Chicago Landscapes and Architecture

The Original Chicago Architecture Tour

Chicago Skyline South of the Chicago River

The Wrigley Building

     We recently took a few days to explore Chicago's architecture and gardens.  We arrived a little early for the 2:45 tour on the famous Wendella boats, allowing us some time to explore the skyscrapers of Michigan Avenue.  One of the earliest examples in the city is the Wrigley Building from 1924.  The glazed terra cotta facade is one of the most recognizable along the Magnificent Mile. 

Chicago Tribune Building with Artifacts from Around the World

Across the street is the Tribune Building looking much like a gothic cathedral tower.  Around the base are embedded relics from around the world including a moon rock and pieces from ancient constructions.  All are well marked and make for a mini outdoor museum with considerable credentials.  

Chicago Skyline from Lake Michigan

     Our boat tour began on a perfect spring day at the Trump Tower docks.  Heading out to the lake, taking in the architecture along the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, the 75 minutes was full of Chicago history that changes yearly with new additions to the cityscape.  One of the most striking newer buildings was Aqua (2009), an 80-story multi-use residential skyscraper designed by Jeanne Gang.  The sculptured facade was created with irregular concrete slabs that form the balconies on the building.  The second tallest 

Towering Trump International Hotel and Tower

skyscraper in Chicago is the Trump International Hotel and Tower (2009).  It's hard to miss with the 2-story mogul's name strategically placed on the building's river side.

The Former Montgomery Ward Catalog Campus

     Heading north on the river, several residences appear from both newly-constructed and revamped structures.  I was particularly impressed with the former Montgomery Ward (catalog) office campus that has repurposed three distinctively different buildings into condos with a view.

     Chicago has always been known for innovative architecture, but one of the scariest is being constructed at 150 North Riverside.  The 54-story tower has a narrowing base that allows it to fit between the river and the railroad tracks.  It will be an eye-catcher in the years to come!

Willis Tower and 311 South Wacker Drive

     Two gems along the southern edge of the Chicago River are Willis Tower and 311 South Wacker Drive.  Willis Tower now has four glass-bottom balconies, known as The Ledge, for viewing on the 103rd floor.  The 311 building is best viewed at night when its tower appears as an oversized diamond ring.

The Chicago Botanical Gardens

Spring Planter

     There are public gardens, and then there are public gardens.  I've been to several in my life and this is my favorite.  I've been there every season of the year (even after a newly fallen 10-inch snow) and they all are spectacular.  The 385 acres of educational landscaping continues to grow and amaze.

Bonsai Collection

     We began with a tram tour of the perimeter.  It's a great way to get your bearings and get an overall feel for how massive these gardens are.  There are also tram rides through the inner gardens for those not wanting to walk through all of the 26 different gardens.  We chose to stop at the Regenstein Center to start our walking tour.  It contains the garden's extensive bonsai collection amidst simple, screened backdrops.  From there we stepped out onto The Esplanade and then on to the Native Garden that showed off the spring blooms. Time for a lunch break, which we found at the 

Lunch at the Garden Cafe

Garden Cafe with a substantial selection.  Eric and I chose the Pea Soup and French Onion Grilled Cheese. Both were tasty, but the grilled cheese was exquisite. 

Heritage Garden

     Now that we were refreshed, it was on to the Heritage Garden.  It's an area that used to be the front entrance, but still shows off some of the best plantings at the Gardens.  It's a circular area that leads to the rolling Rose Garden that was 

Waterfall Gardens

only producing buds at that time.  A stroll down the adjoining espaliered tree lane led us to the terraced Waterfall Garden that is best viewed from all levels.  

One of Three Japanese Garden Islands

Then it was on to the Japanese Garden, my favorite.  It consists of three islands, one of which is impossible to get to on foot—the Island of Happiness.  The other two are full of Japanese structures and well-manicured landscapes.  We happened to hit the azaleas in bloom.  

