approximate estimate of the cost from my plans….’ ”

True to the tradition of its building, parishioners did most of the recent renovation, as this article in Crain’s Chicago Business (of all places) notes. And a fine job of it they did.

It’s all brick, even the white areas on the ceiling, which were plastered over at some point. The mosaics, we were told, were completed in the early 1930s – ordered in pieces from Germany, I believe. Especially striking are Jesus and the Apostles, though they look a little like they’re at a board meeting of some kind (the nonprofit Salvation Co).

By the time we got to St. Paul’s, we were eating our sack lunches in the bus. The tour took us downstairs for more refreshments. The lower level, now an event and meeting space, was a major part of the recent renovation, and striking in its own way.

When I saw it, I thought, Rathskeller. Perfect place to hoist a brew and sing drinking songs in bad German. In the case of the tour, however, the only drinks on offer were water, soda and coffee.

St. Adalbert Catholic Church

Posted on September 23, 2014 by admin

The third church on the CAF bus tour last Saturday was St. Adalbert Catholic Church, named for another saint I knew little about. That only goes to show I’m not up on my hagiography, since he seems to be a fairly big-wheel saint of the 10th century. He’s the patron of Bohemia, Poland, Hungary and Prussia, and a martyr. The story is that pagans up around the Baltic Sea – whom he was trying to Christianize — offed him for cutting down their sacred oak.

According to Wiki, at least, he’s well remembered, even in our time: “April 1997 was the thousandth anniversary of Saint Adalbert’s martyrdom. It was commemorated in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Russia and other countries. Representatives of Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Evangelical churches pilgrimaged to Gniezno, to the saint’s tomb. John Paul II visited Gniezno and held a ceremonial divine service in which heads of seven European states and about a million believers took part.”

In Chicago, St. Adalbert is at 1650 W. 17th St., and currently has some structural issues.

That’s some of the largest scaffolding I’ve ever seen. Apparently the church’s twin towers are losing their will to resist gravity, and need renovation. Naturally, there isn’t enough money for that, and a cheaper option is to shorten them. That seems like a damn shame. I looked around for a box to drop a dollar in for the cause of saving the towers, but I didn’t see one.

St. Adalbert is the newest of the churches we saw, completed in 1914. Chicago Poles hired Henry Schlacks, who was renowned for his church work in Chicago, to design the structure. It’s done in Italian Renaissance style, and it reminded me of some of the churches I saw in Italy, though I couldn’t say quite which (it’s been more than 30 years, after all).

In its early days, the church was Polish through-and-through. Above the altar is a mural depicting events in the saga of Poland, such as the wedding of Queen Jadwiga of Poland and Prince Jagiello of Lithuania, and (I think) the frustration by Charles X of Sweden’s designs on Poland, for which Our Lady of Czestochowa seems to get some credit. Also, the Polish in the arch over the altar is the opening words of “Hymn of the Motherland.” In more recent times, shrines to Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos have been added, a reflection of more recent demographics.

The church features an excellent collection of stained glass, some of which tell the story of Adalbert and his efforts to convert the heathen up near the Baltic Sea. Others are episodes from the New Testament.

There’s even a large Tiffany dome far above the altar.

It’s almost hidden away from casual inspection, peeking out like a moon in the clouds.

St. Procopius Catholic Church

Posted on September 22, 2014 by admin

During the Churches by Bus tour on Saturday, I became acquainted with a few new saints. That’s one of the things about saints, there are always more. The second church for bus #4 was St. Procopius Catholic Church at 1641 S. Allport St. in the Pilsen neighborhood.

Procopius? The Secret History Procopius? He was a saint?

No. Different fellow, separated by 500 years or so and some geography. From the web site of St. Patrick’s Church in Washington, DC: “Born in Bohemia; died March 25, 1053; canonized by Pope Innocent III in 1204; feast day formerly July 4. Procopius studied in Prague, where he was also ordained. He became a canon, was a hermit for a time, and then was founding abbot of the Basilian abbey of Sazaba in Prague.

“Procopius is one of the patrons of Czechoslovakia (Benedictines, Delaney). In art, Saint Procopius lets the devil plough for him. He may be portrayed (1) as an abbot with a book and discipline, devil at his feet; (2) with a stag (or hind) near him; (3) with SS Adelbert, Ludmilla, and Vitus (patrons of Prague); or (4) as a hermit with a skull and a girdle of leaves (Roeder).”

Pilsen, as the name strongly suggests, used to be a Bohemian neighborhood, in the ethnic sense of that term, not the hipster sense. In 1875, St. Procopius was established as the third parish for the Bohemians of Chicago, and the parish built this handsome church in the early 1880s. According to some sources, Paul Huber was the architect. Other sources say it Julius Huber. The father and son sometimes worked together, so maybe they both did, to create the Romanesque Revival structure.

Back then, the Benedictines administered the church. There was even a monastery on site that later moved to suburban Lilse and became the Abbey of St. Procopius. Now the Jesuits operate the church.

In our time, Pilsen is a large Mexican-American neighborhood, with some bohemians in that other sense – those who can’t afford Bucktown or Wicker Park any more – filtering into the neighborhood. Or so I’ve read. My visits to the neighborhood have been scant few in recent years.

Here’s Procopius, center stage. No stag or skull or leaves or even a devil, but artistic interpretations vary.

Not far away are Mary and the infant Jesus, flanked by Joachim and Anne, with Mary as a girl. I don’t ever remember seeing this particular array before, but I don’t spend a lot of time studying religious art.

In a back corner of the church stands a statue of Miguel Agustin Pro, S.J.

The Jesuits are honoring one of their own, martyred by the anti-clerical government of Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles in 1927. Before being executed by firing squad, Pro put his arms up and cried out, “Viva Cristo Rey!” Newspapers published a picture of him in that position, and so he stands in a church far to the north.

The church is also a shrine of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos. A sign in Spanish and English on the outside of the building, near the entrance, says so. (The nearby cornerstone says: “AD SANCTUM PROCOPIUM C Missio Haec Fundata Est A.D. 1875 Hic Lapis Angularis Positus Est 23 Julii 1882.”) If you can’t make it to the shrine of that name in central Mexico, coming here counts, and apparently people do in droves.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Architecture