Category Archives: Chicago

Wolf Point & The Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame

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On Friday I went to downtown Chicago for business. Since it was a warm, clear spring day, I wanted to do a more extensive walkabout, especially in the River North area, where I attended to business. But I didn’t have much time.

Instead I was able to take a quick walk near the Chicago River, mostly on the way to my appointment and heading back to Union Station afterward. I was near the place where the river divides into its North and South Branches, which is known as Wolf Point and is the origin of the Chicago Municipal Device.

For quite a while, Wolf Point was oddly underdeveloped, at least compared with the rest of the riverfront. For instance, until recently the point was occupied mostly by a parking lot.

No more. The latest project there, Wolf Point East, is still under construction.

So Wolf Point looks a little different than at the beginning of this decade, and a lot different than it did in 1833.

Hines, Joseph P. Kennedy Enterprises, the AFL-CIO Building Investment Trust and PNC Realty Investors are the developers of Wolf Point East; Pelli Clarke Pelli did the design. The 60-story tower will have 698 residential units — upper-end rentals — that will be available late this year.

Just to the east, of course, is the 4 million-square-foot Merchandise Mart, seen here catching a shadow in the mid-afternoon.

A street runs between the Merchandise Mart and the river — the unimaginatively named W. Merchandise Mart Plaza — and from there, you can see the Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame. That is, eight bronze busts honoring one-time U.S. merchant princes, each facing the building. Joseph P. Kennedy himself commissioned the busts in the early 1950s, which was possible because the Kennedy family owned the Merchandise Mart for many decades.

The busts are in two groups of four. These are the busts to the west. They don’t look so large from across the street, but the heads are four times the size of a regular human head.
From left to right: John Wanamaker, founder of the stores by that name; George Hartford, founder of A&P; Edward Filene, founder of those stores; and Montgomery Ward.

These are the busts to the east.
Construction and taxis whizzing by made it a little harder to make an image, but in any case they are Robert Wood, a chairman of Sears; F.W. Woolworth; Julius Rosenwald, another chairman of Sears and founder of the Museum of Science and Industry; and Marshall Field.

More about each of the busts is here. Twelve years ago, at least, they looked like they needed some restoration. I didn’t get quite close enough to them this time to know whether that has happened.

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.

Merrie England

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The point of going to Hyde Park on Sunday wasn’t merely to tool around the neighborhood, though that’s usually fun, but to see the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company’s performance of Merrie England at Mandel Hall.

It was the fourth production of theirs we’ve seen, besides Patience (last year) Iolanthe (2017) and Yeomen of the Guard (2015). Seems like the company wanted to do something a little different this year. Like Gilbert & Sullivan, but not Gilbert & Sullivan.

Composer Edward German and librettist Basil Hood collaborated on Merrie England, which had its first run in 1902. G&S might not have been working together by then — Sullivan especially, who had the handicap of being dead — but clearly German & Hood were giving the people what they wanted, for a little while longer anyway. I understand that it was among the last new light operas produced by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company.

Merrie England has all the same sort of whimsy and nonsense as G&S, set to music and enlivened by dance as in G&S. Supposedly it takes place in the age of Elizabeth I, who makes an appearance, along with other historic figures like Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Essex.

The show has all you need in this kind of comic opera: love declared, thwarted and finally triumphant; word play and a few patter songs; a little swordplay and some chasing around the stage; even a cameo by an actual corgi and a supporting character who unexpectedly breaks out a trombone and starts to play it.

All of the cast struck me as talented, but I particularly enjoyed the comic styling of Jeffrey Luksik as Wilkins, who says he’s “poet and chief player in Shakespeare’s Company” who, in a bit of meta fun, insists that everything is better when put to music.

“I prophesy that he [Shakespeare] hath a misconception of the part of a writer in writing a part, in that he hath too little regard for the matters of singing and dancing; for a time will come when all comedies shall be musical, or the public will have none of them…

Dost remember in ‘To be, or not to be’?
Come the words ‘a sea of trouble’
The applause, I trow, would double
If he forthwith sang a song about the sea!”

