Category Archives: History

The Greenstone Church

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The Greenstone United Methodist Church is at the corner of 112th St. and St. Lawrence Ave. and it’s green.

Yuriko suggested it was covered with moss, but closer inspection reveals that much of the rock itself is green. Apparently it’s made of serpentine quarried in Pennsylvania. I wasn’t familiar with serpentine, so I looked into it. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica says that it’s “a mineral which, in a massive and impure form, occurs on a large scale as a rock, and being commonly of variegated colour, is often cut and polished, like marble, for use as a decorative stone… Although popularly called a ‘marble,’ serpentine is essentially different from any kind of limestone, in that it is a magnesium silicate, associated however, with more or less ferrous silicate.”

Why aren’t more things built of it? Could be the expense. But it does make for a sturdy structure. Greenstone has been standing since 1882, designed by Solon Beman, who did all of Pullman. He did a number of other things – including a large number of Christian Science churches, interestingly enough – but he’s best known for Pullman.

Back in the days of Mr. Pullman, the structure was built as a Unitarian Church “for all to unite in a union body and get a broad-minded evangelical clergyman,” according to the Pullman Foundation. That dog didn’t hunt, with each denomination going its own way in rented space elsewhere. It also didn’t help that rent was high at Greenstone. In 1907, a decade after Pullman and his company ceased to own the property, Methodists acquired it.

The inside is modestly adorned, with its original cherry wood pews. I’m sorry I didn’t get to hear the organ.

Again from the Pullman Foundation: “The organ was built in 1882 by the distinguished firm of Steere and Turner as their Opus #170. It is one of the few manual tracker organs remaining in the United States… The organ contains 1,260 pipes ranging in size from the large front pipes to others the size of a pencil. It consists of two manuals for the hands, one for the feet, twenty-one stops and twenty-three ranks of pipes, three couplers and a twenty-seven note-pedal board.”

I don’t know a lot about organs, but that sounds fancy. The foundation further says that “its tracker action means that the valves are mechanically linked to the keys and are directly activated by the organist’s hands and feet. Most organs have an electrical system which eliminates this direct link between the keys and pipes. Today’s organists find playing this organ a physically demanding but emotionally satisfying act.” No organ for old men, you could say.

Pullman Interiors

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All together we visited seven residences on the Historic Pullman House Tour, none of them usually open to the public because people live in them. But on this particular weekend the owners agreed to show them off. I don’t think I’d ever been on a house walk of this kind before, probably because of a vague association with a House Beautiful sensibility. De gustibus non est disputandum, but it isn’t an impulse I share. I’m more House Cluttered.

Pullman’s historic character pulled me in, and come to think of it a house walk can be a good way to go into places and see things. I might have to look into other walks: House Interesting or Odd, if not Beautiful.

Usually it took a few minutes to get into each house, with small groups entering as others left. None of the Pullman houses are that large, and they’re easy to fill up. The event wasn’t teeming with people, but well attended, including a couple of busloads of seniors. In fact, I’d guess that the average age of the attendees was a bit older than me.

Sometimes the rooms and halls were so crowded, it felt like being at a party – except no one knew anyone else, or planned to stick around to gab. The homeowner was usually in one of the rooms, with volunteers in other rooms to explain the original layout of the place, answer questions, and (probably) keep an eye on small possessions.

As far as I could tell, none of the houses still feature their original layouts, but some were closer than others. You’d hardly except a 21st-century family to live in space designed for, say, a half-dozen unmarried skilled workers of the late 19th century. A couple of the homeowners, especially the fellow who owns 533 E. 112th St., whose block is also known as Arcade Row, did an elaborate, painstaking restoration job inspired by design of the late 19th century – wall colors, fixtures, furnishings. He also had art and artifacts either from the period, or reminiscent of it, including items from the mostly lost mansions on Prairie Ave. (George Pullman had his mansion there), and others depicting the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

Arcade Row is close to the former site of the Pullman Arcade Building, a missing part of Pullman. It would be quite a thing to have around: “Pullman Arcade Building contained a 500-seat theatre, a post office, library, the Pullman Trust and Savings Bank, the town management offices as well as office and storefront spaces that were rented to private businesses,” notes the Historic Pullman Foundation. “Modeled after the enclosed arcades of Europe, the Arcade Building was a forerunner of the modern shopping mall we know today. The building was unfortunately demolished in 1927, as the nearby shopping areas gained greater popularity and the building became no longer financially viable.”

Jazz Age retail killed the Arcade, not rampant out-with-the-old of the ’50s and ’60s. Ah, well.

