Category Archives: Religious Sites

A Pair of Chicago Cathedrals: Holy Name and St. James

Posted on by

Spent a little while in the city this weekend and had time to visit two major churches. Cathedrals, in fact. Holy Name Cathedral, which is the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, and St. James Cathedral, which is the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. They are a block apart and both only a few blocks west of Michigan Ave. on the near North Side.

The Gothic Revival style Holy Name rises over State St.
“After the Great Chicago Fire destroyed both the Cathedral of St. Mary (Madison and Wabash streets) and the Church of the Holy Name (site of the present Cathedral), a new cathedral was needed,” the Chicago Architecture Center says…. “the new Holy Name Cathedral was dedicated in 1875.”

More recently, the roof was restored after a 2009 fire did serious damage to the cathedral.
St. James Cathedral is another Gothic Revival structure, rising above Wabash St. It too is the result of rebuilding.
“A few weeks after the splendidly redesigned church was formally rededicated in 1871, the Great Chicago Fire erupted, leaving nothing but the stone walls, the Civil War Memorial, and the bell tower, whose bells gave warning to the neighborhood of the fire,” the church’s web site says.

Wiki says that the upper reaches of the bell tower are still stained with soot from the Fire, but I didn’t really see it.
Maybe the soot was obscured by trees from my vantage. Anyway, here are some interior shots of St. James.

Postcard From Russia

Posted on by

First coolish weekend since spring. Or rather warmish days and coolish nights. The beginning of the same slide into winter as every year.

A postcard I picked up in Russia in 1994.

The Sampsonievsky Cathedral (St Sampson’s), St. Petersburg. Looks like it’s been restored since the postcard was made. If I remember right, the building wasn’t even open when we visited St. Petersburg.

Anyway, at the time I sent the card to my brother Jim with a simple message.

Address whited out for posting. 600 rubles would have been… anywhere from 20 to 30 U.S. cents, since the exchange rate bucked around from 2,000 to 3,000 rubles to the dollar during the two weeks we were in country. Not bad for an international mailing.

I probably sent a dozen cards from the main post office, an elegant structure dating back to the time of Catherine the Great, and still a post office in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. Elegant, but a little dingy. If these pictures are accurate, the place has been spiffed up since the mid-90s.

The Church of St. Barbara

Posted on by

The last stop for bus #4 on this year’s church tour in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago was the Church of St. Barbara on S. Throop St.
It’s an octagonal Renaissance-style church and another edifice created by a Polish congregation in the early 20th century. These days, the congregation is much more  ethnically mixed, but Polish still greets visitors at the main entrance.
St. Barbara is another Worthmann & Steinbach design, finished in 1914, the second we saw on Saturday after First Lutheran Church of the Trinity. Architects tend to be ecumenical in their clients, I figure. A commission’s a commission.

The octagonal shape makes it a little hard to comprehend the interior by looking straight ahead. You have to spend time looking around.
And looking up.
Here’s St. Barbara, looking down on the altar.
I couldn’t remember who St. Barbara was thought to be, but the sword is distinctive. So I looked her up later.

“Virgin and Martyr,” New Advent says. “There is no reference to St. Barbara contained in the authentic early historical authorities for Christian antiquity, neither does her name appear in the original recension of St. Jerome’s martyrology. Veneration of the saint was common, however, from the seventh century.

“Barbara was the daughter of a rich heathen named Dioscorus. She was carefully guarded by her father who kept her shut up in a tower in order to preserve her from the outside world… Before going on a journey her father commanded that a bath-house be erected for her use near her dwelling, and during his absence Barbara had three windows put in it, as a symbol of the Holy Trinity, instead of the two originally intended.

“When her father returned she acknowledged herself to be a Christian; upon this she was ill-treated by him and dragged before the prefect of the province, Martinianus, who had her cruelly tortured and finally condemned her to death by beheading. The father himself carried out the death sentence, but in punishment for this he was struck by lightning on the way home and his body consumed.

