Category Archives: Been There

Champaign Stroll & Digressions From Kung Fu to the Match King

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After visiting the University of Illinois Arboretum on Easter, we returned to Lilly’s apartment briefly and took a walk from there a few blocks to the UIUC campus. Blocks heavy with businesses supported by students. Along the way everyone else went into one of them, Kung Fu Tea, for bubble tea to go, while I waited outside with the dog.

Kung Fu Tea is a chain I’d never heard of. Lilly didn’t understand why I was amused by the name. But she’s unable to imagine the following variation on an old TV narrative.

“Grasshopper, when you can take the tapioca pearl from my hand, it will be time for you to leave.”

I just found out that Kung Fu is available on Amazon for no extra charge. I was an intermittent viewer when the show was originally on the air, which was 45 years ago anyway, so I might give it another go.

From Kung Fu Tea, it was a short walk to Altgeld Hall, which I’ve seen before, but not from this vantage.

On we went. A fine day for a walk. The sunny warmth had drawn a number of students to the Main Quad, where they parked themselves on the grass. That’s the Illini Union in the distance.
Some students lolled in hammocks. That’s something I don’t ever remember seeing at any of the green fields of Vanderbilt.

We circled back around the other side of Altgeld Hall and happened across this statue.
That’s the goddess Diana.
A nearby plaque says: The Diana Fountain is a creation of the Swedish sculptor, Carl Milles. It was designed for the court of a building at 540 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, where it remained from 1930 until it was generously presented by Time Incorporated to the University of Illinois at the request of the Class of 1921.

The Fountain was dedicated here on October 23, 1971, as a class memorial, at the Fiftieth Anniversary Reunion of the Class of 1921.

Then there’s a list of “members and friends” of the Class of ’21, all of whom presumably ponied up some money for moving the statue, as well as the site work and installation. It’s a long alphabetical list from Allman to Zimmer: eight columns of 35 names each. More, actually, since some of the names represent married couples.

Fifty years plus nearly 50 more. Safe to assume all of the Class of ’21 have shuffled off this mortal coil. As has Carl Milles (d. 1955).

Here’s a digression. Another Diana Fountain by Milles is in Stockholm, at a place called the Matchstick Palace. Who built the Matchstick Palace?

The Match King, Ivar Kreuger, that’s who. I ran across him years ago in the wonderful Webster’s New Biographical Dictionary. Wiki gives a fuller description of his activities. His is an astonishing story.

University of Illinois Arboretum & Japan House

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On Easter Sunday, I drove Lilly back to UIUC, and this time the rest of the family came along for the ride: Yuriko, Ann and the dog. Been awhile since we’ve been on a trip of more than a few miles with the dog, but we figured she’d enjoy it and not be too much trouble. Except for the soda spill she caused toward the end of the trip, she wasn’t.

So we had a few pleasant hours in Champaign-Urbana, with temps in the 70s and greenery budding everywhere. Especially at the University of Illinois Arboretum.

“The University of Illinois Arboretum was developed in the late 1980s to early 1990s,” according to the university. “The original 1867 campus master plan placed the Arboretum north of Green Street where the College of Engineering currently exists. During the 1900s, the site moved to south campus, located near the Observatory, and Smith Music Hall.

“Now located at the intersection of South Lincoln and Florida Avenues, the Arboretum’s gardens, collections, and habitats are transforming 160 acres of the University’s south campus in Urbana-Champaign into an exceptional ‘living laboratory’ for students in plant sciences and fine and applied arts, as well as an oasis of natural beauty open to the public.”

I don’t know about natural beauty, since an arboretum, though working with living materials, is man-made. But if you called it artificial beauty, people think plastic or some other synthetic material. So let’s just say it’s a beautiful spot.

A trail leads from the small parking lot and toward the arboretum’s large pond.

Also on the grounds of the University of Illinois Arboretum is Japan House.
Japan House is a unit of the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the UIUC, beginning when a Japanese artist-in-residence, Shozo Sato, came to the school in 1964, with the building completed in 1998. Such rarefied arts are calligraphy, tea, ikebana and sumi-e are taught there.

