"Let's fix that," I said, steering us inside. "Biggest Tiffany dome in the world."
A completely understandable lapse. Originally the main branch of the Chicago Public Library, the Cultural Center, at Randolph and Michigan, has always struggled to find a purpose — generally home to sincere temporary displays of artwork by young persons, it comes off as a gorgeous box with nothing inside. Maybe because nothing on display is anywhere near as finely wrought as the building itself. Currently it has puppets related to the International Puppetry Festival, going on now. Some quite nice. But still lumps of paper mache set next to to shimmering glass and tile.
Of course I told her the story of Richard J. Daley's wife, Sis, saving the building in 1972, saying, in essence, "The hell you will," after her husband had announced it would be torn down.
I routinely pass through only because I walk around the Loop a lot, the Cultural Center is a full city block, north to south, and you can cut through and keep warm on cold days.
If breakfast at a taco place seems odd, the plan had been to meet at Lou Mitchell's on Jackson. But the restaurant is closed for vacation until Jan. 22 — their right, of course, but they don't mention it on the web site. I love Lou Mitchell's — it's 100 years old, great food, thick raisin toast — but c'mon. It's also closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and I tend to forget that odd Tuesday closing. I think I've been turned away from Lou Mitchell's more than I've managed to eat there.
If breakfast at a taco place seems odd, the plan had been to meet at Lou Mitchell's on Jackson. But the restaurant is closed for vacation until Jan. 22 — their right, of course, but they don't mention it on the web site. I love Lou Mitchell's — it's 100 years old, great food, thick raisin toast — but c'mon. It's also closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and I tend to forget that odd Tuesday closing. I think I've been turned away from Lou Mitchell's more than I've managed to eat there.
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| The circle with a Y inside it is called "The Municipal Device" and represented the city — the Y representing the branching river. The CPL is for Chicago Public Library. |
We just passed through on an architectural tour. We had been in Dublin the week before and saw Connemara marble at the Museum Building at Trinity. My son recognized it inlaid by the staircase at the Cultural Center. The tour guide said it was there in honor of Irish immigrants. We learned lots of other fun facts about the building, including the fact that it was the result of a lawsuit between the library and a Civil War vets group.
ReplyDeleteThe things one learns...thanks Sharon!
DeleteThey aren't going to make much business with those hours and closings.
ReplyDeleteThe best version of the Museum of Broadcast Communications was located in the Cultural Center. The scale was perfect. Just enough. It welcomed you. Later locations, not so much.
ReplyDeleteThough I haven't replied to them, I just wanted to say that several of your recent comments have resonated with me, Romberg. Like this one. I at least stopped by the MBC occasionally when it was in the Cultural Center, since it was free and welcoming, as you note. Fun place.
DeleteSuch good memories of that beautiful building. The Museum of Broadcast History had a temporary (free) spot in there for quite a while. And one of the temporary art exhibits opened us to the world of Outsider Art and the magical world created. by Henry Darger.
ReplyDeleteI always hated that building as a library, due to the truly weird layout. Went there for the architecture biennial a few years ago & was wandering through one of the exhibits on the fourth floor, in the former reference reading room & the guard came screaming at me that I wasn't supposed to be in there. Except no signs said so & no rope keeping you out. just another self important clown with a uniform. Wonderful way to ruin the experience.
ReplyDeleteThe first floor toilets are unusable to normal people as the homeless use them & make a mess, so you must go to the fourth floor to go!
Went to the old reading room on Saturdays in the mid-60s, to complete assignments for my high school journalism courses. That place was a gem...with study lamps on long tables... that also got light from the big east-facing windows. Probably hadn't changed much over the previous half-century.
DeleteThose Saturdays taught me how to use a library for research purposes. No open stacks. You had to look up want you wanted and needed and then request the books and obtain them the front desk when your number was called. Wrote whole papers down there. Not typed, like today. Written...and revised...in longhand. Usually took most of the day.
And during school vacations, I would occasionally go downtown and read about famous disasters and sports on the microfilm machines...the Eastland, the Titanic, the Green Hornet streetcar disaster, the 1945 Cubs. Was I something of a sick puppy? Perhaps. But how fortunate to have grown up in a city as fabulous...and as historic...as Chicago.
The Cultural Center was one of the first places my partner wanted to show me back when we were still "boyfriends." I was awestruck and felt more than a little stupid for being unaware of this gem after having lived most of my life in and around the city. I love going back every chance I get.
ReplyDeleteAfter I learned about the "Y" municipal device (on an architecture tour, I think) I started seeing it everywhere. It's like Easter eggs, strewn around the city, hidden in plain sight, on bridges, railings, buildings, manhole covers. Most prominently, but still somehow hidden - the middle of the Chicago Theater's iconic main sign, under the middle C. One of many cool little things I miss about the city.
ReplyDeleteThe device was also in all CTA tokens.
DeleteCan never give enough thanks to the Chicago Landmarks Preservation Council, and Sis Daley, for the preservation of the Cultural Center. In the 70s and 80s, that amazing Tiffany dome was a wonderful oasis in which to hear chamber music on Sunday afternoons.
ReplyDeleteTook my first wife there for some of those concerts. She complained about the "L" rides from Evanston, but I told her it was a small price to pay for culture in the city. A painting of hers was displayed in one of the galleries, a couple of years later.
Around that same time, I heard Bob Elson, whose radio broadcasts of both Chicago baseball teams spanned forty years, give a memorable lecture at the Cultural Center. Great stories about the earliest days of radio baseball. That lecture series also included Bill Veeck. He autographed a couple of his books. Still have them.
