The National Shrine of St. Thérèse

Posted on January 8, 2023 by admin

Well over a decade ago, during a summertime visit to San Antonio, I drove to the west side of the city to see the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower, which I’d never seen or even heard of before, despite growing up in that city. It was very hot that day, as it tends to be that time of the year, so I didn’t linger outside to take many pictures, though I snapped a few marginal ones.

This is a better image. I’m not sure at what point I realized that the basilica in San Antonio and the National Shrine of St. Thérèse in Darien, Illinois, were dedicated to the same person, Thérèse de Lisieux, but I know now. And whatever else I know about St. Thérèse, I also have some sense of her immense popularity as a saint, inspiring edifices around the world in her honor.

We arrived at the Darien shrine just before noon on December 29, an overcast but not especially cold day. Above freezing, anyway. There it is, I told Yuriko.

So we went in. A few minutes passed before I realized that we not in the shrine, but in the nearby museum building, which I believe was the shrine before a new one was completed a few years ago. The sign on this building makes me think that. If so, there needs to be a signage update.

This is the current shrine.

In effect, this is the fourth shrine to her that has existed in the Chicago area. The first two were in the city, a larger one succeeding the original as her popularity grew in the 1920s.

The church that housed the second shrine burned down nearly 50 years ago, but by the 1980s the Carmelites were able to find the scratch the build a third shrine out in the suburbs. The demographics were going that way anyway.

The Carmelites tasked Charles Vincent George Architects, based in nearby Naperville, to design the fourth and latest shrine, which was completed in 2018.

Behind the altar is St. Thérèse in glass.

“The architectural solution pays homage to St. Therese throughout, from the main building’s shape, inspired by the unfolding petals of a flower, a nod to St. Therese’s nickname ‘Little Flower,’ to key structures, such as the plaza clock tower, reminding us of her clockmaker father, and the 24-column colonnade, serving as a symbol of St. Therese’s 24 years of life,” CVG notes.

“As St. Therese had humble beginnings, special attention was taken to provide simple building materials using stone, brick and the limited use of wood for construction materials. The entire building layout focuses on the center altar and image of St. Therese etched in the chancel glass wall, through which there are views of her statue built out into the lake behind the chapel.”

In December, St. Thérèse is the star of Christmas trees in the shrine.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tree decorated with prayers before, but there it was. All of them to the saint.

The museum included some seasonal features as well, such as a nativity under a more permanent woodwork depicting the saint.

Just in case anyone is uncertain, labels come with the nativity scene. Guess that’s helpful for kids who have just learned to read, but I as far as can remember as a kid, the figures were something that everyone knew. Essential Christmas lore, even for public school children. Maybe that’s not true anymore.

Modern stained glass. Some nice abstractions plus holy figures.

What would a saint’s shrine complex be without some relics?

I didn’t know dust could count as a relic, but I’m not up on what can and can not constitute a relic. The museum also has a few relics of Thérèse’s parents, Louis and Zélie Martin, who happen to be saints as well.

“Louis had tried to become a monk, but was rejected because he could not master Latin,” a sign in the museum says. “Zélie Guérin tried to become a Sister of Charity, but was rejected due to poor health.”

They couldn’t take vows, but apparently did the next best thing: produce five daughters (the survivors of nine children), all of whom became nuns.

Get Your Kicks at the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum

Posted on December 19, 2022 by admin

Those three ships that come sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning will be trapped in ice this year, according to the National Weather Service.

That’s the forecast for 8 a.m. Central on December 25. Bitter temps, unless you happen to be on the West Coast or in Florida, and even those places will be relatively chilly. Bah, humbug.

On Saturday I drove down to Normal to pick up Ann, leaving a little early so that I could drop by the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum, which is in the handsome former city hall and main fire station of Pontiac, Illinois, a building that dates from 1900.

The building, now called a museum complex, is home to more than the Route 66 museum, which is on the first floor. Other floors feature a “Life on the Titanic” exhibit, the Waldmire Experience (more about its namesake later), a local war museum and a room devoted to the music of the Civil War. You might call it an eclectic mix.