English Walled Garden

Poppy Fields

Our final stop was the English Walled Garden, another highlight on my list.  Its structured borders vs. curving hillsides provided a perfect backdrop to the English landscape architecture.  It's also home to some of the most unique plant specimens.

Northwestern University

Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Center for the Musical Arts

     Our drive from the northern suburbs took us through Evanston, home to Northwestern University.  It's Eric's alma mater so he was interested in seeing what had changed since our last visit.  The new Music Building is a striking structure along the lake.  There are views of downtown in the distance, giving a connection to the cultural mecca not too far away.

The Robie House

Robie House Entrance

      Robie House is located on a small corner lot on the grounds of the University of Chicago in Hyde Park.  That's both a statement and a forewarning.  Parking can be difficult, depending on the time of your visit.  There is no parking lot for the house.  The tours are one hour and leave from the courtyard area after ticket purchase at the gift shop, which is located in what was once the 3-car garage.  

Robie House

     Robie House is Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest example of the Prairie School style home, making it uniquely American.  (To me, it seemed like an early prototype for the 70s tri-level home.)  Completed in 1910 for the Robie family, it was only inhabited by them for a very short period of time.  Through the years, it was sold to the Chicago Theological Seminary and threatened several times with demolition.  After international support materialized for saving the structure, the university turned it over to the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust in 1997.  Since then, the organization has been restoring the home to its original specifications.  

Living Room

     The home is a little austere from the time one enters the foyer.  Furnishings are sparse, if any.  Much of the furniture created for the home has been lost or is on display at another site. Such is true of the dining room set, which is in the  

Cutout Ceiling Panels and Lighting

UC Museum collection. It emphasizes the architectural and lighting of the home, but leaves one feeling very disconnected during the tour.  One feature that is in the process of being completed is the color specifications that Wright chose at the time of construction.  After seeing these example, Eric thought he should have left that to a more experienced interior designer, but one has to suppose that it was not an option or a subject to be addressed with Wright.

Frank Lloyd Wright Window Designs

     As with any Wright construction, there were experiments with ideas to make life easier and to conserve the structure.  This was the case with self-watering built-in planters that used rain water as their source, as well as cornices that acted as rain gutters on the underside of the roof hence eliminating vertical downspouts that would ruin the horizontal lines of the house.  On that same note, Wright used Roman bricks that 

Roman Brick with Painted Tuck Pointing

were narrower and longer to emphasize the horizontal shape.  To accentuate it even more, the mortar between the horizontal bricks was painted the same color to make it one continuous line.

      Our only quibble with visiting the Robie House was that its restoration and tour paled in comparison to Wright's Oak Park Studio and Home.  The tour seemed a little long (and pricey) although the volunteer did a tremendous job with relaying information.  in addition, there was a $5 up charge for taking interior pictures, a totally unnecessary fee as no one paid any attention and almost everyone on our tour was taking pictures and only one person admitted to paying.

When did Second City become so Self-Satisfied?

     In today’s marketing era, an institution is one whose brand is indestructible, no matter whether the quality has slipped.  Second City embodies this definition in its current main stage revue Fool Me Twice, Déjà Vu.  The concept was intriguing, but the execution was off-key and veered dangerously close to being amateurish.  The set-up was that one cast member was in the now while the rest of the cast was in 1991.  It was a time machine he’d invented and the others were visiting him.  It was funny and the first act’s subtext was an examination of the extent to which American life and culture had changed over the past quarter century.  The best scene involved three young mothers energetically celebrating “having it all.”  The by-products were exhilaration, entitlement, and exhaustion.

The Cast of Fool Me Twice, Déjà Vu

     The second act began as an off-kilter version of the first act’s beginning:  the Déjà Vu effect squared.  The twentysomething brother/sister behind me felt the need to point this out to each other, though it only needed explaining for the obtuse or feeble-minded.  Although the variations, especially a family brunch scene, were droll and amusing, the ensemble made the fatal mistake of breaking numerous times.  Though this can seem funny when it happens inadvertently, it became a motif where the cast members were more focused on entertaining one another and themselves than they were in pointing at truths to an audience.  It’s narcissistic – the absolute opposite intention of improvisation – and lazy, which is the worst rip-off of a paying audience by professionals.