Japan House itself wasn’t open on Sunday, but the grounds were.
Including a view of the zen garden.
The grounds would be a good place for moon viewing, or tsukimi. Wonder if that’s ever happened there.

Sign of the Times: The Great American Political Poster 1844-2012

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Visiting the Elmhurst History Museum for its local history collection was fine, but what I really wanted to see on Saturday — before it ends next weekend — was an exhibit called Sign of the Times: The Great American Political Poster 1844-2012. I’d picked up a leaflet about the exhibit when visiting the Elmhurst Art Museum, so that kind of marketing works sometimes.

The exhibit includes 50 items and occupies the first floor of the museum. I could have spent an hour looking at everything, but not everyone in the family is as enthusiastic about presidential ephemera as I am. Even so, I got a good look and had the chance to explain some things to the girls, such as who this fellow McGovern was. He had a fair number of posters, for all the good it did him.

As promised, the exhibit begins with the election of 1844. As we all know, Henry Clay headed the Whig ticket.

Less well known is the Whig for vice president that year, Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. Vice presidents are often obscure, but men who ran for VP and lost tend to be even more obscure. Too bad he was never veep. Vice President Frelinghuysen has a ring to it.

The Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Conn., did the poster. They were rivals of Currier & Ives but about as well remembered as Mr. Frelinghuysen these days. Google Kellogg and you tend to get cereal, and they aren’t mentioned in any Christmas songs that I know of.

“An Illustrative Map of Human Life Deduced from passages in Sacred Writ” (1847), which is Wiki’s example of one of their works, makes for some interesting reading.

These were the days of hand-colored prints. This one’s exceptional.
John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton, the first Republican candidates for the presidency and vice presidency, in 1856. A wonderfully named artist, Dominique O. Fabronius, did the poster, which was issued by C.E. Lewis of Buffalo. Look at Fabronius’ portrait of “Spoons” Butler here.

On to the golden age of the color lithograph: two posters from the 1900 presidential contest. First, William Jennings Bryan. A busy poster, promising no cross of gold, attacks on the Standard Oil octopus (I assume) and other things.
William McKinley and TR: an even busier poster.
The artists are unknown in both cases. I enjoyed this detail on the McKinley-Roosevelt poster.
I’ve posted about Phrygian caps before, but not in a North American context. Maybe it’s just as well that the caps are generally forgotten in this country as a symbol of liberty. Such symbols are sometimes co-opted by wankers.

The last of the two-man campaign posters: TR and his mostly forgotten VP, Charles Fairbanks. The city in Alaska is named for him, at least.
Note the fasces. Talk about being co-opted by wankers.

Fast forward a few decades. This poster offers a more folksy style for voters in the 1940 election. Note that a happy worker smokes a pipe, besides supporting Willkie.

Offset lithography was the most common means of poster-making by that time. Artist unknown in the case of the Willkie poster.

In 1964, Goldwater got a fairly standard treatment (unknown artist again) in a pro poster.
Along with a stinging anti poster drawn by Ben Shahn.
The ’72 election was represented by previously mentioned McGovern posters, but Nixon made an appearance as well.
By R. Crumb. Am I right in finding it strange that the Nixon campaign would enlist Crumb to do a poster? Well, strange bedfellows and all. Nixon and the Do-Dah man. The ’72 election was a long strange trip, after all.

The Elmhurst History Museum

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Lilly visited for Easter weekend this year. We were glad to see her.
Easter Saturday turned out to be brilliant and warm, much like the Saturday two weeks ago when we visited Elmhurst. So all of us, including Lilly this time, went back to Elmhurst to wander around in the park again, but also for something we didn’t do last time: visit the Elmhurst History Museum.

The museum, founded in 1957, is in the former home of Elmhurst’s first village president, Henry Glos, and his wife Lucy. The mansion dates from ca. 1892.
As I’ve mentioned before, the Gloses are interred across the street. I understand that street didn’t exist when they were alive — in fact, not until the 1970s — so their mausoleum and their house must have been on a single piece of land.

A few odds and ends dot the grounds. Such as the Elmhurst fire bell.