You might also call the Route 66 museum itself that. It’s a large room full of a lot of stuff. Just what a local museum should be.

Regional, really, since it covers the road formerly designated U.S. 66 as it passed through Illinois, from Chicago to East St. Louis, with such towns as Dwight, Pontiac, Bloomington-Normal, Lincoln, and Springfield along the way.

Display cases along the walls are devoted to each of those towns and others on the Illinois stretch, stuffed with pictures and photos and items, and arrayed in order from north to south (or the other way, if you start there). Plenty of other artifacts are placed freely on the floor or are on the walls.

Old gas pumps. Even during the golden age of Route 66, you needed gas.

A wall of Illinois license plates, one for each year from 1915 to 1984.

Trivia for the day — when did Illinois first put Land of Lincoln on its license plates? The wall tells us. 1954. The same words are on IL plates even now.

Something I didn’t know that the museum mentioned: from 1907 to 1917, Illinois issued aluminum disks to show registration, something like taxi medallions. Car owners affixed them to dashboards. The Illinois Motor Vehicle Act, which required motorists to register each vehicle with the Secretary of State’s office, became law in ’07, and specified the two-inch diameter disks.

The centerpiece of the room is Bob Waldmire’s custom-fitted ’72 VW microbus. Views outside and in:

Looks like he was a collector of bric-a-brac after my own heart. As a young artist, Waldmire (1945-2009) “determined that he would spend his life creating art that celebrated the history of Route 66,” according to a brochure I picked up. He apparently spent a lot of time driving the microbus along the historic route.

Until he upgraded to a modified school bus, that is.

The bus is parked behind the museum complex and is sometimes open for tours. Not when I wandered by. Just another reason to drop by Pontiac again, which will be easy enough during the back-and-forth to Normal over the next few years.

Art Institute Spaces, Small and Large

Posted on December 8, 2022 by admin

I’d like to say I visited this room recently — looks interesting, doesn’t it? — but I only looked into the room.

An English great room of the late Tudor period, 1550-1603, according to a nearby sign. I couldn’t get in because one inch within this room equals one foot in an actual room of that kind, so at best I could get a hand in.

The Art Institute doesn’t want anyone to do that, and for good reason, since random hands would completely wreck any of the Thorne Miniature Rooms. So they are behind glass in walled-in spaces, and not at eye level for someone as tall as I am.

Still, I leaned over to look in. The fascination is there. Not just for me, but for the many other people looking at the rooms on Saturday. Each room evokes a different place or time, heavily but not exclusively American or European settings.

English drawing room, ca. 1800.

French library, ca. 1720.

Across the Atlantic. Pennsylvania drawing room, 1830s.

Massachusetts living room, 1675-1700.

The fascination isn’t just with the astonishing intricacy of the work, which it certainly has, but also the artful lighting. Artful as the light-play on a Kubrick set. I know those are electric lights in the background, but it looks like the rooms are lighted the way they would have been during those periods. With sunlight, that is.

“Narcissa Niblack Thorne, the creator of the Thorne Rooms, herself had a vivid imagination,” says the Art Institute. “In the 1930s, she assembled a group of skilled artisans in Chicago to create a series of intricate rooms on the minute scale of 1:12.

“With these interiors, she wanted to present a visual history of interior design that was both accurate and inspiring. The result is two parts fantasy, one part history — each room a shoe box–sized stage set awaiting viewers’ characters and plots.” (More microwave oven–sized, I’d say.)

Thorne (d. 1966) had the wherewithal to hire artisans during the Depression by being married to James Ward Thorne, an heir to the Montgomery Ward department store fortune, back when department stores generated fortunes. Bet the artisans were glad to have the work.

It wasn’t my first visit to the Thorne Rooms, but I believe I appreciate it a little more each time. I know I feel that way about the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, which I also visited on Saturday.

