Nate at the Baha'i House of Worship for the North American Continent. I'm surprised I never made it up there until today. Gotta love a religion where, for their house of worship, they decided to go with a Space Opera motif. Inside it's a little more sedate, though the ceiling is breathtaking. The complexity of the designs seems even more extreme up close. Stop by. They're nice folks. They only ask for silence and no picture taking inside the sanctuary.

Designed by Louis Bourgeois, who worked with (no surprise) Louis Sullivan for a while, the building was started in 1912 and finished in 1953.

Trivia: This is where Rainn "Dwight Schrute" Wilson went as a lad.

The car was acting weird. Specifically, the floor on the passenger side turned wet and soggy on humid days when the air conditioning was running. So, we decided to bring it in to the mechanic to let them have a look at it and, subsequently, charge us an obscene amount of money. Turns out it was no big deal. The drains were plugged and the drainage hose had somehow pulled away from where it was supposed to be, flooding the rug with condensational(?) water on nasty humid days. All told it was $70. We got off light.

As a happy side effect, the mechanic runs his business in Old Town, a neighborhood found mid-city, closer to the lake, and bound by Halsted, Division, and Wells. I say happy side effect because I haven't been in Old Town in years. In the late eighties it was one of the places my friends and I would visit, mostly for cheeseburgers at Mr. G's (no longer there, sadly), and to buy stuff at Bizarre Bazaar—a head shop with all sorts of, well, bizarre shit. It was and still is a weird neighborhood, though now it's so gentrified I barely recognized it. I have memories of visiting the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum on Wells back in the 70s, and I still remember how utterly sleazy the area was (Whiskey a Go Go bars and such... The nearest comparison I could make would be that part of Bourbon Street in New Orleans with all the naked people bars). In the 80s and early 90s it was a little more tame, still occupied by the hippies that moved there in the 60s. Today, it's all boites and boutiques... and mechanics for some reason.

While waiting for my car, I realized that I was near the Second City Theater, and that I'd never taken a picture of its facade. Said facade was once part of Adler and Sullivan's Garrick Theater. The Garrick stood on Randolph for a hundred years or so before some idiot decided to tear it down and build a parking garage. As it turned out they tore down the garage a few years ago to build a new section of the Goodman Theater. Theaters: 2, Parking Garages 1. Here's the facade. The busts are of German composers (I'll take a stab and say they're Wagner, Brahams, Bach, and Mozart... but I could be wrong).



Driving home, I had another revelation: I was very near Henry Darger's house (or rather the townhouse where he had a studio apartment). I wasn't surprised that I'd walked or driven past Henry's home (851 N. Webster) dozens of times over the years without realizing it back when semibold and several friends lived nearby. Henry's place is the one on the right. Again, not bad, though I'm betting the Lerners (Henry's landlords) cleaned up the place over the years.



So, here's the fun part. I decided to park and walk around back, to see if I could get a gander at Henry's windows. No such luck. A sprawling porch blocked my view. I think. It was hard to get my bearings back there.



The fun comes when I discovered this table, covered with books, in the alley.



That's a stack of, of all things, hardcover coffeetable books addressing interior decorating, design, and architecture from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. My mind whirled with thoughts of the artistic possibilities. When Nate grows a little more independent, I look forward to building shadow boxes again. The above will make for excellent raw material. Was Henry watching over me, acting as a supernatural Medici? Maybe so, even though I consider the idea of ghosts complete hooey. Anyway, I filled the back seat with books and moved on.

Driving further, I visited two other Henry sites. St. Vincent de Paul Church (of nearby DePaul University. Go Blue Demons.) was Henry's house of worship. He attended mass there every day. Sadly, they weren't open when I arrived. No worries. I've been in there plenty of times. It's a lovely church, inside and out.



Across the street is Roma's restaurant. Rather, it's where Roma's used to be. I read somewhere that Henry ate here quite often. So did I, though again this was before I learned about Henry from my friend Steven. I remember it as a homely place—a diner with, to use a term my friend Seth hates, simple food. too bad it's closed. At least the building is still there.



And then I went home. A pleasant little interlude all around.

