FEATURE image: High School band tuba players, July 4, 2023, Independence Day parade, Downers Grove, Illinois, Main Street.
My Street Photography: 2023 INDEPENDENCE DAY PARADE, Downers Grove, Illinois. (11 photos).
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Tag Archives: My Photography – Street
My Street Photography: 2021 INDEPENDENCE DAY PARADE, Wheaton, Illinois. (47 photos).
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My Street Photography: 2019 INDEPENDENCE DAY PARADE, Downers Grove, Illinois. (22 photos).
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My Street Photography: 2020 BLACK LIVES MATTER march, Downers Grove, Illinois (35 photos).
FEATURE image: The BLM march took place on Main Street on Sunday, June 7, 2020.
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My Street Photography: STREET III (83 Photos).
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Street Photography: SIGNS OF THE TIMES. (76 Photos).
see – https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4090960/user-clip-clintongore-campaign-speech-1992 – retrieved June 20, 2023.
https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/686; https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/battle-of-chippawa.
The Battle of Stillman’s Run was named for the first engagement between Illinois militia led by Major Isaiah Stillman (1793-1861) and Sauk warriors during the short, storied Black Hawk War in 1832. Maj. Stillman, who was born in Massachusetts, had settled in Illinois and joined its newly-formed militia in 1827. On that perilous Monday, May 14, 1832, in present-day Stillman Valley, a town in north-central Illinois, Maj. Stillman’s 275 Illinois militia were attacked by Sauk warriors of Black Hawk’s British Band. The numbers of Native American warriors is unknown but is placed somewhere between 50 and 200 fighters. The Black Hawk War began when Sauk chief Black Hawk (1767-1838) recrossed the Mississippi River from Iowa into Illinois on April 5, 1832 to re-settle with around 1,000 warriors and women, children and elders. Black Hawk believed that the Treaty of St. Louis dated from 1804 that ceded land of his birthplace was invalid. Though a state since 1818, Illinois was on the edge of wilderness awaiting an influx of settlers and the return by Black Hawk was viewed as antithetical to that immediate objective according to the U.S. Government. During the Battle of Stillman’s Run, a name characterized by a nearby creek as well as the militia’s desperate foot-race in defeat, 12 militiamen had been killed by Band warriors as they made a stand on a small hill. In the retreat, the militia fled back 30 miles south to the fort along the Rock River at Dixon’s Ferry (present-day Dixon, IL). Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), future 16th president of the United States, was stationed at Dixon’s Ferry and may have been present at the Battle of Stillman’s Run though it is not yet known. Recent scholarship does put Lincoln at the Battle of Kellogg’s Grove in Illinois in June 1832 nearly 50 miles farther west. Lincoln was also present for the formal burials of the 12 militiamen who were killed at the Battle of Stillman’s Run. It was reported by Black Hawk that just 5 or less of his Sauk warriors were lost in that first day of battle. The Black Hawk War ended on August 2, 1832 with the military defeat of Black Hawk’s by then starving band that had retreated towards the Mississippi River near present-day Victory, Wisconsin, where the state lines of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota meet.
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My Street Photography: Europe 1970s-2000s (18 Photos).
FEATURE image: July 1984. Marienplatz, Munich, Germany. 7.91mb 91%
In 1895 M. Morin, an executive at Le Bon Marché, looked to give his wife a gift. Since the 1860s, Japanese art and its influences and practices (known as “japonisme”) had a profound impact on France’s own fine and popular arts, and this craze became even more popular by the 1890s. It was only natural for M. Morin to build a real pagoda as a lavish and fashionable statement next door to the couple’s house in Paris. Pieces were shipped from Asia and reassembled in Paris under the design and direction of Alexandre Marcel (1860-1928) at 57 bis, rue de Babylone on the corner with rue Monsieur in the 7th arrondissement. Built in the middle of a residential neighborhood it boasted all things Japanese including stone figures of dragons, lions, buddhas and birds as well as distinctive Asian-style rooflines. In 1930 it became a 400-seat cinema movie theatre that became an art-house cinema in the 1970s and, after 85 years of operation, closed its doors in 2015. SOURCE: 1000 Buildings of Paris, Kathy Borrus, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York, 2003, p. 275 and http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/6906 – retrieved January 4, 2023.