     The fully improvised third act was sloppy.  The first game was word/sentence association and went on three times longer than its natural ending, which was a hilarious example by Jamison Webb, who was the glue that held the ensemble together.  I felt Daniel Strauss was checked out of this part.  His best moments were one line in the first act and its repeat in the second act.  Strauss broke the cardinal rule of accepting a detail given him by another cast member and going with it.  Instead, he denied it and justified this by his character’s bad memory.  I couldn’t reconcile this ‘variation’ on the orthodoxy of improv.  Paul Jurewicz worked well, but the audience

Rashawn Nadine Scott

seemed primed to see another John Belushi just because he possessed girth.  Rashawn Nadine Scott sparked in any audience interaction game, while Sarah Shook was kookily attractive, but willing to do anything for a laugh.  I liked Kelsey Kinney a lot in a long improv about Google programmers, but she kept performing the same type of character continually in the first two acts.

     None of this seemed to faze the audience, however.  They were overly conversant with the legendary past of Second City and reacted as if they were watching then in their prime.  Ten years ago or so we saw an excellent troupe exemplified by the Black Republican sketch and the ancient black grandmother giving shockingly honest advice to much younger listeners.  I don’t know what happened to those performers, but they were excellent.  I saw Paradigm Shift in ’97 (partly written by Tina Fey) and found its quick retread of part of act one in the second act and final summative moments to be startlingly fresh.  I still remember Rachel Dratch’s mother of a gargoyle.  Fool Me Twice isn’t fresh, especially in the negative stereotyping of southerners and the easy shots at straight white Anglo-Saxon males.  They could have added Jewish males in the movie business as well, but they didn’t have the guts to go quite that far.  The lack of liberal self-awareness was surprising.  In the past, the ensemble has been able to poke fun at itself, but this was not an element of this production.

     The three-generation family behind us – I figured out that the younger members were explaining what was going on to the grandmother.  How she was able to get into the performance space in her wheelchair was beyond me, but she was sandwiched in like the rest of us.  They left during the improvised set I assume because it was coarse and not very funny.

Jacob Shuda

    The musical direction was stellar and did a lot to punch up the pacing and underscore the specific scenes’ emotions.  Musical Director and pianist Jacob Shuda looked like a star when he took his bow.  The cast should take a cue from him.

secondcity.com

Mary Page Marlowe at Steppenwolf

     Neil was interested in seeing Tracy Lettts’ Mary Page Marlowe (MPM) because it was premiering at Steppenwolf and we wanted a reason to visit Chicago; I was interested after I read a rave in The New York Times (yes, bloggers can be review whores).  Letts has deservedly earned a reputation as a major American dramatist and he’s focused on the middle of the country with intelligent, quirky characters finding themselves in situations that begin mundanely and turn horrific.  With Superior Donuts (2008) and now MPM, he’s examining the details of ordinary lives, the type of people watching the show or people that viewers know.

     Baby boomer Mary Page Marlowe, living in Dayton and then Lexington, leads a life that many women of her generation did (and do) in being raised by parents who came of age before World War II, listened to records and thought about boys in the ‘50s, graduated from college in the ‘60s, got married and worked professionally, had a family, divorced, and I won’t go on from there because I don’t want to spoil the story, which depends on its specific details and the order of their revelation.  Although these were turbulent times that changed the culture in the U.S., MPM is not a leader in any movement.  She’s an ordinary middle-class woman and this frustrates her, along with her tacitly acknowledged Catholic guilt, resulting in behavior she regrets.

Madeline Weinstein, Jack Edwards and Rebecca Spence

     Letts’ coup de theatre is to portray scenes from her life out of chronological order so that the audience has clues to figure out MPM’s personality and motivations and also renders what could be commonplace when told like an obituary as various startling and defining moments.  Director Anna D. Shapiro has cast six actresses as Mary over the decades.  Rebecca Spence and Blair Brown are standouts in the role.  I’d like to have seen more of Spence, but the next scene she might have played chronologically was cast with another actress.  I wish we could have seen Carrie Coon since she was fierce in Gone Girl (2014), but her understudy was playing instead and was very good, though her wigs looked like wigs.  