“The legend that her father was struck by lightning caused her, probably, to be regarded by the common people as the patron saint in time of danger from thunderstorms and fire, and later by analogy, as the protector of artillerymen and miners.”

One of those very popular saints without any actual historical basis, it seems. No matter. She has a lot of places named after her besides the city in California.

After looking around the sanctuary, we went to the adjacent school for snacks. That’s where I saw something else I’d never seen before.

A bingo sign. Plugged in and everything. Pretty much as mysterious to me as the tales of St. Barbara.

All Saints-St. Anthony Church

Posted on by

After we visited the relatively spare First Lutheran Church of the Trinity in the Bridgeport neighborhood, we experienced a more ornate style at All Saints-St. Anthony on W. 28th St.
The Romanesque style church was another work by Henry Schlacks, completed in 1915. According to a history of the two congregations that formed the present church, “Pre-eminent among the distinguishing features of the Church, even today, is a mosaic of the vision of St. Anthony of Padua adorning the exterior above the main entrance.”

The view toward the apse.
The mural behind the altar.
Back toward the narthex.
The church’s stained glass is attributed to Franz Xaver Zettler, whom I’ve run across before.
Though Bavarian, Zettler did a lot of American windows.

First Lutheran Church of the Trinity

Posted on by

Mostly Catholic immigrants have populated the Bridgeport neighborhood in Chicago over the years, but not entirely. There were many Germans there once upon a time, some of whom happened to be Lutheran.

First Lutheran Church of the Trinity rises over W. 31st St. and has since 1913. It was the only Protestant church we visited on the tour.

Worthmann & Steinbach did the Gothic design. They also did St. Mary of the Angels, while Steinbach did Covenant Presbyterian Church.

“Currently the oldest Christian congregation in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago [founded in 1865], First Trinity was originally located on the southeast corner of 25th Place and S. Canal,” the church web site notes. “After the railroad took possession of that property, the church moved to its current location… in the early 20th century.

“The church started out as a German immigrant parish named Ev. Luth. Dreieinigkeits (Evangelical Lutheran Trinity), supported an elementary school, and earned the nickname ‘Mother Church of the South Side’ by numerous branch schools that eventually developed into daughter congregations on the South Side of Chicago.”

The last service in German was sometime in the 1950s, if I remember the docent right. During a renovation at some point the line from Scripture (Luke 11:28) was changed from German to English.

Inside, as you’d expect, the adornment is toned down.

As the docent said, there isn’t much to distract you front looking straight ahead.
I thought the trefoil over the altar was an interesting detail.
I don’t think I’ve seen one quite like it. Completely fitting, considering the name of the church.

Monastery of the Holy Cross and Ling Shen Ching Tze Buddhist Temple

Posted on by

Two stops on the churches by bus tour in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago on Saturday weren’t churches any more, not at least as they’d originally been built. One was the Monastery of the Holy Cross on S. Aberdeen St.

Hermann Gaul designed the Gothic structure as Immaculate Conception Church in 1908. You have to like a tower that sports gargoyles.
It occurred to me that Gargoyle or the Gargoyles would be a good name for a punk or metal band, but as usual keener minds are ahead of me.

Eventually the church closed due to declining attendance, and some Benedictines took the place over in 1991. I understand that the monks have to be self-sustaining, so they operate a bed and breakfast on the property (which we did not see), and also sell coffins and CDs of their plainsong.

I’d say the brothers have done a pretty good job of keeping up the place.

As well as providing sacred art.
Here’s an unusual subject for a stained glass window, but it does reference the original name of the church. The glass depicts Pius IX promulgating Ineffabilis Deus, which defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in 1854.
A block away from Monastery of the Holy Cross is Ling Shen Ching Tze Buddhist Temple, on W. 31st St. For most of its existence, the structure was Emmanuel Presbyterian Church. Which looks better, at least at the time of day I visited, in monochrome.

John Wellborn Root designed the church before his unfortunate death at 41, and Daniel Burnham oversaw its construction in 1894. In 1994, Ling Shen Ching Tze acquired the property.