The Thorne Rooms are an exercise in constrained space. The Trading Room is one of expansive space. So much so that my basic lens really isn’t up to capturing the whole. Still, I try.

No one else was in the room with me. It is a little out of the way, in museum wayfinding terms, and it is the artwork, rather than being mere protective walls and climate control, so maybe people pass it by.

Not me. I spent a while looking at details.

Overhead.

Such a grand room. Victorian ideas at work, striving to add uplift to a space devoted to grubby commerce. I’d say they succeeded.

“Designed by Chicago architects Louis Sullivan and his partner, Dankmar Adler, the original Chicago Stock Exchange was completed in 1894,” the museum notes on a page that also extols the room as a place where as many as 300 people can meet.

“When it was demolished in 1972, sections of the Trading Room, including Sullivan’s elaborate stenciled decorations, molded plaster capitals, and art glass, were preserved and used in the 1976–77 reconstruction of the room here at the Art Institute.”

I attended an event there myself for some forgotten reason about 20 years ago. Suits and ties (a while ago, as I said), dresses, and drinks in hand, the room hosted such a crowd with ease. If I had 300 people to entertain, I’d certainly consider renting the place.

Chagall’s America Windows

Posted on December 7, 2022 by admin

A treasure from the 1970s: Chagall’s America Windows at the Art Institute (1977). They’re out there, those treasures from that time.

In order from right to left.

Here’s a thought for the 2020s: Odious antisemites need to knock it off. As in, shut up. Then again, “odious” is already packed into “antisemite,” isn’t it? So that counts as a redundancy.

Details from the America Windows.

The museum was busy on Saturday, but I had the windows practically to myself.

A Few Rooms of Ancient Art

Posted on December 6, 2022 by admin

I might be misremembering, but I believe the Uffizi Gallery had a hallway that featured busts of every Roman emperor, plus a good many of their wives, down at least to Severus Alexander (d. AD 235), in chronological order. I spent a while there, looking over them all.

The Uffizi array included famed and long-lasting rulers (e.g., Augustus) but also obscure short-timers whose biographies tend to end with “assassinated by…” (e.g., Didius Julianus (d. AD 193), the rich mope who bought the office from the highly untrustworthy Praetorian Guard and held it for all of 66 days in 193).

I thought of all those emperor busts when I took a look at Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius on Saturday.

Second century AD, no doubt part of what would later be called propaganda: the effort to let the Roman people feel the presence of their rulers. These two busts are among the ancient Roman artworks on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, along with works by Greek, Egyptian and other peoples.

It isn’t a huge collection, though sizable enough. If you put together the ancient art found at Art Institute and the Field Museum and the Oriental Institute Museum, that might be a British Museum- or Pergamon Museum-class collection, but no matter. I always enjoy strolling around the Art Institute’s ancient gallery, which is back a fair ways from the main entrance, in four rooms surrounding a peristyle-like courtyard, though that is a story down.

Besides emperors, you’ll see emperor-adjacent figures, such as Antinous, done up as Osiris, 2nd century AD of course.

Beloved by Hadrian, Antinous took a swim in the Nile one day in AD 130 and drowned. Hadrian founded the nearby city of Antinoupolis in his honor (it’s a minor ruin these days) and proclaimed him a god — the sort of thing a grieving emperor could do in those days.

A Roman copy of a Greek statue of Sophocles, ca. AD 100.

Hercules, 1st century AD.

My cohort learned of Hercules through cartoons. Could have done worse, I guess.

A story never animated for children, as far as I know: Leda and the Swan, 1st or 2nd century AD. A story that nevertheless reverberates down the centuries.

Who doesn’t like ancient mosaics? I like to think these 2nd-century AD works were part of an ancient tavern that served food.

A sampling of Greek vases are on display as well. These black-figure works are from the sixth century BC, probably for storing wine. In vino veritas, though in this case that would be Ἐν οἴνῳ ἀλήθεια (En oinō alētheia), and I won’t pretend I didn’t have to look that up.

