Tag Archives: Municipality – Evanston IL

Art Photography: HIEROTOPY. Created Sacred Space & Its Paradigms. (15 Photos).

FEATURE Image: The Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago, 10915 S. Lemont Road, Lemont IL. Author’s photograph, 7/2017 5.75 mb 

INTRODUCTION.

Hierotopy derives from two Ancient Greek words meaning “Sacred Space” and in a specifically broad sense.

It is a term developed at the start of the 21st century by Alexei Lidov (b. 1959), a Russian art historian who specializes in Byzantium.

Hierotopy is the study of the creation and frequent re-creation of sacred spaces whose inter-disciplinary application extends to a vast array of media (i.e., images, shrines, architectural spaces, pilgrimage, song, incense, ritual, natural forces, such as light and darkness) as well as spans the areas of art history, archeology, cultural anthropology (diversity in social practice), ethnology (groups and culture), and religious studies.

What hierotopy is not is the study of the phenomenology of the sacred. Rather, it is a look at projects that express the sacred and the relationship of the sacred and the mundane. It is a universal language posited in a nearly infinite number of forms marked by creative human activity and expression.

As such, icons and other sacred artifacts, for example, are not seen only as isolated objects but as part of any wider project to express a wide scope of communication of the sacred and mundane. It is these projects themselves – including both their conceptual and artistic aspects, as well as the historical developments leading to their formation – which are the primary focus of hierotopic study.

In regard to this post of photographs, as hierotopy is the study of the creative direction of projects coordinating artists and specialists in shaping a unified and comprehensive vision of the relation of the sacred and mundane, these photographs are their own hierotopy project. In seeking to capture others’ creative projects in the communication of the sacred and mundane along with those embodied human interactions with or among them, each photographic image is its own original hierotopic project.

Hierotopic projects are not limited to churches and sanctuaries but can be landscapes, architectural compounds, and greater entities such as urban settings. While edifices and other macro-art and architecture are hiertopic, so are individual and simple yet equally powerful components such as the use of light in church architecture as well as sacred (including revealed religious and other) ceremonies, feasts, and folk customs.

While my photographs as a hiertopic project can include original sacred spaces which are those that appear as the result of a theophany (Ancient Greek meaning “appearance of a deity”) or a representative thereof, it can extend to its re-creation elsewhere, such as, popularly, a Lourdes grotto or Hindu prayer pole. Other hierotopic projects can involve less tangible ideas but look to express a higher order so that by way of the hierotopic project a common bond or experience on or towards such higher planes is manifested between the created sacred space and its human participant or beholder, such as, to start, the prayer labyrinth.

El Santuario/Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe of the Archdiocese of Chicago 1170 N. River Rd. Des Plaines, IL. 5/2018 7.89 mb 84% 
First Baptist Church, Kankakee County, IL 8/2017 6.63 mb
Moses, Mount Sinai, and the 10 Commandments Experience (The Shrine of Christ’s Passion) St. John, IN. 7/2017 4.83 mb
St. Edmund’s Church, 188 S. Oak Park Avenue, Oak Park, IL. 7/2015 7.84 mb 93%
Levere Temple, Sigma Alpha Epsilon National Headquarters, 1856 Sheridan Rd, Evanston, Il 10/2015. 30%.
The Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy, St. Stanislaus Kostka Church 1327 N. Noble Street, Chicago. 3/2013 1.58 mb
Corpus Christi Catholic Church, 4920 S. Martin Luther King Drive, Chicago. 10/2015 25%. After 120 years of service, the Bronzeville Catholic Church closed its doors for good in July 2021 as part of the archdiocesan consolidation plan,
Holy Innocents Church at 743 North Armour Street, Chicago. After 116 years of service, in 2021, the Chicago archdiocese combined Holy Innocents, St. Malachy + Precious Blood, and Santa Maria Addolorata to form the new parish, Blessed Maria Gabriella, 3/2013 1.74 mb
El Santuario/Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe of the Archdiocese of Chicago 1170 N. River Rd. Des Plaines, IL. 5/2018 3.65 mb
El Santuario/Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe of the Archdiocese of Chicago 1170 N. River Rd. Des Plaines, IL. 5/2018 5.02 mb
St. Edmund, Oak Park, IL. 9/2015 35%
St Bernadette. Cathédrale Saint-Cyr-et-Sainte-Julitte de Nevers, Nevers, France 1993 1.15 mb

(49 seconds). Police in Lourdes, France, interrogate 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous following the 6th apparition (Feb. 21, 1858) at the grotto. From The Song of Bernadette (1943) starring Jennifer Jones for which Jones won the Academy Award that year for Best Actress.