Dorian McCall did a fine turn as the Earl of Essex, the villain but not really the villain. As the program notes put it, he has an “even baritone and a rich and flexible voice, recognized as having great style, musically and physically, on stage.”

Also impressive: Emma Sorensen, who played a woodland-dwelling character called Jill-All-Alone, a witch but not really a witch, unless she really was a witch. How such a slender woman can project such a powerful voice is beyond me.

A fuller review — “hijinks and humor galore” is in the apt head — along with a picture of the cast, is at the Hyde Park Herald.

Along E. 57th Street, Chicago

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Our stroll through a small slice of the Hyde Park neighborhood on Sunday took us westward on E. 57th St. for a few blocks, roughly between S. Kenwood Ave. and S. University Ave. As you head west, small businesses and flats give way to university property.

Mostly. This is the 57th St. side of the First Unitarian Church of Chicago.
According to the AIA Guide to Chicago, the church, which was completed in 1931, is a “textbook example of English Perpendicular Gothic design [that] fits in easily with the limestone facades and Gothic ornament of many Hyde Park residences and university buildings.”

Denison B. Hull did the design. “The son of a five-term, Republican U.S. representative, Morton Hull, he grew up in the Hyde Park area that his father represented in the 1920s,” the Chicago Tribune said in his 1988 obit.

“After serving as an officer in World War I, Mr. Hull was graduated from Harvard University. In 1922, he won first prize in an architectural design contest conducted by the university.

Among his noted architectural work, besides the First Unitarian Church, were the restoration of Old Church and the expansion of the historical museum, both in Bennington, Vt…

Mr. Hull was noted also as a scholar of ancient Greek and Greece.”

They don’t make ’em like that anymore.

I’ve never been able to see the inside of First Unitarian. Services are at 10 a.m. Sunday, and if I ever happen to be in Hyde Park then, I will attend one. Not just to see the interior, but also to see whatever it is Unitarians do during their services.

At 1219 E. 57th St. is the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society. More simply, the Neubauer Collegium.

According to a sign in front, exhibits can be seen inside, but not, as it happens, on Sunday. I wondered just what the organization was, and why I’d never heard of it. To answer the second question first: it was founded only in 2012, and makes its home in the former Meadville-Lombard Seminary Building.

As for what it does, the Neubauer — as best as I can describe it — is a humanities think tank.

UChicago News says: “The Neubauer Collegium will unite scholars in the common pursuit of ideas of grand scale and broad scope, making the University of Chicago a global destination for top scholars engaged in humanistic research while also pioneering efforts to share that research with the public.”

Here’s the view of the Reynolds Club bell tower from near 57th St.
As probably no one calls it: the John J. Mitchell Tower of the Joseph Reynolds Student Clubhouse. These days, the clubhouse, completed in 1903, is a student union. Joseph “Diamond Jo” Reynolds was a Gilded Age steamboat and railroad magnate whose bequest paid for the building; I believe John J. Mitchell was a Chicago banker who seems to have died in a road-rage incident.

As Time reported in 1927:

Near Chicago last week death came to banker John J. Mitchell, and to Mrs. Mitchell. They were driving in an open motor car from their country home at Lake Geneva, Ill., to Chicago for the funeral of their elder daughter’s father-in-law, when their machine met a roadside brawl. Two motor cars, going in opposite directions had tried to pass a hay wagon at the same time. Both cars went into a ditch; the drivers jumped clear and fell to words and fisticuffs. The haywagon stopped as did several machines. Their drivers wanted to see…

To read more, I’d have to subscribe, but I’d rather leave the story at that.

Here’s the view of the tower from inside the quad formed by the Reynolds Club and some other buildings.

Designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, the building was “derived from St. John’s College at Oxford, and its domestic feeling is enhanced by a stair hall that could have come straight out of an English manor house.”

Also inside — behind the row of windows to the left of the tower, above — is the Charles L. Hutchinson Common, which SRC did as well. Hutchinson, better known as founder of the Art Institute of Chicago, ponied up for building the hall.