All of homeowners had put a lot of effort into their properties, but mostly their interiors were distinctly modern, some more aesthetic than others. One owner’s hobby was stained glass, and he put a lot of nice work into his house. Other owners invested a lot of time in their small back yards, raising flowers and koi and installing sculptures and sundials and fountains. Another owner was fond of art exhibit posters. I looked at one in particular for a few moments  – The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, which was at the Art Institute in the summer of ’87 – before I thought, “Hey, I went to that one.”

Yet another owner had a large collection of model fantasy figures – you know, heroes, dragons, orcs, and so on, a few inches high, quite detailed, and each with a home in a display case. And, he told me, places to set them up that were put away for the house tour. I told him my cousin has an impressive collection of military model figures, and he allowed that fantasy/military is probably the main division among figure-oriented hobbyists.

Each home has two or three floors, all of them with narrow staircases. After climbing stairs in seven houses, we were fairly tired but also thirsty and in need of lunch. So we repaired to the Cal-Harbor Restaurant, a diner-like place without a lot of decoration; it was good to take a rest from sensory overload. Or at least to shift away from visual stimulation to the satisfaction of good omelettes and – something you don’t always find in Chicago diners – good grits.

Cal-Harbor is on 115th, which is a mid-sized east-west street. Visible from its window is a facility across the street that includes a vast plain of black asphalt and a brutal concrete building, all surrounded by a chain-link fence. I don’t know what it is. I guess it has some economic utility. But it’s butt ugly. The Pullman neighborhood could have been that.

The Historic Pullman House Tour

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On Saturday, Yuriko and I went to Pullman to participate in the 40th annual Historic Pullman House Tour. For a fairly modest fee, you can walk around the Pullman neighborhood and go into seven privately owned houses, one church, one community center, and the visitor center – which would be accessible anyway and isn’t historic, though it’s a good little museum about Pullman.

You can also take a look at the outside of the Hotel Florence, which has been closed and under renovation for years, and wander around the Pullman factory ruins, which were ruined less by the neglect over the decades than a fire set by a lunatic in 1998. We did all those things over the course of the afternoon, and also squeezed in lunch at the diner-like Cal-Harbor restaurant at the edge of the district.

In the early 1880s, industrialist George Pullman established a company town just to the south of Chicago to build his famed railroad cars. The place has a long and storied history, easy to find described elsewhere. Enough to say that the legacy neighborhood, now in the city and way down on the South Side, features about 900 row houses either two or three stories high, made of brick with limestone foundations, with a lot of late Victorian detail. It is, I’ve read, one of the largest collections of 19th-century residences in Chicago.

The entire neighborhood was nearly Eisenhowered around 1960 to make way for an industrial park. The neighborhood successfully fought its destruction and it lives on, though parts are still dilapidated. Pullman clearly includes some enthusiastic residents.

You might call that a Pullman car.

Atlanta ’10

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About three years ago on the way to Springfield, we stopped in Atlanta, Illinois, which isn’t far from I-55 but which used to be right on U.S. 66. These days that means there’s enough nostalgia traffic – and probably local regulars – to support the revived Palms Grill Café. We ate there three years ago, only a short time after it re-opened. Some years before that an artist named Steve Estes painted a mural dedicated to the original joint across the street.

A helpful sign under the mural says: “In its early days, weekly dances and bingo nights accompanied the blue-plate specials served at the Palms Grill Café. The “Grill” was also Atlanta’s Greyhound bus-stop. You just turned the light on above the door if you wanted the bus to pick you up. Located directly across Rt. 66 from this mural, the Palms Grill Café served Atlanta’s citizens, as well as a steady stream of Rt. 66 travelers, from 1936 until the late 1960s.

In his design of the “Palms Grill Café” mural, Steve Estes of Possum Trot, Kentucky, captured the intent of the “Grill’s” first owner, Robert Adams, an Atlanta native, who named it after a restaurant he frequented during trips to California. The mural was completed in June 2003 during the “LetterRip on Rt. 66” gathering of approximately 100 Letterheads in Atlanta.

The Letterheads are a group of generous and free-spirited sign painters from across the United States and Canada who are interested in preserving the art of painting outdoor signs and murals.

Just down the street from the mural is a small park with a handful of memorials. This stone caught my eye.

The modern sign says:

Knights of Pythias “Memorial Tree” Stone

This stone was dedicated by the Atlanta, Illinois Knights of Pythias organization as a memorial to veterans of World War I. The stone was placed under a Memorial Tree on November 11, 1921. At some unknown date, the stone was removed from its original location. It then rested behind the Atlanta Library for many years. Research continues to identify the exact location of the memorial tree. Atlanta’s Acme Lodge #332 of the Knights of Pythias was organized in 1892. No longer active in Atlanta, the Knights of Pythias, is an international fraternity founded in 1864, whose motto is Friendship, Charity and Benevolence.