My neighborhood's proximity to Old Irving Park allows for pleasant walks down many tree-lined streets offering the eye-candy of stately old Georgians, Victorians, graystones, a-frames, and stranger designs. The Kedvale Castle at 4215 N. Kedvale (not to be confused with Rudy Acosta's Castle.), is one of my favorites. I don't know the building's history, but I imagine some 1930s developer had a dream to bring old Bavaria to the Second City--not such a strange thing since German-Americans were one of the larger ethnic groups in Chicago for many years. Set in an otherwise calm, residential neighborhood, the Castle is a startling sight for anyone not expecting to see a siege-resistant edifice on their morning jog. Funnily enough, the Kedvale Castle isn't the only "castle" in Chicago. The Givens Castle sits down in the very Irish neighborhood of Beverly, for example. Naturally, it has a reputation for being haunted.

Hm, there's an article in this. The Castles of Chicago.


Click the photo to see a few more shots of the castle. I'll add more tonight.

Nate and I took his first and probably my 57th trip to Graceland Cemetery this early afternoon. I went because I'm throwing around the idea of an article about dead Chicago cartoonists.* I knew Chicago editorial cartoonist John T. McCutcheon was buried there, but I somehow never got around to finding his stone. I asked the folks at the front desk if they knew of any other cartoonists in the cemetery, but nada. Nate and I still had a good time.

The most pleasant discovery was that the grave of poor Augustus Dickens, Charles' brother, who moved to Chicago and fell on hard times, was finally discovered and commemorated with a headstone.



Mr. McCutcheon's grave.



One of Dada's heroes.



One of Dada's other heroes.



Editorial?





* Other local cartoonists buried in Chicago soil include Harold Lincoln Gray, creator of Little Orphan Annie, Shel Silverstein, and Billy De Beck of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. I'm still looking. If there's anything more depressing that reading about obscure cartoonists, I don't know what it is. Most of these guys seem to have either died after operations, in car accidents, or by their own hand. One guy shot himself with an antique "horse pistol," whatever that might be, while sitting on a couch in a barn. The saddest passage of their obituaries is usually a line like, "The deceased was best-known for his strip Boobus T. Hornswoggle and His Wackadoo Gang." leaving even an ardent comic art buff like me to say, "What with the who now?"

I revisited my old neighborhood of Logan Square, crossing my fingers and hoping against hope no one had demolished the Odd Fellows building on Wrightwood Avenue. Nope, but it's no longer a lodge building, apparently. I keep meaning to compile a collection of photos of former and current freemasonic and Odd Fellows buildings in Chicago, but... well, busy busy busy (i.e., lazy lazy lazy). One of the great tragedies for me took place when a fundamentalist church took over the grand Logan Square Freemason Temple and removed the "LOGAN SQUARE FREEMASON TEMPLE" carved into the entablature (I think that's the correct term for the "nameplate"). Bah. I'm glad this queer little building still exists, relatively untouched.

I wanted to write an entry about taking the boy to Quimby's for the first time, but Wicker Park has become nigh-impossible to park in. This never would have happened if Steven Svymbersky were still in charge!!!

We ended up driving around old haunts, including the first house I lived in in Chicago (still standing, though the house on the north side, formerly occupied by surly polocks, has apparently been torn down and replaced, and the factory parking lot on the south side—whereby I was awakened every morning by the sound and feeling of cars bumping into the house as the workers arrived for the morning shift—has a new house on it as well). Craptastic though those days were, it was a charming little place. More accurately, after it was gutted and the thousand or so bits of roach poop and other distasteful matter were carted off... then it became simply dreary ut interesting. At $200 for my own room, I did all right. Built in 1879, it was once (so the real estate agent said) a firehouse. Looks like my former landlady still owns it (according to the Neighborhood Early Warning System site... though it's about seven years out of date), but there's a for sale sign out front. Based on the tear-downs on either side, I fear its days are numbered if and when she sells it.

Not too much else. I tried to find a replacement grill for the floor register I accidentally put my foot through a few weeks ago (stopping short of sliding through the ductwork and into the basement, thank God, though truthfully I think I might have been stopped by my pelvis. Thank you, Pelvis.). No dice. So, the boy and I went to Target—shopping choice of Kate Beckinsale—and shopped for a few goodies for Momma's Easter basket.

This is an exciting life I lead.