Grotto. 10/2022 7.86 mb 63%
Field of Honor 2021 Colonial Flag Foundation, June 30 – July 4, 2021 Seven Gables Park, 1750 S. Naperville Road, Wheaton, IL The event’s website claims: “This stirring display of 2,000 flags will bring the community together in a patriotic tribute to honor our heroes.” 7/2021 7.82 mb

Jazz-Age WEDDING DRESS, 1924 – Fashionable High Skirts and Sleeveless Blouses were Believed Risqué.

Bridal Party Dresses, 1924. Charles Gates Dawes House, Evanston, Illinois. 10/2015 500 kb

On Saturday, June 7, 1924, Ruth M. Anderson was married in this sleeveless wedding dress (left) to William Noling in Evanston, Illinois. The dress is now on display in the Charles Gates Dawes House in Evanston. Dawes was Vice President of the United States from 1925 to 1929 under President Calvin Coolidge.

The Noling-Anderson wedding was held in the house of the bride and her parents, Isak and Jennie (née Johnson) Anderson, at 1035 Ridge Avenue in Evanston. Built in 1914, the house still stands as it did 100 years ago.

The dress is made of silk satin in an egg shell color. It is accented by an oval medallion with bands also made of silk satin. The medallion is embroidered with faux pearl and other glass beads.

While the wedding dress was very fashionable for the mid1920’s – sleeveless tops of all shapes and sizes were the rage in 1924 – it probably was not allowed in one of Evanston’s houses of worship. The fact that it was sleeveless and au courant would be deemed by many as risqué for showing too much bare skin inspired by a thoroughly modern flapper style. It was only in 1924, for instance, that the Methodist Episcopal General Conference first lifted its ban on going to the theater as well as dancing though dance music was the radio’s most popular programming.

The bridesmaid dress (right) was the height of women’s style in 1924 – a mainly straight, knee-length skirt gathered slightly or cut with front pleats. Short sleeve and sleeveless tops were the rage in 1924 reflected in Hollywood by the Mack Sennett girls who starred in movies where they pranced on the beach in a chorus line in not much more than bathing caps and short swim suits.

The fashionable bride and her court likely sported the latest style of facial make-up which is hinted at in the 2015 display– masklike with garish, even orange, lipstick and heavy red rouge on the cheeks. Popular fashion accessories from 1924 are also evident – pearls knotted at the neck and simple, though elegant, arm bracelets.

The bride’s father, Isak Anderson, was born in Sweden and came to the United States at 20 years old in 1890. In 1891 he married Jennie Johnson and they had Ruth and another child. Ruth’s father was a bank director and partner in a local tailoring business in downtown Evanston at 608 Davis that today is a noodle shop.  

With Prohibition starting in 1920, guests at the wedding may have been served the latest popular highball whose recipe called for fruit juice and raw eggs. Their morning could have started with a bowl of Wheaties at breakfast, since the cereal of champions made its first appearance in 1924.

Ruth Anderson married William Noling in this house in Evanston, Illinois, in June 1924. Fair Use.

SOURCES: Dawes House, Evanston Illinois; The Swedish Element in Illinois: Survey of the Past Seven Decades, Ernst Wilhelm Olson, p. 586; American Chronicle, Lois Gordon & Alan Gordon, Yale University Press, New Haven & London,1999, pp. 230-238; Chicago: The Glamour Years (1919-1941), Thomas G. Aylesworth & Virginia Aylesworth, Gallery Books, NY, 1986, p.14.