Can’t remember which tree was planted by the Knights of Pythias, eh? Just goes to show you that no matter how fervently one generation wants later ones to remember something, they probably won’t. Or if they do, it’s a matter of chance as much as anything else. Then again, you can also make a reasonable argument along the lines of, Who cares which tree a long-gone fraternal order planted in an obscure town in the heart of North America in the early 20th century? Really important things will be remembered. (Except that they usually aren’t. Except by historically minded eccentrics.)

The Atlanta Library is an octagon dating from 1908. That’s a fine shape for a building. There need to be more of them. The exact reasons for choosing that shape for this library are probably lost, but I’d think it made for better lighting in an era when electric lighting, though available, wouldn’t have been as bright as later.

According to the library web site: “Near the turn of the 20th century, the Atlanta Women’s Club established a committee with the purpose of erecting a Library building. Land located next to the tracks of the Chicago and Mississippi railroad, was donated to the City of Atlanta by Seward Fields, a descendant of William Leonard. Leonard was one of the contractors responsible for helping build the Chicago and Mississippi railroad… A beautiful bookcase dedicated to Seward Fields is still in use at the Library.

Mrs. Martha Harness Tuttle… helped fund the erection of the Atlanta Library building.  In 1908, she donated $4,000 – over half the funds needed for the new structure. The Library Board adopted plans for erecting an octagonal-shaped structure as prepared by architect Paul Moratz, of Bloomington, Illinois… The new building was dedicated on Saturday, March 28, 1908.

The Amber Room

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Ed tells me that the inside of Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood  “is… seriously over the top. I like the Russian Orthodox for its restraint, and there is none whatsoever in that church.”

Must be all those mosaics. Maybe the Russians were trying to outdo Byzantine churches – taking that whole Third Rome idea seriously, at least when it comes to adorning sacred spaces. On the other hand, I’ve read that there might be more square feet of mosaics decorating the Cathedral of St. Louis than even the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood, and as far as I know no one’s claiming St. Louis as a new iteration of Rome.

The inside of Spilled Blood is just another thing I missed, not because I didn’t visit a certain place, but because I didn’t visit a certain place at the right time. That happens a lot; it has to, if you go anywhere at all. Some things, you want to miss – far better to visit St. Petersburg in 1994 than 1944, for instance. But I’m not thinking of anything quite so dramatic. Not long ago, I read about the reconstruction of the Amber Room, which is near St. Petersburg, and which wasn’t finished until 2003, meaning I missed that too.

It’s quite a story, the Amber Room. The Smithsonian says that the original room, whose construction started in 1701, ultimately “covered about 180 square feet and glowed with six tons of amber and other semi-precious stones. The amber panels were backed with gold leaf, and historians estimate that, at the time, the room was worth $142 million in today’s dollars. Over time, the Amber Room was used as a private meditation chamber for Czarina Elizabeth, a gathering room for Catherine the Great and a trophy space for amber connoisseur Alexander II.

“A gift to Peter the Great in 1716 celebrating peace between Russia and Prussia, the room’s fate became anything but peaceful: Nazis looted it during World War II, and in the final months of the war, the amber panels, which had been packed away in crates, disappeared.” (The whole article is here.)

Burned in a bombing? Buried in an unrecoverable place? Put at the bottom of the Baltic Sea by torpedoes? There are a number of ideas about what happened to the original, but nothing conclusive. Nothing like a good mystery involving treasure.

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

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October became more October-like today, at least the way that month is usually felt in these Northern Hemisphere latitudes. Cool and clear, in other words. A fine day to take the dog for a long walk around one of the small lakes at the Poplar Creek Forest Preserve, in fact the lake in the third picture here (and we wandered under that vast old willow in the picture, too).

My experience of early October in St. Petersburg, Russia, was a lot colder. The place felt positively Decemberish. That didn’t stop Russians, or us, from strolling down Nevsky Prospekt, though it did persuade us not to buy any frozen treats from vendors. Ordinary Russians, on the other hand, seemed quite fond of eating ice cream on the street when the temperatures were barely above freezing.

At the meeting of Nevsky Prospekt and the Griboyedov Canal, the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood appears, just a few blocks away.