I always visit the coin case. Here’s a silver tetradrachm minted in the 2nd century BC in Asia Minor, depicting Apollo. Such detailed work for something struck by hand.

Then there’s this — creature.

Statue of a Young Satyr Wearing a Theater Mask of Silenus, ca. 1st century AD, the museum sign says (and he’s putting his hand through the mask). You need to watch out for those young satyrs. They’re always up to something.

Nth Visit to the Art Institute of Chicago

Posted on December 5, 2022 by admin

On Saturday, I made my way to downtown Chicago, while Yuriko created this most delicious Christmas cake at her occasional cake class.

I rode the El part of the way. Not many people are masked these days, unlike subway riders of a year ago (at least in New York). But there are a few.

Another mark of the shifting tides of pandemic: a storefront on a downtown Chicago street.

I didn’t doctor that image. A white rectangle was painted on the sign. Note that it went from Free Covid Care — though surely they meant testing, not intensive care — to Covid Care, as federal subsidies dried up, to For Rent, as business dried up.

Before long, I came to my destination: The Art Institute of Chicago.

The Art Institute and I go back a ways, and I’m sure I’ve been there more than any other art museum, or maybe any museum at all. Remarkably, I know the date of my first visit: May 17, 1981, during my first visit to Chicago. I haven’t consistently keep a diary over the years, but I did then.

That day I mostly remember spending time at an exhibit called “The Search for Alexander.” I might or might not have known it at the time, but the exhibit had opened just the day before.

A few years earlier, the wildly popular “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibit had set the stage for the museum megashows of today, with their crowds, high prices and timed tickets, but most of that was still to come in ’81 (and there were other memorable legacies of Tut, too).

I don’t think the Alexander exhibit counted as a megashow, since I don’t remember paying extra, or dealing with a crowd. But I do remember being impressed by the art and artifacts from the time of Alexander of Macedon, especially a wreath of gold fashioned to look like oak leaves and acorns, held by fine gold branches that vibrated ever so gently in the mild air puffs of a climate-controlled display case.

On Saturday, I once again spent time with the museum’s ancient art, but also lingered in front of the Chagall’s America Windows and in the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, which I almost always do, as well as taking a long look at the Thorne Miniatures, which was by far the most crowded gallery I visited, though this time I didn’t go into the Impressionist rooms, which always pack ’em in.

Wherever you are, Saturday’s a busy day at the Art Institute.

A scattering of people wore masks.

Many more wore beards.

Museum workers were working.

As befitting my age, I spent a good few minutes on the museum’s benches. That gave me time to fiddle with my camera.

Oops.

Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Postcard Version

Posted on December 4, 2022 by admin

I sent this card to my brother Jim in December 1994, on the day that we visited Windsor Castle.

The British postmark is where it should be. The USPS thoughtlessly postmarked the image. Nice going, USPS. Just another example of disrespecting postcards.

As this account of the 1992 Windsor Castle fire says, only two of the castle’s artworks were destroyed by the fire, not including the one depicted on the card, “Judith with the Head of Holofernes” (Cristofano Allori, 1613) which was part of the Royal Collection at Windsor. It still is.

At the time, I didn’t know anything about Allori or the painting. The Royal Collection Trust notes: “According to his biographer Baldinucci, Allori painted this work in part as an autobiographical account of his love affair with Maria de Giovanni Mazzafirri, which ended badly. The figure of Judith, Baldinucci claimed, resembles ‘La Mazzafirra,’ the servant in the background her mother, and the severed head of Holofernes is a portrait of the artist himself.”

I had seen “Judith I” (Gustav Klimt, 1901) in Vienna earlier that year, and of course the story of Judith came up in my studies, but I also didn’t really know how popular Judith was in artistic depictions. This I found out later. Nothing like a story of deception, a fetching feme, a drunken fool and a beheading to inspire art, I guess.

As for the work at Windsor, most recently — as in, last week — I read how it came to be in the Royal Collection. Acquired by Charles I, probably from the Gonzaga collection, Mantua, the trust says, which lead me to read further about the Gonzaga collection. If I had heard about it before, and I might had, I’d forgotten.