This is the Overton Hygienic Building, on 36th Street. Part of a collection of buildings marking off the remaining part of Chicago known as Black Metropolis/Bronzeville District. I stopped by the Overton a week ago while driving back from U of C, where I visited their Jazz Archive to hear an interview with my ongoing obsession, record producer J. Mayo Williams. Williams had an office in the building, you see. I'm not sure which one. I'll have to recheck my research binder, but my impression is that a lot of jazz and blues greats passed through those doors, on their way to see Mayo Williams. I'm pretty sure that I read about people like Blind Blake, Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, and many others turning up at Williams' office to audition. I don't know for sure about that, because Williams was considered a bit stand-offish by his talent. They said he was acting "dicty,"(i.e., high and mighty, as if his skin wasn't as black as theirs). Williams said he needed to keep them at arm's length, else he'd be inundated with requests for money and auditions for the friends of the friends of the talent. Who can say?

An interesting blog entry from someone at work on restoring the Overton. Actually, it's a complete gutting, but better that than demolishing it, I guess. It's certainly better than leaving it in its "flophouse" state. Nice looking building too. Took me a while to get down there, but I'm glad I finally had the opportunity.

I'm an architectural preservationist, but I have a hard time giving a damn about anything built after, oh, 1930. I especially don't care about all the freaky, angular space age claptrap built in the 1950s and 60s. Okay, the Googie stuff is amusing, even though it eventually rots and rusts out and doesn't look so futuristic anymore.

That said, arguing for preserving an admittedly interesting-in-its-strangeness little church by mentioning its architect's firm built Water Tower Place... Well, that's not an argument for preservation. While Water Tower Place may be a valuable piece of real estate that houses many upscale retail shops and Oprah's corpus—it's big and dull. Except for the interior, of course, which is dark and creepy. Then there's the question of whatever it was that Water Tower Place and the Emmanuel Presbyterian Church displaced. I don't happen to know the answer to that, but back in 1965 and 1975 a lot of classic Chicago buildings were laid to waste for the sake of modernity and money. I suppose it's inevitable that, after losing so many of the great old buildings of the 19th and early 20th centuries, preservationists were bound to transfer their maternal feelings to the newer buildings when they became suitably grizzled. Hence, we're now supposed to worry about losing the buildings that stomped all over old Chicago because...because... Well, they're old, and not new.

Modern architects are like people in the fashion industry. Their only justification for their existence, their only claim to importance, is through commerce and their peers' opinions—not art, historicity, or humanity. Disturbingly, modern architectural critics seem to be products of the same schools and cliques as modern architects. They speak the same language and appreciate the same "bold" designs. To appreciate the human side of architecture, outside of an idea of a building that facilitates "living" (much in the same way an assembly line facilitates construction), is so declassé, don't you think? Check out Nicolai Ouroussoff's assessment of "the best house in Paris," the above glass-bricked box that seems as intended for human dwelling as Steve Martin's cruel shoes were for female feet. It appears in today's New York Times.

Mr. Ouroussoff and his girlfriend must spend a few nights in this modernist haunted house before he can write about it, much to Mr. Ouroussoff's strangely snippy disdain:

"I recently had the chance to test this idea firsthand. For a few days this summer Mr. Rubin let me stay there with my girlfriend. The visit fulfilled a fantasy, but it was also a concession to various editors who have suggested that I briefly live in a house and then write about it. (Usually this suggestion arises from one of the tiredest clichés in architecture: that the more unorthodox a house is, the more difficult it is to live in.)"

In my 40 years, I've noted the best way to overlook an uncomfortable truism is to declare it a cliché.

Ouroussoff excitedly describes the ease with which he and his gal pal can move from room to room, always ending up on the killing floor... uh, I mean in the main room. Mr. Ouroussoff is apparently some sort of fakir, given to sleeping on beds of nails and broken glass, because he makes the house sound just that cozy. Everything that's not made of glass seems to be constructed of steel pipe or rubber. Of course, it's just so darned MODERN, Mr. Ouroussoff is positively orgasmic.

"As we strode through the house, I was reminded of an essay by Mr. Frampton that compared the house to Marcel Duchamp’s 1923 “Large Glass” (“The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even”)."

This is the piece of art to which Mr. Ouroussoff refers:



It's a fine and important work, but there's a difference between a piece of art you observe and one you live in. Feel like kicking back in the above Duchamp? Why you can almost see the fireplace and easy chair where you'll read the newspaperevery Sunday morning, bassett hound at your feet, as the sharp metallic bride blimp floats scarily overhead, can't you?