     All of the actors in the large cast performed beautifully, especially newcomer Madeline Weinstein as Mary’s daughter Wendy and the veteran Steppenwolf member Alan Wilder as Mary’s final husband.  Without ever underlining, the production demonstrates the time periods easily through Todd Rosenthal’s set design and Linda Roethke’s costumes.  Large screen projections were integral to the scene changes (as they were in the Shaw’s production of Sweet Charity last year), but Sven Ortel’s are decorative and thematic, rather than being descriptive.

The Final Scene with Blair Brown

     The one problem with the performance was its ending.  Rather than a dramatic climax, though there were fraught confrontations earlier, the final moment is one of quiet epiphany.  However, there wasn’t an arresting conclusion with lighting or sound to draw the applause it deserved.  An understated, eloquent play was left hanging and I think Shapiro needs to re-think the moments after the final image so that the audience can react properly.

MPM runs through June 5, 2016.

steppenwolf.org

Degas’ Dancer Sculptures in Toledo

Second String City 

with a First Rate Art Museum

The Toledo Museum of Art

     Neil had been to The Toledo Museum of Art in the 1980s and was very impressed with the works by El Greco he’d seen there.  There’s an exhibition of Degas and the Dance through January 10 so we thought we’d check it out between Detroit and Cleveland.  One thing about late 19th century industrial cities’ movers and shakers, (in this case the Libbey Glass Company) they sure as heck pushed for major art showplaces.  

The Agony in the Garden, El Greco

As a follow-up and possible suspense killer, there is an El Greco painting.  What Neil remembered, according to one of the docents, was actually an exhibit.

Degas' Little Dancer of Fourteen Years

     Degas and the Dance features eleven sculptures and paintings about ballet.  The centerpiece is the three foot tall figure of a dancer from the Ballet School of the Paris Opéra, the wax sculpture modeled in 1881, but cast in bronze a couple of years after Degas’ 1917 death.  It’s a boutique exhibit that is an amuse bouche for the following courses the museum offers.

The Glass Pavilion

     The unmissable, best thing to see first is the Glass Pavilion, opened in 2006 and designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa before they won the Pritzker Prize for Architecture.  Though it seems influenced by Phillip Johnson’s glass block private homes, it seems to float in the landscape because of its curving lines inside and out.  There are glassblowing demonstrations, but we didn’t have much time to check that out because we were under a deadline. The sublime 

BCE Glass Pieces

collection extends from 1500 BCE to the last couple of years and includes examples from around the world.  Amazingly, glass did not change much in terms of technology or method for production.  

Variations in Glass

The basis for design and color has remained steady, while there have been specific variations by continent and historical era.  There’s a mix of pieces to be used and those to be viewed.  I’d recommend going there first on a visit.

Wolfe Contemporary Gallery

     Wolfe Gallery on the second level in the main building has been renovated as the central point for the contemporary collection.  It’s impressive and even has a large Jennifer Bartlett work, which is the first time I’ve seen such a work by her that wasn’t in a book.  The rest of the museum covers the 

major movements and continents over the centuries, though the Baroque and Rococo periods receive significant exposure.  The 19th – early 20th century pieces will entice many visitors.

Degas and the Dance runs through January 10. 2016.

toledomuseum.org

48 Hours in Detroit

Appear, Appease, Applaud by Xavier Simmons
from the Exhibit 30 Americans

     Where to go for a little cultural getaway?  This time our road trip was based around three exhibitions at three midwest art museums—Detroit, Toledo, and Cleveland.  Beginning with Detroit, we arrived   in time for a late lunch at El Barzon, a combination of Mexican and Itlaiian cuisines in Mexicantown west of downtown.  For those that are squeamish (i.e. afraid of exploring downtown CIncinnati), driving around Detroit neighborhoods may prove to be anxiety-ridden.  For us, it was sad and hopeful.  Covering complete neighborhoods that have been deserted for years was a bit like a bombed European city after World War II that we've only seen on the news.  Our questions were numerous with few answers, but we were there to celebrate their determination to make a great city great again.