The long and short of it is that the House of Gonzaga, after much effort, put together a splendid art collection, only to sell it when they needed cash — to King Charles in the late 1620s, well before that monarch’s grim fate, in a deal facilitated by one Daniel Nijs.

The lesson here? Postcards are educational.

Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park

Posted on November 10, 2022 by admin

Today was probably the last warm day of the year. For the next week and then some, at least, the chill will be on. Lunch and dinner were on our deck.

On the morning of October 15, a warm, clear Saturday in Atlanta, I got up early (for me) and walked from my short-term rental apartment in the Mechanicsville neighborhood to Garnett Station (on Marta’s Red and Gold Lines), mostly via Windsor Street, which was quiet and largely devoid of people.

From the station, I took the train to Peachtree Center, after which I spent time in Centennial Olympic Park.

The CNN Center is adjacent to the park, so I went there for a look too. Also, to find a bathroom, since the management of Centennial Olympic Park, in a gesture I take as hostile to the public at large, hasn’t bothered to re-open the park’s public bathrooms that closed during the pandemic emergency.

CNN employees can ride that tall escalator through a model Earth.

Soon after, I went to catch a streetcar — called a tram on the maps — which stops just outside the park. But I had a little time before the next arrival, so I looked around. In the vicinity of the park, you can see this building, whose name or address I didn’t bother with. Its Pac-Man-ish features, which appear to be the profile of a bold bird, move.

Then it changes its pattern, and they move some more.

The Ferris wheel Skyview Atlanta, another feature of that part of downtown, wasn’t moving yet.

After a short ride, I arrived at the streetcar stop near the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park and Preservation District.

I have the MLK park service publication in front of me. Don’t let anyone tell you that QR codes are better, NPS. The paper pamphlet unfolds in a way a smart phone image cannot, and it allows things to jump out at you in a way they can’t.

As soon as I unfolded it completely, the beginning of a sentence jumped out at me.

“In the twelve or so years that Martin Luther King, Jr. led the American Civil Rights Movement…”

Twelve years. Making Martin Luther King Jr. a bright meteor in American history, an illumination of the better angels of our nature, that’s over and done all too soon. Except that his legacy, his ethical bequest to the nation and the world, is hardly over and done.

The park captures the geography of Dr. King’s early life: a line from his birthplace and boyhood home on Auburn Avenue to his church — the church of his father and grandfather — also on Auburn, only blocks away.

When the King family led Ebenezer Baptist Church, it met here, a building now known as Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, Heritage Sanctuary. It was completed in the 1920s and restored in recent years to look like it did in the 1960s.

Not open. Some kind of maintenance going on, I think. I’d liked to have seen the inside.

This is the Horizon Sanctuary, a 1999 structure, where the church gathers now.

It isn’t part of the park, but on its border, next to the main visitor center and museum devoted to Dr. King and his times. The church isn’t a relic of the past either, its congregation robust these days. Its pastor, Sen. Raphael Warnock, is in the thick of trying to win a full term in the U.S. Senate.

Close to the historic church and also on Auburn, Dr. and Mrs. King repose in a tomb perched on a circular island, the focus of a deep blue reflecting pool running the length of a brick plaza. Promenade might be a better way to put it, considering that people were strolling the length of it.

An eternal flame on the grounds.

I spent some time in the museum. A fair amount to read and view, but the most poignant artifact was the wagon that carried his coffin.

Outside the museum, there’s a garden with a mouthful of a name: The Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have A Dream” World Peace Rose Garden.

Also on Auburn, his birth house.

It’s on the left. On the right is a book store and the museum shop. Tours of the birth house were already booked for the day.

“Auburn Avenue was the commercial, cultural, and spiritual center of African American life in Atlanta prior to the civil rights movement,” says the New Georgia Encyclopedia. ” ‘Sweet Auburn’ boasted a concentration of Black-owned businesses, entertainment venues, and churches that was unrivaled elsewhere in the South.”