It’s also like stepping into Oxford. According to Wiki, anyway, “The Harry Potter film series has used the original hall at Christ Church in each of its films, imparting a tourist interest in its American replicate.[citation needed].”

Short Hyde Park Walkabout

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We don’t make it to the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago that often, so when we do, if time and weather allow, we take a walk. Today wasn’t especially warm, but not cold either, or windy, and the sun was out. Good day for a walk along a few blocks in Hyde Park.

These views happen to be along S. Blackstone Ave.

Also on Blackstone — 5640 S. Blackstone Ave., to be exact — is the abandoned St. Stephen’s.
The most recent information I’ve found about the structure — which was developed in 1917 as a Christian Science church — dates from about three years ago, when a new owner acquired it with unspecified plans for redevelopment.

Even then, according to the defunct DNAInfo, the building had defied redevelopment for more than 20 years. Looks like it’s still doing so.

To the west of the abandoned church is an oddity in a small park adjacent to William H. Ray Elementary School. An array of concrete spheres.
Those are many, but not all, of the spheres. There are 30 in all. Or so says a stone plaque fixed to the ground nearby; I didn’t count them.

The globes form an artwork called “Like the Time They Go” by Virginio Ferrari, a Chicago sculptor originally from Verona. The date on the plaque says 1977-2002, while other sources simply say 1977. Maybe the more recent date was when Ferrari quit making changes or adding concrete spheres.

The New 110 N. Wacker Dr.

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About a year ago, I found myself at the corner of N. Wacker Dr. and W. Washington St. in downtown Chicago. At the time, a ’50s-vintage building across the street was being dismantled.

Today I was downtown for a little while, and passed by the same corner. Though drizzly, I decided to document the moment.

The new 110 N. Wacker Dr. is a development of Howard Hughes Co. and Riverside Investment and Development. Looks like it will be an interesting building when it’s finished next year.

Century of Progress, Missent to Kansas City

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Had my slip and fall over the weekend. That happens about once per winter. Light snow was falling on Sunday, just enough to cover up a patch of ice waiting for me on a sidewalk. You know how it is. By the time you realize you’re falling, you’re on the ground.

Ann was next to me and helped me to my feet again. I knew I had children for a reason. This time, no bone damage or even bruises or any pain. Sometimes you get lucky.

The risk isn’t over. Until 9 a.m. Tuesday, the NWS says: “Total snow accumulations of 1 to 4 inches expected with highest amounts in the north. Ice accumulations of up to one quarter of an inch possible across portions of Lee, DeKalb, Kane, and DuPage Counties…

“Strong westerly winds are expected to develop Tuesday afternoon and continue Tuesday night. These strong winds may result in blowing snow and may also increase the threat of power outages…”

Oh, boy. Days like this, time to dwell on the past. Someone else’s past. At some point during the last few years, I acquired this postcard for a modest sum.
It’s a genuine penny postcard, depicting the General Motors Building at the 1933 world’s fair in Chicago. The Century of Progress Exposition, to use its formal name.

A product of the Reuben H. Donnelley Co., whom I assume was tasked to make cards for the fair. Not, as it turns out, the same entity as R.R. Donnelley Publishing, but a separate company founded by Richard Robert Donnelley’s son, Reuben H. Donnelley. Guess he didn’t want to work for the old man.

The card was mailed from the fair, postmarked 9 p.m. July 17, 1933, a Monday, and sent to a Mrs. A.G. Drew of St. Joseph, Mo. Interestingly, there’s another postmark that says “Missent to Kansas City, July 18, 1933.” Hope the delay wasn’t too long for Mrs. Drew.

When I lived in Osaka, one day I got a beaten up envelope in the mail that had been about three weeks in transit from the United States, or two weeks longer than usual. Stamped on the bottom (in English) was “Missent to Manila.”

Image Adjustments

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Not long ago I downloaded a new version of PhotoScape, the program that I use to adjust images. I’d used an earlier version for years, mostly to do simple things, such as crop, adjust sizes and lighten or darken an image.