That circle with a Y inside, called The Municipal Device, represented the North, South, and West sides of the city, along with the river and its two branches. It can be found on the exteriors of a number of public structures, and inside them as well. It's even more commonly seen on some of Chicago's many bridges. As a youngster, I always thought it had something to to with "the Y"...as in YMCA. Kids take so many things literally.
My father worked in the Board of Trade building, at La Salle and Jackson, in the Fifties, and I worked there, too, in the early Eighties. Never made it over to Lou Mitchell's, and I don't think he did, either. Wasn't near the trains we rode. Sounds like we missed something good.
Dieter Kober conducting the Chicago Chamber Orchestra! We enjoyed a number of those Sunday concerts, as well, Grizz.
DeleteThe same space also featured the Wednesday lunch-time Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, which have relocated to the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist on Wacker for some reason.
Maybe. And a lot of string quartets and quintets.
DeleteLong time ago...around 1976-81, give or take a year or so.
The music, the dome, the lighting...simply idyllic. Bliss...
Still attend a lot of chamber and classical piano performances.
Until recently, Cleveland's art museum had freebies on Sunday afternoons.
Well, this is a timely post, given the polar vortex and the fact that "you can cut through and keep warm on cold days." Love that builiding and have visited it often. Not since the pandemic, however, except that we just did so a couple weeks ago, as an edifying cut-through on our way to the Art Institute. We made a point to check out all the floors and both domes, though all but one of the exhibit spaces seemed to be in-between shows. Still well worth the time.
ReplyDeleteOff topic, but by the way, Neil, I know you visit the Art Institute often, so you've probably already seen this. But I just want to recommend the exhibition "Jeremy Frey: Woven." "Delicate, intricate, and sinuous — the vessels that Jeremy Frey weaves from the heavy lumber of ash trees are astonishing to behold." It's not the kind of thing that would generally even interest me, but wow, those "vessels" are amazing! The show closes February 10.
https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/10212/jeremy-frey-woven
These are beautiful baskets/"vessels" - thanks for the tip, Jakash!
DeleteWhen I was in high school, trips downtown were never complete without a stop at the library. We could do work on school papers, or take out things like piano reductions of major pieces of music so we could try to sound like a symphony at home. I miss the Grand Army of the Republic Museum, and wonder whatever happened to the Civil War memorabilia. The building does seem to lack of purpose now. I took my grandson to see it and he was confused by the temporary exhibits there. I've not been in the Harold Washington Library. I hope it is nice.
ReplyDeleteThe GAR museum was completely remodeled, so it's still there.
DeleteThe Harold Washington Library is an architectural atrocity!
I have to say I remember the old Library as being a dismal place in my high school days, with endless waits for the books you asked for to get pulled and delivered. Imagine my astonishment, 60 or so years later, to visit the Cultural Center and be gobsmacked by the architecture, the mosaics, the domes, the ... ... . I do get there several times a year and mostly like those art exhibitions that you so cavalierly dismiss.
ReplyDeleteI love the adjective "sincere."
ReplyDeleteI chose it carefully, though not carefully enough for Rick Weiland.
DeleteI reread to find the "sincere" and appreciate that in context there. There is or maybe was another student art center across Randolph we visit. I grew up on southside near Ashland/92nd-mom didn't drive, dad took train down, we rarely went into the city and I feel poorer for that fact. We didn't even have a library in our neighborhood and our school library rather antiquated. Found the Cultural Center as a 20-30 something while living here in west central IL and visiting via Amtrak. I entered on the Washington St side and was frankly gobsmacked at the grand mosaic staircase. I climbed the stairs and read the great authors names and their quotes while following grand piano music to the great hall and dome. A famous Russian pianist was practicing; we caught her concert the next day as broadcasted on radio. This was a freaking library? How did I not know about this palace. We make it a point to visit most every time we are in the city and have had fun introducing it to friends for their first experience. There have been changes--seems like there were a few concerts in the former reception area on Randolph St. It was a pretty cozy space-comfey chairs and tables; yes, there were many who may have been spending time indoors in a warm or cool space but it was a mash-up. I saw some wonderful art installations in those grand rooms; there was a NPR Story Corp recording place there I think. Thx for writing about this wonderful place and "Sis" is a saint for saving the CCC-as well as the "Municipal Device" which is a familiar motif in the city.
DeleteOh-another wonderously quirky happening I see there and in the area in the summer-The Puppet Wagon! Anyone here have info on that? Perhaps Mr. S has already written about it. It's like this rather "shacky" wooden box with a stage build onto a large trike and a cast of rather "well loved, used, kind of tattered puppets. I've never seen it moving from place to place but there's a person in there making some magic and delight on the streets some daze.
I know I'm late to the game, but I want to express my thanks to all the people who have commented on the Chicago Cultural Center (former Public Library). As a student at the School of the Art Institute, I spend many hours doing art historical research there. The art book section was in the NE corner of the first floor. It wasn't until the building was threatened with demolition that I fully appreciated how awesome it was. Ever since, I have made it a mandatory place to take out-of-town visitors. I am fortunate to have been one of the artists who exhibited there. So glad Jakash mentioned the Dame Myra Hess Concerts and Romberg for noting the brilliant Museum of Broadcast Communications. There is nothing in Chicago that compares to the CCC. We are so lucky that it was saved.
ReplyDeleteThe Chicago Cultural Center is also the home of Uniting Voices Chicago, formerly known as the Chicago Children's Choir, an amazing organization of which my younger daughter was a member.
ReplyDeleteNeil, have you ever talked to Josephine Lee, the president of UVC?
https://www.unitingvoiceschicago.org/about-us/our-team/faculty-and-administration/josephine-lee