Motown's Studio A

     Our second stop was Motown Museum in New Center district, a row of early 20th century homes purchased by Barry Gordy as offices for his music empire from 1959 to 1972.  After hearing about how most of the artists grew up in the same neighborhood, we were on a mission to find Diana Ross' family home.  A fast google research came up with a street, but not a house number.  Photos showed the home we were looking for, but we never found it.  In the process, we did pass Florence Ballard's home.  Later, after digging deeper into google, we found the addresses for all three Supremes

Florence Ballard's Home

discovering that Diana Ross' house was right across the street from Florence's and Mary Well's was a mere four blocks away.  It took us through some startling neighborhoods, but theirs was amazingly left untouched.  

The Henry Lobby

     Our "home" was The Henry located in Dearborn.  It's a lovely oversized boutique hotel with artwork lining the corridor, all for sale to guests.  Our dinner that night was at TRIA adjacent to the lobby.  We opted to share the Duck Cassoulet since our lunch had been quite hearty.  Eric started with the Pumpkin Soup and I had the Arugula Salad.  However, the main reason we were there was for the

Soufflé with Grand Marnier Sauce

Soufflé served with a Grand Marnier Sauce and vanilla Ice cream.  We were hoping for a Commander's Palace/New Orleans experience and that is exactly what we had.

     I had checked out the website detroit.eater.com for dining options.  It's a great idea with 38 restaurants that are briefly reviewed and updated quarterly.  Our stop for lunch was Rose's Fine Foods, a small diner committed to totally local food that even these foodies found amazing.  A short drive

Pewabic Pottery

down Jefferson Avenue was Pewabic Pottery known locally and beyond.  We found it akin to Rookwood. The quaint tudor

Pewabic Potteryware

cottage looked out of place in the neighborhood, but contained some pieces that we just couldn't resist for ourselves and as gifts.  

Detroit Institute of Arts. 2007 addition

     Next on our itinerary was the reason for our visit, the Detroit Institute of Arts.  Located on a city block just north of downtown, the original 1885 building was surrounded in the back by a contemporary addition from 2007.  What looked like a modest museum on the outside proved to be enormous once inside.  The collection was stellar and the Diego Rivera murals in the courtyard are not to be missed.  Walking through what

Diega Rivera Murals

became a history of art, it was hard to imagine that such a collection was actually proposed to be sold a few years ago to bail out the city.  From the surprisingly generous attendance on a Friday afternoon and into the evening, it would have been an unbelievable blow to a city already struggling for stability.  We were there four hours and only made it through one of three floors.

Shinola Store in Midtown

     Shinola (of shoe shine fame) has become a bright light to the Detroit creative class in the past couple of years.  Taking a mundane product, the new owners decided to turn it into a model for "made in America" with handmade leather products and gift items that epitomize quality with price tags to match.

City Bird

We visited their store in Midtown, an obviously trending area for young millennials.  We particularly liked  our visit to City Bird across the street.  Its prices and offerings were more in line with our style.

Fox Theatre

     A trip further downtown toward the river brought us into more congestion that was actually a pleasure to confront.  Everyone seemed to be drawn to Ford Field, and for good reason.  Luke Bryan was performing at the outdoor stadium, which seemed to be a risky premise for the end of October.  Finally, we had found the heart of the city and it was beating heavily.

Dinner at Polish VIllage Cafe in Hamtramck

     From our trusty dining guide, we found the Polish area of the city—Hamtramck.  Virtually a city within a city, it was a working class area with a vibe.  Following the crowd to the downstairs Polish Village Cafe, we joined the line forming for a table.  The wait was much longer than indicated, but the experience was purely cultural with locals speaking Polish and Hungarian.  We were definitely not in a tourist spot.