Architecture & Design Photography: HOWARD VAN DOREN SHAW (1869-1926). The Mentor Building (1906) in Chicago and 1005 Michigan Avenue House (1913) in Evanston, Illinois. (2 Photos).

Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926), 1906, THE MENTOR BUILDING, 39 S. State Street (6 E. Monroe Street), Chicago, from the southwest. Author’s photograph, July 2015.

A Mentor building has stood on this northeast corner of State and Monroe since 1873 when there had been a 7-story building erected here.1

Howard Van Doren Shaw’s only skyscraper presents an unusual mixture of styles.

There are windows grouped in horizontal bands between a four-level base of large showroom windows. The top is classically inspired with details that are strong and idiosyncratic. The building retains the character of its classical sources though they are used as large-scale motifs.2

Shaw’s 1906 building is 17 stories high with two basements on rock caissons.3

The photograph was taken on July 5, 2015.

1 Frank A. Randall, History of Development of Building Construction in Chicago, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded by John D. Randall, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1999, p, 196.

2 Alice Sinkevitch, AIA Guide to Chicago, 2nd Edition, Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, 2004, p. 59.

3 Randall, p.265.

Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926), 1913, 1005 MICHIGAN AVENUE, Evanston, Illinois. Author’s photograph, June 2022. 14.96 mb 25%

Seven years after Howard Van Doren Shaw’s sole skyscraper, Chicago Downtown’s Mentor Building (above), was built in 1906, the architect raised this highly sophisticated “great house” design in Evanston, Illinois.

The light-colored brick house is Colonial Revival with modifications. The façade’s symmetry is prominently displayed in its 5 equal openings for its two main floors and topped by a shortened pitched roof with three flat-roofed dormers. A chimney protrudes at the roof line to the north.

For the main mass there are aligned windows with a middle opening for both the first and second floor symmetrically displaying diverse residential functionality: a broad-arched porchway and genteel fanlight above a double door entry on the first floor and, at the second level. a wrought iron balcony providing a small, mainly decorative step landing.

The great house is situated on the northeast corner lot of a leafy yet trafficked suburban residential intersection, with the main building’s symmetry broken to the south by the then-popular sun porch extension. It is a low, two-story flat-roofed projection with an enclosed porch on the first floor and an open porch originally on the upper level.

SOURCE:

A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs On Wheels & On Foot, Ira J. Bach, Chicago, Athens, Ohio, London: Ohio University Press (Swallow Press), 1981, p. 518.

Street Photography: SIGNS OF THE TIMES. (60 Photos).