The plaque says (all caps, but I’ve regularized that):

The old Elmhurst fire bell
is here erected as a memorial
dedicated
in the Illinois sesquicentennial year 1968
to the brave men of the Elmhurst Volunteer Fire Department
who served with courage and devotion
from the days when fire fighting equipment
was crude and horse drawn
on behalf of a grateful community

The Elmhurst Historical Commission

It doesn’t look bad for a bell that’s been in the elements for more than 50 years now.

The museum has a modest but interesting collection of Elmhurst-specific artifacts.

Such as an Order of Odd Fellows sword. How often do you see one of those?
It goes along with a Shriner’s fez, a Jaycee’s collection box, some Knights of Columbus pins and other fraternal org items.

This calendar, produced by the local Rothmeyer Coal Co., belongs in the don’t-make-em-like-that-anymore file.

Notable birthdays on the calendar for January 1934 include Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and William McKinley.

A six pack of Baderbrau beer.
A short-lived Elmhurst brew (1989-1997). Never heard of it, even though Chicago’s well-known Goose Island brewery acquired the name and formula after 1997 and brewed it for a few more years. A mid-2010s revival didn’t work out either.

Better known are the Keebler elves. Keebler Foods Co. used to be located in Elmurst until its owner Kellogg Co. moved the snack operation to Michigan. I suspect not all of the elves relocated. There’s probably a neighborhood in Elmhurst where some of them still live.

You’d think the Village of Elmhurst would try to get permission from Kellogg to build an elf tree in one of the local parks. Do it right and people would come to see that.

Fallen Trees

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Before any snow fell on Sunday, we enjoyed a fairly nice Saturday, sunny and not too cold. Warm enough to talk a pleasant wall at Spring Valley, our go-to place for short walks in the mixed woods and prairie when we don’t want to drive too far to do so.

I noticed that the park district had finally gotten around to removing the big white ex-tree near the edge of the Spring Valley’s largest pond.
This is what it looked like nearly five years ago, standing tall and dead.

A nearby fallen tree, which landed in the pond, is still there, but the years are taking their toll.
That inspired me to look around for some other fallen trees at Spring Valley. There are a fair number, including cut ones.

And those that look like the wind finally got them.
All very nice, but nothing as epic as I saw in Washington state, or as damaging as in the UP. Or as varied as you can find among these images.

Notre-Dame

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First heard about the Notre-Dame fire on the car radio late yesterday afternoon. Wish I could report some kind of transcendent experience at the cathedral during our visit years ago, but no. Other people’s accounts along those lines are being posted with great speed.

We were duly impressed by the stained glass, the flying buttresses and the overall sweeping majesty of the exterior. But sad to say, what I remember most was that the cathedral interior was dark.

I understand the reason. Lighting is expensive. So the cathedral wasn’t much illuminated on an ordinary day in November 1994 for the ordinary tourists who were visiting. The thing to do would have been to attend a service, but we thoughtlessly did not.

Among all the pictures I took in 1994, I have exactly one of Notre-Dame. Of course it was one of the Rose Windows. I didn’t want to use film anywhere too dark. Not that I had the equipment to take a very good image anyway.

Maybe we were lucky to be able to see it at all. Whether you credit Dietrich von Choltitz with not burning down Paris in 1944, or think that’s nonsense, the Germans could have certainly done a lot of damage before liberation, including dynamiting something so quintessentially French as Notre-Dame du Paris. Such an act would have been in character, after all.

I’ve read today that, at least, the flying buttresses did indeed buttress the walls, though the roof was lost, including wood lattices made from trees cut down between 1160 and 1170. The Rose Windows seem to be intact.

Naturally, the building will be restored. I wonder whether there will be arguments about rebuilding the completely lost spire. Considering the long history of the cathedral, it counts as a late addition.

Thursday Nokorimono

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One major installation we saw at the Elmhurst Art Museum on Saturday didn’t have anything to do with the Bauhaus (which got a Google doodle today), or Mies van der Rohe, or anything but the sky.

“Skycube” by David Wallace Haskins, which was installed in 2015. It may look light, but it’s made from 6,000 lbs. of steel.
The mirrors inside the cube deliver an image of the sky to — in — at — the square window — hole — aperture — on the side. It’s a little unnerving to sit there and look at it, but also hard to turn away.
Stand next to the “window” and you can get a self-portrait in the sky. Got a surreal tinge to it.
The view might be even more interesting on one of those days when rafts of clouds are speeding along at high altitudes.