A service was going on when we visited, so we could only peek inside.
The temple’s headquarters is in Washington state. As far as I can tell, it’s devoted to the teaching of Taoism, Sutrayana and Tantric philosophies. A mite different from Presbyterianism, no doubt.

St. Mary of Perpetual Help

Posted on by

It’s been a few years since we took a church bus tour — 2014 and ’15, as it happens — so a while ago I looked into this year’s offerings from the newly renamed and relocated Chicago Architecture Center on E. Wacker Dr.

Formerly, Chicago Architecture Foundation. Why did the organization give up the solidity of foundation for the generic center?

Never mind, the tours look as good as ever. The church bus tour selection this year was a cluster of churches in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago. Actually, four Christian churches, one monastery, and one Buddhist temple in a building that used to be a church, but has been modified to meet the needs of the Chinese-American population moving into Bridgeport from nearby Chinatown.

Even now, Bridgeport evokes the Irish. After all, that’s the neighborhood that gave Chicago the Daleys and, going back a little further, Mr. Dooley. Of course in our time, other ethnicities are in the mix, such as the aforementioned Chinese, but also an Hispanic population. As far as I can tell, Bridgeport never really was home to just one group, because even in the early days there were Irish, but also Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Italians and Bohemians.

It hasn’t always been a peaceful place. “Bridgeport once stood as a bastion of white ethnic communities,” the Encyclopedia of Chicago says. “Racial and ethnic strife has always been part of its history. An almost legendary clash between the Germans and the Irish occurred in 1856. During the Civil War pro-Confederate rallies were held in the neighborhood. In the twentieth century Polish and Lithuanian gangs often clashed along Morgan Street.”

St. Mary of Perpetual Help, tucked away on W. 32nd St. in Bridgeport, originally had a Polish congregation. It’s a magnificent blend of styles, with Romanesque on the outside.
Inside, a handsome Byzantine style.

With impressive domes, though I didn’t manage a good shot of any of their exteriors.
Henry Engelbert designed the church, which was completed in 1892. He’s listed as one of the designers of Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica in Chicago, but he’s better known for his work in New York City. St. Mary of Perpetual Help’s interior was by John A. Mallin, who did the interiors of a lot of churches in his long career.

Here’s the resplendent altar.

Stations of the Cross, with original Polish.

First-rate stained glass, as you’d expect.

Everything looks impressively new, but that’s because during the decades of the 21st century so far, the parish has undertaken major restoration work both exterior and interior. Being able to raise that kind of money must count as a minor miracle, though probably not in the theological sense.

I Am What I Am, Even on Thursdays

Posted on by

Something else I snapped while on foot downtown Chicago last week: the front of the I AM Temple on W. Washington St.

I didn’t go in. A sign on the door says ring bell and wait for someone. I prefer my religious sites to be self-service.

The organization’s HQ happens to be in the northwest suburbs, not downtown. Without digressing into detail — a foray into the rabbit hole, that is — it’s enough to say that, according to Britannica, “I AM movement, theosophical movement founded in Chicago in the early 1930s by Guy W. Ballard (1878–1939), a mining engineer, and his wife, Edna W. Ballard (1886–1971)…. Ballard claimed that in 1930 during a visit to Mount Shasta (a dormant volcano in northern California), he was contacted by St. Germain, one of the Ascended Masters of the Great White Brotherhood.”

Is it possible that Popeye is a prophet of this movement? After all, he appeared ca. 1930 and was known to say, “I yam what I yam.”

Also, why are rabbit holes a metaphor for endless, bewildering complications? Are rabbit holes that complex? Maybe warrens are, but that isn’t the way the saying goes. Wouldn’t ant nests or prairie dog towns be more suitable?

Another day, another stash of Roman coins dug up in Italy. Late Roman imperial era, the article says.

Bonus: they were gold coins. That’s something I’d like to find in the basement, though strictly speaking, we don’t have a basement. Roman gold-coin hordes must be pretty scarce in the New World, anyway.