Naturally, we had to take a closer look at the church. Its exterior is splendid up close, but I’m sorry to report that it was still closed in 1994. According to the church’s Wiki article in English, the building didn’t reopen until about three years later, following significant restoration. I’m not sure I knew it at the time — even though the information must have been my guidebook — that it was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881.

The Samurai Collection

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The Ann & Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum: The Samurai Collection takes up the second floor of the St. Ann Building in Dallas’ Uptown district, which is a walkable distance from downtown, even in the late-summer heat. The museum is another new attraction for the city, open only since March.

To reach it, you enter a first-floor restaurant, pass its reception desk, and then go up some stairs. It’s a small museum with a single focus: samurai armor, weapons, masks, and related items. The museum asserts that its “collection of samurai objects is one of the largest of its type in the world and is displayed in the only museum outside Japan whose focus is samurai armor.”

Go up to the cool, quiet reaches of the museum, and pretty soon you’re face-to-face with the likes of him:

It’s a somen (full-face mask), made of iron, leather, horsehair, lacquer and silk lacing, dating from mid-Edo – the 18th century. During earlier periods, when a samurai might actually have to do battle, somen weren’t that popular, since a mask like that can obscure your vision. In the more peaceful Edo era, that wasn’t such a concern, and the masks had a revival among samurai (at least those who could afford them).

Another cool item at the Samurai Collection is this helmet.

It’s an akodanari kabuto, a melon-shaped helmet of iron and lacquer and dating from the Muromachi period, or the late 15th to early 16th centuries, when it was entirely likely that a samurai would be fighting someone. The museum says that “the construction of this kabuto, with twelve plates covered in protruding rivet comprising the helmet bowl, is unique. There is no other known example.”

These are fine artifacts, but they aren’t as grand as some full armor that the Barbier-Mueller has. In this case, one for a man, another for a boy.

The larger suit, the museum notes, “was assembled during the Edo period and incorporates several older components. The helmet displays stylized horns known as kuwagata and a frontal ornament in the shape of a paulownia leaf, the crest of several important families…” As for the smaller suit, it’s late Edo. “Boys of samurai class families began training to become warriors at a very young age… at around age 12, samurai boys participated in a ceremony known as genpuku, wherein they received their first armor and sword.”

All in all, a high-quality collection, and not such a large display that you can’t leisurely take in most of it in one visit. It’s as if a single room of some vast, first-water museum – the British Museum, the Met, the Art Institute – had detached itself and landed in Dallas. So why Dallas? The museum’s name says it all: Dallas real estate mogul Gabriel Barbier-Mueller and his wife Ann, long-time collectors of this kind of art and artifact, wanted it to be there.

Here’s a 2006 D article about Barbier-Mueller, scion of the Swiss family of that name who decided to live in Dallas, in as much as anyone with four houses lives in a particular place. It begins with the amusing line: “Gabriel Barbier-Mueller owns a lot of stuff.” Well, so do I. It’s just that a lot of his stuff is more expensive.

Confederate Field

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Another major section of the Texas State Cemetery honors Confederate dead. Even before we went, I knew that Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, who took a slug at Shiloh, had been reburied at the cemetery. Sure enough, he has one of the larger memorials, at a place of honor among the field of Confederates.

The memorial, including a recumbent statue of Gen. Johnston, was done by Elisabet Ney, another European sculptor who did well in 19th-century Texas, though she was no slacker before she left Europe. “Among her best-known works from this period [i.e., pre-Texas] are portrait busts of Arthur Schopenhauer, Giuseppi Garibaldi, and Otto von Bismarck, and a full-length statue of King Ludwig II of Bavaria,” notes the Handbook of Texas. After establishing herself in Texas, she did busts of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston (presumably not from life), among others. All in all, quite a career.

These days her Austin studio is a museum. How did I not know about it? Got another thing to see in Austin someday.

The light was poor on the recumbent Gen. Johnston, so I didn’t make an image. Not far away, however, is a much more obscure Confederate general, John A. Wharton. He was in full sunlight.

Another Confederate Texan, his date of death is listed as April 6, 1865, so I figured he was one of the unlucky few killed in action just as the war ground to an end. But no. Again from the Handbook of Texas: “On April 6, 1865, while visiting Gen. John B. Magruder’s headquarters at the Fannin Hotel in Houston, Wharton was killed by fellow officer George W. Baylor in a personal quarrel that grew out of ‘an unpleasant misunderstanding over military matters.’ Even though Wharton was found to have been unarmed, Baylor was acquitted of murder charges in 1868.” Geez.

The bust was by Enrico Filiberto Cerracchio, another European sculptor who ended up in Texas. Who knew there were so many? He came a little later, though, and is best known for his large bronze equestrian figure of Sam Houston at the entrance to Hermann Park in Houston, which dates from 1924.