The street had been renamed Auburn in 1893; originally it had been Wheat Street.

“During the next two decades, as restrictive Jim Crow legislation was codified into law, the city’s African American population became confined to the area between downtown and Atlanta University and to neighborhoods on the city’s east side, known today as the Old Fourth Ward,” the encyclopedia notes.

“It was during this period that Auburn Avenue first achieved prominence as a commercial corridor and became home to the city’s emerging Black middle class.

“Ironically, Auburn’s civic activism led to its undoing. As the NAACP and local voting-rights organizations, from their Sweet Auburn offices, lobbied state and local governments for an end to segregation, and as native son Martin Luther King Jr… led the crusade for civil rights before a national audience, the street began its steep decline. With the legal barriers to integration removed, many Auburn shopkeepers moved their businesses to other areas of the city, and residents began migrating to Atlanta’s west side.”

Historic No. 6 Fire Station, which is part of the park.

The NPS says: Built in 1894 in Romanesque Revival style, the fire station stood guard over the city for nearly 100 years. In the 1960s, it became one of Atlanta’s first racially integrated firehouses. It closed in 1991.

So before the ’60s, Atlanta firehouses were segregated. How nuts is that?

Besides sites associated with Dr. King, Auburn still features some shotgun houses, which mostly aren’t part of the park.

Plus some larger houses. This one is home to the Historic District Development Corp.

Eventually, I wandered beyond Auburn to a parallel street, Edgewood Avenue. It’s an active commercial street in our time, with various establishments.

Plus murals.

I had a late lunch of breakfast food at Thumbs Up, a diner. Its outside wall.

Eggs and pancakes, done up right. Worth the half-hour wait sitting outside.

The National Automobile Museum

Posted on October 20, 2022 by admin

One upon a time, gaming businessman William Harrah owned a lot of cars, maybe more than any single individual ever. The dosh to put his collection together came from Harrah building a large hotel and casino empire in Reno and other places in the years after WWII. Sources put the number of vehicles at around 1,400, but maybe that’s an undercount.

Harrah died in 1978. Eventually, most of his cars were sold at auction, but a nucleus of the collection remained intact and formed the basis of the National Automobile Museum in Reno. Intrigued by the prospect of seeing them myself, especially with the impressive Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum in Fairbanks in mind, I arrived not long before noon on October 3.

Auto museums are a fairly new interest of mine, spurred by my good experience in Alaska last year. And why not? I like good airplane collections and historic trains, too. If I’m ever in southern Germany again, I’d look at the Zeppelin Museum as well, because how cool is that?

The scope of the Reno museum is wider than the one in Fairbanks, considering that it has cars from the dawn of automotive travel through close to the present day, as opposed to a collection that extends only until the end of the 1930s. Quite a lot to see, beginning with the beginning.

That’s an 1892 Philion. I’d never heard of it either, and for good reason: this is the only one. There only ever was one, since it was never intended to be mass produced. The story of its owner is just as interesting as any of the mechanical aspects of the vehicle.

Achille Philion, a French acrobat and showman in the U.S. who called himself the Great Equilibrist and Originator, acquired a steam-powered quadricycle and had it modified, even going so far as to register a few patents associated with early autos. He used the car to draw attention to his performances, which involved — well, let a poster tell the story. Nothing really to do with automobiles.

According to the plaque at the museum, the car changed hands a number of times after Philion sold it, and it even made an appearance in The Magnificent Ambersons.

Other early autos at the museum include the 1899 Locomobile, one of the first production autos in the U.S., and another steamer. Cool name.

An 1899 Winton.

Auto design and innovation progressed quickly in the ’00s. Pretty soon carmaker Thomas Motor Co. created a car that could drive most of the way around the world: The 1907 Thomas Flyer.

As far as I’m concerned, this was the centerpiece of the museum. Sure, there are also dozens of cars from early motoring, sleek pre-WWII machines, mid-century racecars, and the Batmobile driven by Adam West, among many, many interesting vehicles.