Villa Park, IL. 5/2018 4.06 mb
Evanston, IL. 2/2019 4.94 mb
Lisle, IL. 3/2018 3.38 mb
Chicago. 6.30 mb 95%
4/2020 7.39mb
6/2020 4.59 mb
4/2020 4.15 mb
Chicago. 3300 W. 111th St, 60655. 7/2015 4.16 mb
Chicago. Symphony Center. 10/2014 1.99 mb
Auditorium Theatre. Chicago. 12/2016. (10)
Chicago. Macy’s State Street. 1/2018 872kb
Chicago. Loop Synagogue. 9/2015 4.73 mb
9/2015 3.82 mb
Forest Park, IL. 7/2016 5.11 mb
1/2018 2.40 mb
Chicago. 9/2015 2.75 mb
Chicago. 134 S Wabash Ave, 60603. 7/2015 3.68 mb
Chinatown Chicago. 8/2015 3.44 mb
Chinatown Chicago. 10/2016 404 kb 25%
Chinatown Chicago. 7/2016 5.01 mb (20)
South Loop Chicago. 9/2015 3.82 mb
Chicago. 558 E 79th St, 60619 6/2018 3.64mb
6/2021 95%
Watseka, IL. 8/2017 6.24mb
Kentland, IN. 8/2017 3.16mb
Chicago. 8/2015 3.54 mb
Chicago. 2/2018 4.74 mb
Westmont IL. 12/2017 7.83 mb 98%
2/2018 6.74 mb 98%
Cedarburg, Wi. 6/2018 6.23 mb 95% (30)
Chicago. 9/2017 2.80 mb
Kennedy Expressway Chicago. 2/2018 6.58 mb
Chicago. 2/2018 3.63 mb
Chicago. 12/2015 4.30 mb
Chicago. Symphony Center. 10/2014 2.51 mb
Post Office. 3/2017 4.11 mb
Chicago. 2/2018 6.18 mb
Downers Grove, IL. 6/2018 7.35 mb
Chicago. 12/2018 6.67 mb 99%
Westchester IL. 5/2022 7.33mb 98% (40)
6/2022 7.02mb
Lisle Il. 9/2022 6.57 mb
Downers Grove, IL. 10/2022 5.80 mb 99%
10/2022 7.48 mb 99%
Chicago. 6/2022 5.86 mb
20, rue Surcouf, Paris, 75007. 10/2002 65%
Chicago. 12/2017 141 kb 25%
8/2022 7.57 mb 99%
Wheaton, IL. 917 E Roosevelt Rd, 5/2022 7.76 mb 99%
Chicago. 9/2015 6.33 mb (50)
Alsip, IL (Demolished). 7/2017 4.56 mb
Chicago. 8/2021 6.25 mb 99%
Chicago. 6/2022 2.11mb
Chicago, 8611 S Pulaski Rd 60652. 8/2015 7.71 mb 87%
Chicago. 2116 W. 95th Street, 60643. 8/2015 7.13 mb
San Diego, CA. 1/1999 75% The California Conservation Corps (CCC) at the end of a work day. The CCC was founded by Gov. Jerry Brown in 1976. It is a pay-as-you-go government agency that gives youth the opportunity to work in a job that is mostly outdoors as well as provides some scholarships.
Chicago. 8/2021 7.43 mb 70%
Waukegan, IL. 6/2014 7.10mb
5/2023 7.09 mb 99%
6/1979 Dublin, Ireland 200kb 45%. Opened in 1967, the Berkeley at Trinity College is an example of Brutalist architecture – exposed, unpainted concrete, monochrome palette, steel, timber, glass – that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom as a reaction to nostalgic architecture. 

(3.26 minutes). When I was in Ireland studying history, it was at Trinity College in Dublin. Though there was access to the Berkeley Library (pronounced Barkley) as well as the Old Library that housed the Book of Kells, I ended up using almost exclusively The National Library of Ireland, established in 1877 (though its origins are in the early 18th century), which was a 5-minute walk from the Trinity College campus. Through its decorative iron gates off Kildare Street was Ireland’s “library of record” whose rich collection of books, manuscripts and other documents (over 12 million items) was deeply related to the expanse of Irish history, particularly from its medieval period to before 1800. Taking up a desk day after day in the Main Reading Room designed in 1890 by Irish architect Sir Thomas Deane (1828 –1899) I searched their catalogs and spoke with reference librarians which resulted in requested materials which were then delivered by runners to my assigned desk.

FROM THE (May 9, 2023) ARTICLE: “A fellow of Trinity and the former librarian there, [18th century philosopher George] Berkeley [1685-1753] is regarded by academics as one of the most influential thinkers of the early modern period. Some view his philosophical and scientific ideas on perception and reality as foreshadowing the work of Albert Einstein. But last month, the governing board of Trinity, Ireland’s oldest university, announced that it had voted to “dename” the library after months of research and consultation by a group established to review problematic legacies.”

After months of work in Ireland and back in the U.S., the end result was a 75-page paper on the Franciscan Order in Ireland between the 13th and 16th centuries. James Joyce set the ninth episode of Ulysses in the National Library where Stephen Dedalus is depicted talking about Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It was in fact the rejection of membership in the mid1830s to the Roman Catholic archbishop of Dublin (Daniel Murray) to the National Library’s immediate predecessor organization (The Royal Dublin Society) that led to a campaign in the House of Commons by the Conservative MP for Limerick (Will O’Brien) to reform this elitist Society so that it, as well as any reference institution connected to it, would extend admission privileges without concern of party affiliation or religion.