Generals are one thing, but far more of the cemetery is occupied by ordinary Confederate soldiers, or more exactly, old men who had once been CSA who died in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Confederate Field is large.

Stephen F. Austin and the Company He Keeps

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There are a lot of notables in the Texas State Cemetery, but who’s more notable for Texas than Stephen F. Austin, especially since Sam Houston is buried somewhere else? Austin’s been in the cemetery in Austin for over 100 years now, reposing under a statue by an Italian sculptor who did most of his work in Texas, one Pompeo Coppini, whose name is conveniently on the base, and who had an interesting career I didn’t know about until I looked him up.

Wonder how many people who know about the city of Austin for its tech industries or music scene or its politics or UT or Keep Austin Weird or its moon towers know even a bit about Austin the man. Anyone who took Texas History in the 7th grade or read Texas History “Movies,” maybe.

Coppini gave Austin a determined visage, reaching for the future. Since he died young, at only 43, you have to wonder what he would have done had he lived another 30 years — at the very least held a number of high offices in the republic and the state, as Houston did.

The plaque in front of the figure says:

Stephen Fuller

AUSTIN

“The Father of Texas”
was born in Wythe County, Virginia
November 3, 1793
and died in Brazoria County, Texas
December 27, 1836

Wise, Gentle, Courageous, and Patient
He was the founder
of a mighty commonwealth

He’s actually one of the few full-sized bronzes in the cemetery. Most of the funerary art involves other shapes, such as that of Ma and Pa Ferguson, who are not far from Austin.

James and Miriam Ferguson, that is, who were both governor of the state at various times. My mother remembers them, and I heard about them from her from time to time.

One of the least conventional memorials in the cemetery — or in any cemetery — was this one, to William and Carrin Patman, whom I had to look up. He was a long-time Texas state senator and also spent a while in the U.S. House.

Other notables we spotted on “Republic Hill,” whose centerpiece is the Austin statue, included Walter Prescott Webb, Bigfoot Wallace, Rep. Barbara Jordan, Rep. Jake Pickle, and a few other governors and state officials. Coach Darrell Royal is buried near the road. I hadn’t realized he was dead. His stone features a UT gold ring and the words, “Let’s Give Him Three.”

 

The Texas State Cemetery

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The Texas State Cemetery, which is in Austin east of I-35 but still not that far from the capitol, is a lush patch of mildly sloping land, artfully landscaped, graced by a variety of trees, a few water features, narrow roads, many Texas flags, and lots of monuments of different sizes and shapes, as you’d except from a good cemetery. Jay and I stopped by the State Cemetery on the afternoon of Friday the 13th under partly cloudy skies, and during the usual high heat you’re going to encounter in September in Central Texas. Fortunately, there was also a good bit of shade.

One thing the cemetery did not have, at least when we were there, was many other visitors – maybe a four or five all together, and I think at least one of them worked there. Then again, that’s not so strange. I often find myself alone – among living people, anyway – even in large cemeteries. The only recent exception to that has been Arlington National Cemetery.

The invaluable Handbook of Texas tells us that the 22-acre Texas State Cemetery “is divided into two plots. The smaller one includes some 234 marked graves of more or less prominent men and their wives, including… representatives of every department of state government and every period of state history. The larger plot contains the marked graves of some 2,047 Confederate veterans and their widows, who died after 1889 in the Texas Confederate Home and the Confederate Woman’s Home.”

The cemetery also still has room for expansion. I understand that most state officials can be buried there if they so desire, and the legislature can offer burial in the cemetery to whomever it wants. That would account, for example, for the stone dedicated to Wille James Wells, “El Diablo,” 1906-1989.

I hadn’t heard of him before. His stone says, “Played and managed in the Negro Leagues, 1924-1948. Began his career with the St. Louis Stars and became baseball’s first power hitting shortstop… He was best known for his aggressive play [hence the nickname]. During his career he compiled a .392 batting average against Major League ballplayers. In 1997, Willie Wells was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame…” Wells’ connection to Texas isn’t obvious from the stone, so I looked him up, and it turns out he’s native to Austin.

Roads run through the cemetery, making a T shape. The formal entrance to the grounds is at the bottom of the T. According to Wiki at least, the stem of the T shape is part of Texas 165, which also includes part of a side street that borders the cemetery. It isn’t clear from the text whether the rest of the T also counts as Texas 165, but never mind.

This is the view looking north, past the top of the T. Whatever you call it, the road is abundantly lined with Texas flags.