Nothing tops the Thomas.

This isn’t an example of just any 1907 Thomas. This is the car that won the 1908 New York to Paris Automobile Race, traveling 22,000 miles by land and sea over 169 days, despite there being very little in the way of infrastructure to support such a drive.

“After this victory, Thomas auto sales increased for a period; however, by 1912, the company was in receivership,” the sign at the museum says, and the car was sold during the bankruptcy proceedings.

William Harrah found it in the early 1960s, neglected and forgotten, and authenticated its participation in the race in a most amazing way, namely by bringing George Schuster, who had driven the car to victory in 1908, to Reno. Schuster was 91 at the time (he lived to be 99), and “during the dismantling of the Flyer, [he] witnessed cracks in the frame and repairs he had made during the race, proving its authenticity. The Thomas Flyer was restored to the condition [it was] when it finished the race.”

Elsewhere in the museum is this.

It shows the route of the race.

Accounts of the race say the prize for winning wasn’t money, but honor and glory — and “a trophy.” The plaque at the base says this globe was indeed presented to the Thomas Motor Co. by the organizers, so I guess this is it.

One more legacy of the race: it inspired The Great Race. Among silly early ’60s epic-long movies, it’s one of the more silly (and could have been trimmed by an hour with no loss).

Moving on to other fine machines of the pre-WWI period. A 1908 Brush (gas), a 1909 White (steam), and a 1912 Selden (gas), respectively.

Those were just part of the contents of one room. Other rooms had more recent vehicles. Such as these arrays.

Here’s a 1956 Mercedes-Benz.

“[It] has a 6-cylinder OHC fuel-injected engine developing 240 hp with an advertised top speed of 146 mph… The car was entered in the 1959 Bonneville Salt Flats Class D speed trials and set a new record at 143.769 mph,” the museum says. Those doors are referred to as “gullwing.”

A ’53 Hudson.

The Hudson line lasted only until 1957. By that time, the company was known as American Motors Corp., which had a future ahead of it that included the AMC Pacer. I didn’t have one, but a friend of mine in high school did, and I remember it fondly. Maybe more than he does.

A ’47 Volkswagen.

Uncomfortably close to its origins as the people’s car of National Socialism, but never mind. Another high school friend of mine had a ’73 Super Beetle, and occasionally he took that car to places where cars really weren’t supposed to go. What a gas.

The museum’s collection also includes a fair number of less-than-standard cars. Take the three-wheeled, piscine 1937 Airomobile, for example.

The only one ever built. “It failed to attract financial backing,” the museum explains drily.

Maybe the ultimate vehicular oddity is the 1934 Dymaxion.

Looks something like a Volkswagen Microbus except, of course, for having three wheels and an even rounder contour. Bucky was trying to smash paradigms, but no go: only three prototypes were built — and this is the only one still in existence. Still, revisionist thinkers closer to our time admire the Dymaxion. Well, maybe. Fuller’s house design didn’t catch on either, but it is interesting to look at.

The museum also has an impressive cache of cars used in movies and TV shows, such as in The Green Hornet, a modified 1966 Imperial, one of two created for the show by car remodeler Dean Jeffries.

A close replica of the DeLorean put to such good use in Back to the Future. More gullwings.

And of course — what could be better? — a Batmobile (a modified 1966 Lincoln).

An original George Barris Batmobile, the museum says, and you can see Barris’ autograph inside, along with those of Adam West and Burt Ward.

All together, the museum sports a fun lot of cars to see, even if you’re not too keen on all the technical specs. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that its collection includes plenty of other other car-related items. My own favorite were a line of vintage gas pumps. Rare to see anything like them in situ, but not impossible. Modern gas pumps pale (stylistically) by comparison.

After all, without gas, where are all those cars going to go? Unless they’re steamers. Imagine the advanced steamer tech we’d have now — we wouldn’t think a thing of it — if they’d caught on instead of internal combustion, or even developed in parallel.