The YouTube autoplay algorithm is pretty much of the same dense mindset as Top 40 radio is, or at least used to be. Play one song, well known or even not so well known, and it will line up nothing unusual or surprising.

Odd, then — and I’ve tested this on a few separate days — when I queue up something by the B-52s, a good many lesser-known songs of theirs appear on the autoplay. Mostly published by the group itself, but not always (and who doesn’t like a song that mentions ancient Mesopotamia?).

Might just be a fluke, though. Your results may vary. I doubt that algorithms will ever be good enough to weed out all the flukes. Hope not.

The last time I was in downtown Chicago, earlier this month, I paused for a moment to take a picture of a sign on E. Adams St. marking the eastern terminus of the former U.S. 66.
That’s the western-facing side of the side, covered by stickers from all over, with many European in origin. Shortly before I took my picture, a group of Germans were doing the same. Must be in their Reiseführer von Amerika. And what does the Meat Bunny know?

By the time I took a picture of the eastern-facing side, the Germans were gone.
Leaving only this fellow and his selfie stick.

The Whole World A Bauhaus

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After a pleasant weekend and a warm Monday and Tuesday — lunch on the deck is my benchmark for warm days — the hammer dropped on Wednesday. Mostly we got cold rain, but I also saw flecks of ice on the deck and in the greenish grass today.

I’m pretty sure that the first time I ever heard of the Bauhaus, or Walter Gropius for that matter, was ca. 1977 listening to Tom Lehrer’s That Was The Year That Was album. One of the songs, “Alma,” was about Alma Mahler, who had died during The Year That Was, that is, 1964.

Walter Gropius was Alma’s second husband. In amusing Lehrer fashion, he made a rhyme of “Bauhaus” and “chow house” in the verse about Walter and Alma.

But he would work late at the Bauhaus
And only come home now and then
She said, “Vhat am I running, a chow house?
It’s time to change partners again!’

This is an interesting video about Alma. Nearly 55 years after her death, she still inspires strong opinions, pro and con; see the comments section. I think my opinion about Alma will be, I don’t care.

We went to the Elmhurst Art Museum on Saturday to see The Whole World A Bauhaus, a traveling exhibition mounted for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus. Elmhurst, it seems, is its only stop in the United States.

Blair Kamin did a good write-up of the exhibition in the Chicago Tribune: “Amid the show’s 400-plus objects,which include photographs, works on paper, architectural models, documents, films and audio recordings, are classic chairs by Mies and Marcel Breuer; geometric wall tapestries and carpets by such Bauhaus masters as the textile artist Anni Albers, wife of painter Josef Albers; and curiosities like a yellow, blue and red cradle and flyers for Bauhaus designs.”

Curious indeed, that cradle.

It looks like with a vigorous push, you could roll it completely over, throwing an unfortunate infant onto the floor.

But never mind that. At least it’s a Bauhaus object. Kamin calls the exhibit “overstuffed,” and I’ll go along with him. It’s overstuffed with photos and documents and other Bauhaus ephemera.

For true Bauhaus nerds, this might be exciting, but the minutiae was a little much for me. For a school that produced a wealth of artful objects, or perhaps elegant industrial objects, The Whole World A Bauhaus had relatively few of them on display. Fewer pictures of Bauhaus types at work and play and more Bauhaus output to examine in person would have improved the show.

Even so, I learned a fair number of things — such as how the Bauhaus formed factions almost immediately, as you might except from a group of people with talent, strong opinions and high ideals.

One example, as Kamin tells it: “One was the charismatic Swiss artist Johannes Itten, who shaved his head and wore rimless round glasses and gurulike garb. Itten made his students do breathing exercises to improve their powers of concentration. When the school’s founding director, the urbane German architect Walter Gropius, shifted the focus of the Bauhaus’ workshops from distinctive crafted objects to design for mass production, the idealistic Itten left the school in 1923.”