Late Roman imperial era, eh? I can imagine it: “Quick, find a place to bury the gold! The Visigoths are coming! We’ll come back for it later.”

The event probably wasn’t that dramatic, but someone put the horde there, presumably not to lose track of it — but they did, for 1,500 or more years. Distant posterity is the beneficiary.

Strictly by coincidence, Ann and I watched the first episode of I, Claudius last weekend, which is available on disk (but not on demand: what kind of world is this?). Been a long time since I’ve seen it. Early ’90s, I think, as it was available in Japan on VHS. I also saw it when I was roughly Ann’s age, on PBS when it was pretty new.

The other day I used bifurcation in an article. That’s more common in business writing than one might think, since it’s sometimes used to describe markets dividing in some way or other (often, winners and losers). It’s also I word I can never remember how to spell, so I always look it up.

Google has replaced a trip to a dictionary as the default for spelling. Sad to say, since the possibility of lateral learning is rife while thumbing through a dictionary. Many times in earlier years I spied an entry, not the one I was looking for, and thought, I didn’t know that word.

Then again, there can be sideways learning with Google. If you let it. Not satisfied with mere spelling, I fed “bifurcation” into Google News to see what would happen. Every single hit on the first page linked to items in the Indian English-language media.

From the Times of India:

GMDA can’t plan drain bifurcation now, say greens

Bifurcate HC too: Centre backs Telangana’s petition in SC

Bifurcation of Badshapur drain on cards to avert flooding in Hero …

From The Hindu:

‘Telangana drawing water from NSP without KRMB approval’

Demand for bifurcation of municipal corporation getting stronger

From the New Indian Express:

Centre to expedite High Court bifurcation: Vinod Kumar

Clearly, the word gets more mileage on the Subcontinent than in this country.

Two Downtown Chicago Churches

Posted on by

Yesterday evening at about 8:15 I was out walking the dog — sometimes it’s an after-dark activity now that there’s more darkness — and I spotted a pale yellow slender crescent moon hanging just over the western horizon. Low enough to appear luminously large. Quite a sight.

Just after the new moon signifying Rosh Hashanah, I realized. I couldn’t remember the year’s number, so I looked that up: 5779.

While downtown last week, on the way back to Union Station to return home, I ducked briefly into two churches. I’d been in them before, but they’re always good for a look.
One was St. Peter’s in the Loop, a Catholic church on W. Madison St.
The enormous crucifix is by Latvian artist Arvid Strauss. The building dates from 1953. According to Heavenly City: The Architectural Tradition of Catholic Chicago by Denis McNamara, “the stepped-back roof profile of the exterior recalls the Art Deco skyscapers [architects Vitzthum and Burns] had designed and gave the church a modern sensibility, but the facade retained the sign value of churchliness with Gothic decorative elements, pink Georgia marble, and [the] monumental exterior cruxifix…”

The interior. Sacred deco, you might call it.
The building is more just the sanctuary. Tucked away in the structure, hidden from casual visitors like me, are an auditorium, library, offices, meeting rooms and friary completed with living quarters, kitchen and a chapel for the Franciscans who run the place.

Not far away is the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple, an unusual arrangement for a church. It’s at the base and top floors of a 568-foot skyscraper on W. Washington St. I didn’t take any exteriors, but this is what it looks like. A Holabird & Roche design from the 1920s.

It features another handsome interior.
With fine stained glass.

I had no time to tour the Sky Chapel again — I visited ca. 2002 — which is at top of the building and open every day at 2 p.m. It’s a sacred space unlike any other I know.

Stray Thursday Items

Posted on by

Various things my computer has told me lately:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Sure, whatever you say.

Tremendous loud thunderstorm yesterday evening. Short but dramatic. The yard needed the water. Been a dryish August so far. But not too hot. I try to enjoy lunch on my deck daily, and sometimes breakfast, because soon the air will grow cold. All too soon.