A fruit and vegetable market on the Katschhof square (above) in Aachen, Germany, in March 1992 was held the day before Ash Wednesday. The historic square has Aachen Cathedral on one side and the town hall on the other side and is brought to life during its numerous festivals, markets, and events. In Carolingian history, the Katschhof represented the connection between Charlemagne’s palace hall and his St. Mary’s Church with his throne and tomb. In 2014 it was announced by a team of scientists who started to study the tomb’s bones and bone fragments in 1988 that if they are those of Charlemagne (747-814), the 66-year-old Holy Roman Emperor was tall and thin. See- https://www.archaeology.org/news/1782-140131-charlemagne-bones-sarcophagus – retrieved October 6, 2023.
Opened in 1967, the Berkeley Library building at Trinity College is an example of Brutalist architecture — exposed unpainted concrete, monochrome palette, steel, timber, and glass. The style emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom in reaction to nostalgic architecture. In 2023 the name was removed from the library by the governing board of Trinity, Ireland’s oldest university, because its namesake, George Berkeley (1685-1753), an 18th century scholar whose philosophical and scientific ideas on perception and reality presage the work of Albert Einstein (1879-1955), had been a slave owner who actively defended slavery. Berkeley was a fellow of Trinity and, aptly for the library, its former librarian. George Berkeley is also the namesake of the University of California, Berkeley—and the town in which it is located—and Berkeley College, one of the 14 residential colleges at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. – see https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/05/09/berkeley-name-dropped-trinity-college-library – retrieved October 5, 2023. I was studing Irish History at Trinity College in 1979 and used this library and the National Library of Ireland around the corner on Kildare Street extensively for reading and research.
Dating from the late 1100s, these houses in Belgium are among the oldest surviving domiciles in Europe.
A 10-minute walk from the city center, the Rubens House (Rubenshuis in Dutch) is an older Flemish house transformed into an Italian palazzo by the artist, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) in 1610. Married that year to his first wife Isabella Brandt (1591-1626), Rubens purchased and renovated the house on today’s Wapper street whose layout included the couple’s home, the artist’s studio, a monumental portico and interior courtyard (pictured above). The courtyard also opens into the Baroque garden designed by Rubens. Isabella and Peter Paul Rubens had three children together when Isabella died of the plague at 34 years old. Centuries later, in 1937, Antwerp bought the house and opened it to the public in 1946.
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Street Photography: STREET II. (95 Photos).
Photographs ©John P. Walsh
William C. “Bill” Henry (1935-1992) for which this portion of 16th Street is named, was a 24th Ward Chicago alderman. Ald. Henry put together the coalition of Black and white aldermen to elect Eugene Sawyer (1934-2008) as mayor of the City of Chicago following the sudden death of Harold Washington (1922-1987), the first black mayor elected in Chicago.
Responding to accusations of deal cutting, Ald. Henry declared during the debate in the City Council chamber: “Deals? We was all making deals!” Henry’s constituents voted their alderman out of office for helping Sawyer in preference to Tim Evans, the reform candidate. Ald. Henry passed away from cancer in 1992 at 56 years old. In 2021 Timothy C. Evans is the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
see- http://www.cookcountycourt.org/ABOUT-THE-COURT/Office-of-the-Chief-Judge – retrieved June 3, 2021; https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2018/10/15/new-podcast-the-city-brings-back-memories-of-alderman-bill-henry-and-dealmaking-in-chicago – retrieved June 3, 2021.
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Street Photography: U.S. MIDWEST ROADS. (81 Photos).
Dell Rhea’s Chicken Basket
(above in 2016) is 22 miles southwest of downtown Chicago. Its address is 645 Joliet Road, Willowbrook, Illinois.
The Chicken Basket is a mandatory dine-in or carry-out stop on a “Midwest Roads” visit. Vintage roadhouse decor and family-oriented service is joined to the menu which features fresh, succulent fried chicken cooked-to-order.
Opened in 1926
The business first opened in 1926 as a gas station and lunch counter on the brand-new Route 66. U.S. Route 66 traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles, California —a distance of more than 2,000 miles.
In 1939, fried chicken was served for the first time by its original owner, Irv Kolarik.
In 1946 the present one-story brick commercial building was designed and built by architect Eugene F. Stoyke (1912-1993) next to the original building. It was during the post-World-War-II travel (and baby) boom that it became a full-service restaurant.
Original windows and signage
Dell Rhea’s bay of 9 single-light-glass-and-wood-canted windows is original where an immense fireplace anchored the dining area’s north wall. The neon-and-metal sign in the photograph was original when this photograph was taken. It was replaced in 2017 with an exact replica. In 1956, a cocktail lounge was added to the south.