I also enjoyed much of what I saw. Such as the model of the Dessau Bauhaus building.
I wondered whether it, unlike the school itself, survived National Socialism, or the war or the DDR for that matter. Yes, it turns out. In reunified Germany, the Dessau Bauhaus is a big-deal tourist attraction.

I consciously looked for works on paper that would make good postcards. I found a few. Such as “Construction for Fireworks” by Kurt Schmidt.

I’m not the only person who thinks a line of Bauhaus postcards would be just the thing. Gropius himself apparently thought that.

“In 1923, the Bauhaus was preparing for its first exhibition, where Walter Gropius, the school’s founder, would extol the benefits of industrial mass production,” notes Wired.

“To publicize the events, the Bauhaus mailed out beautiful postcards.”

Here’s one more. Who needs a course catalog when you have this?

I wondered for a moment how the Elmhurst Art Museum bagged the only U.S. visit by this exhibition, and figured there were a few reasons. The Chicago area has strong ties to modernism, for one thing, but a few rooms of Bauhaus might get lost in a larger venue like the Art Institute.

Besides, the Elmhurst has its own ties to modernism. Namely, the main display space is adjacent to the McCormick House, a single-family home designed in 1952 by Mies van der Rohe, last director of the Bauhaus 20 years earlier, and moved to its current location from elsewhere in the village of Elmhurst.

The house was restored to a more original appearance recently.
The house is open, so we wandered in for a look. Not quite as striking as the Farnsworth House, but definitely Miesian.

Glos Memorial Park, Elmhurst

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I’d like to say that I discovered Glos Memorial Park in Elmhurst on Saturday via serendipity, but I learned about the place from that exceptional travel tool, Google Maps.
The park is a strip of land, a little less than an acre, near Elmurst’s main shopping district and just east of Robert T. Palmer Dr. Mostly it’s a pleasant strolling sort of place, with sidewalks and benches and a rose garden, but there’s also a single structure.
It’s the Glos Mausoleum.
Glos Memorial Park, Elmhurst“Lucy Glos, wife of Henry L. Glos, banker and first Village President, donated the land to the City of Elmhurst,” explains the Elmhurst Park District.

“The land was donated to the City of Elmhurst in the 1940s, but was not developed into a park until 1979, with dedication in 1981. The City began leasing the property to the Park District in 1978.”

Explore Elmhurst fills in a few other details: “The Village of Elmhurst passed an ordinance in 1892 giving Village President Henry Glos permission to build a mausoleum on his property. The mausoleum was built in 1899. Henry Glos (1851-1905) and Lucy Glos (1852-1941) are buried there.”

The Wilder Park Conservatory

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Near Elmhurst College in west suburban Elmhurst is Wilder Park, a mid-sized suburban park that includes the Elmhurst Public Library, Elmhurst Art Museum, Lizzadro Museum, Wilder Mansion and the Wilder Park Conservatory and Formal Gardens.

This is the Wilder Mansion, named after the last family that owned the place, before the Elmhurst Park District acquired it and the surrounding land in the early 1920s.
I understand that for most of the 20th century, the building housed the Elmhurst Library, but these days it’s a wedding and event venue. Even though it was late Saturday morning, the place was closed. I was a little surprised. I expected someone to be there, setting up for a wedding.

Not far away is the modest Wilder Park Conservatory and Formal Gardens. The gardens were around back and not growing much yet.
At one room and a non-public greenhouse, I believe the Wilder is the smallest public conservatory in metro Chicago, smaller even than the one in Mount Prospect, but it has a nice array of plants. Especially when outside is still mostly brown.

Along with a few rock formations.

Outside the conservatory is a public oddity.
The sign says:

Elmhurst Landmark
1870
Urn-Adorned
Cook County Court House before Chicago Fire
of 1871

According to the ElmhurstHistory.Org: “Following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, many people from the Chicago area collected ruins from the fire as a souvenir [sic]. Seth Wadhams, who lived in what is now known as the Wilder Mansion, brought two roof finials (decorative pieces) from the Cook County Courthouse, which had burned in the fire. One of the finials deteriorated over time. The second one remains in Wilder Park.”

It looks like you can see many of the courthouse finials in this pre-Fire photo. Strange thought that one of them might be, probably is, the obscure stone relic now miles from its original perch.