The new version, even the non-premium one, has a lot more bells and whistles. Curious, I decided the other day to play around with some of the added functions. I picked an image from my files for that purpose.

In case the scene isn’t familiar, that’s the Heald Square Monument on E. Wacker Dr. in downtown Chicago, dating from the late 1930s. Prominently placed yet seemingly little noticed. It’s a bronze by the renowned Lorado Taft depicting George Washington and the two main financiers of the American Revolution, Robert Morris and Haym Salomon.

It’s also the kind of thing I take pictures of. I took this one on January 29, 2013. The light wasn’t especially good and in fact I brightened up the above image somewhat. Still a little drab. It was a drab day, I think.

So add a little color. Add a mirror image to the bottom.

Or do other effects the names of which I forget.
Or finally, my own favorite, kaleidoscope.
That’s only a small sample, not including the functions you have to pay extra for. Interesting.

Titus Andronicus

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The event we’d gotten up early for on Saturday was a reading of Titus Andronicus at the Newberry Library, done for a few hundred people seated in one of the library’s large rooms. A reading because the actors had scripts with them and there were no sets or much in the way of costumes. But they were good actors and they interacted with each other as if it were a full stage show. So we enjoyed it as much as a standard staging.

Titus Andronicus is an early Shakespeare work, early 1590s, and apparently popular in its time. Later it fell from fashion and has certainly been overshadowed by other Shakespeare plays. After the early 17th century, it wasn’t performed much at all again until the 20th century.

It counts as a revenge play. I can see why. One character is wronged and that sets off a cycle of revenge and more revenge. When Titus Andronicus’ characters seek revenge, things get pretty stabby. The play’s got it all: hate, betrayal, rape, a lot of murder, mutilation, decapitation, even a touch of cannibalism.

I can’t say that the play’s exactly back in fashion, but 21st-century audiences have no shortage of the old ultraviolence in our entertainment, so Titus Andronicus fits right in. Quentin Tarantino ought to do a movie version.

Bughouse Square & the Newberry Library in the Snow

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You have to like a place nicknamed Bughouse Square. The city of Chicago has just such a place on the Near North Side. I quote at length from the Encyclopedia of Chicago.

“Bughouse Square (from ‘bughouse,’ slang for mental health facility) is the popular name of Chicago’s Washington Square Park, where orators (‘soapboxers’) held forth on warm-weather evenings from the 1910s through the mid-1960s.

“Located across Walton Street from the Newberry Library, Bughouse Square was the most celebrated outdoor free-speech center in the nation and a popular Chicago tourist attraction.

“In its heyday during the 1920s and 1930s, poets, religionists, and cranks addressed the crowds, but the mainstays were soapboxers from the revolutionary left, especially from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Proletarian Party, Revolutionary Workers’ League, and more ephemeral groups.

“Many speakers became legendary, including anarchist Lucy Parsons, ‘clap doctor’ Ben Reitman, labor-wars veteran John Loughman, socialist Frank Midney, feminist-Marxist Martha Biegler, Frederick Wilkesbarr (‘The Sirfessor’), Herbert Shaw (the ‘Cosmic Kid’), the Sheridan twins (Jack and Jimmy), and one-armed ‘Cholly’ Wendorf.”

The Speakers’ Corner of Chicago, it was. But by the 1980s, when I first saw Bughouse Square, whose formal name is Washington Square Park, the place had quieted down. A number of homeless people were always in residence, however temporarily. Considering the way gentrification goes, those ragged souls might be regularly chased away now, a circumstance that would surely disturb the shade of Ben Reitman.

On Saturday morning, snow fell on Bughouse Square and most of the other people we saw there were walking dogs.
At the center of the square is a modest fountain, a recreation of an early 20th-century fountain on the site.

That morning fairly early, against our usual habit, Ann and I had gotten up and made our way to the city for an event across the street from the square at the Newberry Library.

As always, the library’s an impressive pile of stones.