Whitefish Point

Posted on August 17, 2022 by admin

After leaving Sault Ste. Marie around noon on August 4, we headed via small roads to Whitefish Point, a cape jutting from the Upper Peninsula into Lake Superior.

First stop en route, Point Iroquois Light, which overlooks the lake as it narrows to drain into St. Marys River. A light has been there since 1856, in response to the increased shipping through the recently opened Soo Locks. The lighthouse and keeper’s house are handsome structures, though the light was under scaffolding. I’ve encountered a fair number of such obstructed sights over the years.

Nice view of Whitefish Bay, too.

A good boardwalk walk.

We had lunch in Paradise. The UP town of that name, that is. We stopped there for lunch in 2006 and I’d like to say I had a cheeseburger. But the record says otherwise. Back then, I wrote: “I need to say I’ve been to Paradise. Paradise, Mich., that is, which is just south of Whitefish Point. In fact, I ate a whitefish sandwich in Paradise, and it was good, but not paradisiacal.”

I didn’t record the name of the restaurant in ’06, but I will this time, because it’s so much fun: Wheelhouse Diner & Goatlocker Saloon. (The owner(s) must have been in the Navy.) We ate in the back, in the saloon part, which looked pretty much like the rest of the place, with the addition of a bar. I had a whitefish sandwich again, because that’s the thing you do within spitting distance of Lake Superior, at least once or twice. I didn’t regret my choice.

Same as 16 years ago — can it have been that long ago, and still be in the 21st century? — we headed up to Whitefish Point after lunch. The star of the point is Whitefish Point Lighthouse.

The original light was built in 1849 as one of the first ones on Lake Superior and, as the lake’s epithet at this point attests — “Graveyard of the Great Lakes” — it was badly needed.

It’s also a fitting location for the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.

The museum doesn’t seem to have changed much since I wrote: “Front and center inside the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum is the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald… It’s hard to imagine the violence necessary to sink a ship big enough to carry 26,000 tons of cargo, but there she lies, in two pieces, on the bottom not far from Whitefish Point.

“But it was not an Edmund Fitzgerald museum. Along three walls were other stories of other wrecks, most costing some lives, and most so long ago that there’s no living memory of them — the Comet, Vienna, Myron and Superior City, just to name a few. Among the artifacts from these wrecks were the nautical things you’d expect, such as a ship’s wheel, anchor chains, or steam engine gages.”

Like the name plate from the Myron, lost in a November gale in 1919.

“More poignant were bits of flotsam like bottles, dishes, a candelabra and even a bar of soap in its late 19th-century packaging. Some of the museum’s benches were made from wooden planks from wrecked ships, with their name carved in it.”

This time it struck me how many ships sank after collisions with other ships. Radar was a real game-changer, but even so, it couldn’t prevent every wreck.

Such as that of the Edmund Fitzgerald, with all the modern equipment of 1975. The ship’s bell, retrieved from Superior’s ice-water mansion in 1995.

The Big Fitz bell isn’t the only ship’s bell in the collection. Another was from the schooner Niagara, which sank in 1897.

And how does one go looking for such artifacts? At least in the old days? Amazing that divers could do anything at all encased in such bulk.

All these things evoke history and loss, as they should. But I think none of the items are as cool as the museum’s Fresnel lens. Years ago, I wrote:

“Hanging near the ceiling was a second-order Fresnel lens, formerly the bright eye of a lighthouse elsewhere in Michigan but since retired… Meant to magnify light, and representing an important technical advance in the 19th century, a Fresnel lens is also an astonishing piece of glasswork.”

Yes, indeed.

“At first its overall resemblance to a human eye strikes you, but the more you look at it, the more the glassy curves and grooves and nodes emerge into an ensemble of glass pieces, arrayed like soldiers on parade.”

The museum also has a smaller, fourth-order lens.

Before we left, we took a look at the shore, accessed by a boardwalk.

Sobering the think of all the wrecks off in that general direction.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: museums