Cicadas are in full voice during the day now. Crickets are on the night shift, singing their songs. Sounds just the same — to my human ears — as it did in 2015. But for all I know, the songs have morphed since then, and are as different to the insects as Middle English compared with Modern English.

Presidential sites are pretty thin on the ground up on the north shore of Lake Superior, but I did find one place during our recent trip that has the vaguest connection to a U.S. president. Its name: Buchanan.

Here it is.
That might look like undeveloped shore on Lake Superior, and it is, but not far from shore a plaque says: This town site, named after President Buchanan, was laid out in October 1856. From September 1857 until May 1859 the place, though little less than wilderness, was the seat of the U.S. land office for the northeastern district of Minnesota. After the removal of the land office, the settlement disappeared.

This sizable sculpture is on the campus of University of Minnesota Duluth, near that school’s planetarium. It’s called “Wild Ricing Moon.”“The sculpture… was designed by John David Mooney, a Chicago sculptor with an international reputation,” the university says. “The piece is 89 feet tall. The first half of this large-scale outdoor sculpture was erected in October 2005. The first installation, a large steel circle, 40 feet in diameter, represents the full, rice-harvesting moon of late summer.

“A ‘rice stalk’ section and bird was included in the pieces that arrived in June. Mooney described the sculpture as reflecting the North Shore of Lake Superior and natural features of the region.”

Here’s the pleasant open area behind the Allyndale Motel in Duluth.

One morning I ate a rudimentary breakfast there as the girls slept. One night I went there on the thin hope that the northern lights would be visible. No dice.

I spent a few minutes tooling around Eau Claire, Wis., on the Saturday morning on the way up to Minnesota. One thing I saw in passing was the impressive Sacred Heart-St. Patrick Parish church.
Unfortunately, the church was closed.

A little later that day we stopped at Leinenkugel Brewery in Chippewa Falls. The tourist-facing part of the operation is known as the Leinie Lodge®, which “is filled with historical photos, vintage brewing equipment and plenty of Leinie’s wearables and collectibles to take home,” notes the brewery web site. There’s also a bar. Guess what it serves.

Boy, the Leinie Lodge was crowded. That’s the result of years of clever advertising (autoplay) and what we get for going on a Saturday morning. But that wasn’t the irritating part, not really. Leinenkugel Brewery tours cost $10. Admission for a brewery tour?

I’ve been on brewery and vineyard and distillery tours all over the world, including a beer brewery in Denmark, a bourbon maker in Kentucky, a winery in Western Australia and a sake brewery in Japan, and that’s one thing I haven’t run across. Because, you know, the tour is marketing — building goodwill — introducing new customers to your product — not a damned revenue stream. For the birds, Leinenkugel, for the birds.

But I have to confess that Lilly wanted a Leinenkugel shirt, so I got her one. Her souvenir for the trip. I got a couple of postcards.

On the way back from Minnesota, as I’ve mentioned, we ate lunch in Madison, Wis., at the excellent Monty’s Blue Plate Diner.

Across the street from Monty’s is the Barrymore Theatre. I like its looks.

Various live acts play at the Barrymore. Looking at the upcoming list, I see that They Might Be Giants will be there in October after dates in the UK, Germany and Canada. Maybe I should see them again — it’s been almost 30 years now — but it’s a Tuesday show, so I don’t think I’ll make it.

One more thing. At a rest stop on I-94 near Black River Falls, Wis., there’s a state historical marker honoring, at some length, the passenger pigeon. Among other things, the marker says: “The largest nesting on record anywhere occurred in this area in 1871. The nesting ground covered 850 square miles with an estimated 136,000,000 pigeons.

“John Muir described the passenger pigeons in flight, ‘I have seen flocks streaming south in the fall so large that they were flowing from horizon to horizon in an almost continuous stream all day long.’ “

Wow. 136 million pigeons more or less in the same place? A marvel to behold, I’m sure. That and an amazing amount of noise and a monumental torrent of droppings.