The follow paragraph is telling:

"Its status as a cult object was enhanced by the house’s relative inaccessibility. For decades it was seen only by a handful of scholars and by patients of a gynecologist whose offices took up the first floor. Later it was mostly used as occasional guest quarters for friends of the doctor’s family, who had long since settled into a traditional 18th-century apartment across the courtyard."

Sounds likes the good gyno and his family got the heebie-jeebies. One can almost see him in his scarlet scrubs, performing D&Cs on mutant women before running screaming to the quaint apartment across the way.

I have a theory that, in reaction to the preservationist movements of the 60s and 70s, modern architects now design to alienate and repel the nostalgists, aesthetes, and general common folk. Ever hear of the wire mother experiment? Back in the 50s, a sadistic psychologist set up an experiment in which he created two maternal substitutes for newborn rhesus monkeys. One was made of cuddly terry-cloth, the other from steel cloth wire. The wire mother was equipped with a feeding bottle, but the baby monkey clung to the fuzzy-wuzzy mother for safety while reaching over to the wire mother for nutrition. Comfort and tenderness engendered love. Animal abuse aside, if you create buildings that are antithetical to the human desire for warmth, protection, visual appeal, and democracy, you create buildings that people will not give a damn about. You can rip 'em down without fear of inspiring another Richard Nickel. You might inspire one or two critics to say tut-tut when you tear down a astro-church, but they probably won't chain themselves to it or risk being crushed in the ruins.

I find the rationalizations of preservationists, when they try to cozy up to post-war architecture, somewhat disturbing. Preservation seems less and less about protecting buildings possessed of human appeal, and more about preserving previous chilly notions of architectural artistry that removed human beings from the equation. When you run out of whooping cranes to protect, you move on to pigeons, I suppose.

More on this later...

Old motels are apparently becoming the latest objects of misplaced nostalgia. This is not to say that I don't find them cool little snapshots of the old 20th Century America, back when we were midway between covered wagons and coach class flights. Lincoln Avenue, as this splendid Gapers Block article (with a guest appearance by our friend Tim Samuelson), has a bevy of tacky hostels, still boasting air conditioning and
COLOR TV on the signs out front, while also whispering of prostitution, drug deals, and extramarital sex. All fascinatingly noir, but it's a little odd that simply because they've managed to hang on and retain their retro appeal, people have forgotten that this mass produced dung is the reason why modern roadside travel is so monotonously dull.

Architecturally speaking, these buildings are nightmares. They look like the cheap cookie-cutter buildings they are, and they're usually plopped in the middle of otherwise gorgeous stretches of natural beauty or adding to the clutter on the outskirts of dying towns. Motels have a knack for aging badly too, whether people take care of them or not. I don't think I've ever seen a motel that didn't appear to be made entirely of rust patches, cracked concrete, and dirty plastic.

I understand the need, once upon a time, for tired travelers to have a place to eat and sleep, and it was no doubt heartening to see a reasonably priced, space age sterile Howard Johnson's off the highway at 3 a.m. On the other hand, this led to the dreary modern traveling experience of every pit stop becoming an embossed imprint of one Shell station, one McDonald's, one Denny's, and one Kentaco Hut (shuffle these with Hardee's, Burger King, British Petroleum, Mobil, Steak and Shake, as you wish).

These places were meant to disintegrate and make way for the roadside imperialism of the big chains, so it seems odd to get weepy about them now. perhaps they're best imagined as Ozymandian edifices of capitalistic folly.*

On the other hand, they did teach us to cultivate a healthy sense of shower fear.


* Why yes, I am talking out my ass.

Triumphs in Dildonic Architecture!

The city's planning board just endorsed a proposal for the Chicago Spire, which will be erected (chuckle) in Streeterville and top off at 2,000 feet. When completed, Chicago will once more have the tallest building in the Western hemisphere. Ha! Take THAT future Freedom Tower and the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan. But wait! Gradually, even the Spire will be dwarfed by up-and-coming stud, the Burj Dubai! Hope this doesn't affect anyone's performance.

The Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois just released their list of the 10 most endangered historic landmarks in Illinois, which includes, of all things, a Viking ship built and then sailed from Norway to Chicago for the Columbian Exposition (which we Chicagoans just won't shut up about 110 years later... But come on, it was pretty damn cool. Better than anything, say, New York ever did or will do).