Bluebird Bus stop to St. Louis
In 1962 Interstate 55 opened—the major expressway connecting Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans—and effectively retired U.S. Route 66 in this part of Illinois.
In front of the restaurant there was a Bluebird Bus stop (founded in 1927) which people could take to St. Louis or use to send packages across country.
New Owners
In 1963 the Chicken Basket was bought by Chicago businessman Delbert Francis “Dell” Rhea (1907-1992) who knew how to invigorate the eatery while maintaining its tradition for a new era.
The popular Chicken Basket was owned and managed by the Rhea family until 2019. The Lombardi family took over with the promise to keep intact the original recipe which is unchanged since 1946 and continue the same Chicken Basket tradition.
SOURCES: http://www.chickenbasket.com/ and https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/route66/dell_rheas_chicken_basket_hinsdale.html.
INTRODUCTION.
These are some of my photographs featuring people, places, and things I have met and seen along today’s American Midwest roads.
I have a personal affinity and affection for the American Midwest. I grew up in Chicago and its suburbs, and went to school here and live here today. My family has been in Illinois since at least the 1830s.
Growing up in the Midwest, my experiences included family, friends, diverse outings, engaging jobs, and being married here. I love to explore this vast region that’s rightly called “The Heart of America.”
Memories of the Middle West — its sights, sounds, smells, and tastes — and mostly in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan — are the mother’s milk of my life. In steamy summers, multi-colored autumns, ice-bitten winters, and flowering, reawakening springs to get outside to walk and ride on Midwest roads are pure adventure, then and now.
The American Midwest is filled with human stories and diverse and awesome natural beauty. There is timeless nostalgia, and, if such things don’t entice for the moment, unexpected curiosities.
For those who love it, the Midwest terrain carries all Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) spoke on in his last major book, The Sangamon. There is “magic in that soil, in the plains, the borders of forest, the oak trees on the hills,” the poet wrote. Masters was sure that “if you should drive through (this region)…strange dreams would come to you, and moreover those dreams would tally with mine.”
The region continues to offer the sightseer magical things. This includes its primordial aspects, such as animals, birds, natural outcroppings and waterways, as well as impressive remnants of Native American mound-building culture from the Midwest’s southern to northern reaches.
Edgar Lee Masters understood that it is the Midwest’s people – often defined as individualistic, hospitable, diverse, industrious, good-willed, courageous and independent – who imbue the region its greatest distinction. It is a populace and setting that, despite various economic setbacks and pockets of unfortunate decline, build and display what is often photographed on Midwest roads: historic canals, roads, barns and farms, houses. In the 21st century new things of interest can be seen on Midwest roads such as cellphone towers and wind turbines as older things, like barns and even some towns, decay or disappear.
Many famous American and international figures have lived and traveled on Midwest roads such as U.S. presidents, writers, actors, artists, business people, etc. This includes James Monroe (in 1785), Charles Dickens (1842), John Muir (1849), Henry David Thoreau (1861), Antonín Dvořák (1893), Winston Churchill (1946). Midwest natives include Carl Sandburg, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Edison, Edgar Lee Masters, Walt Disney, Mark Twain, Jane Addams, Harry S Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Barack and Michelle Obama, Frank Lloyd Wright, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., John Wayne, Wyatt Earp, “Wild Bill” Hickok, Jesse James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Dinah Washington (“Queen of the Blues”), and many, many more.
But It is Abraham Lincoln whose memory is most famously linked to Midwest Roads. Riding on his horse, “Old Bob,” Lincoln loved to travel the Eighth Judicial Circuit in central Illinois as a defense lawyer. It is to the 16th U.S. president and a Midwestern spirit he manifested to whom this photographic essay is dedicated.
SOURCES: E.L. Masters quotes from The Sangamon by Edgar Lee Masters with Introduction by Charles E. Burgess, University of Illinois Press, Urbana & Chicago, 1988 (first published 1942), p.6.
The Ronald Reagan Trail (IL-26) is a route in Illinois that follows sites of interest associated with the 40th president of The United States. Reagan grew up in Dixon, Illinois.
Originally Route 26 ran north-south for about 25 miles from Freeport, Illinois to Polo, Illinois.
In 1937, IL-26 was extended about 15 miles north to the Illinois-Wisconsin state line and about 15 miles south to Dixon, Illinois.
In 1969, IL-26 was extended almost 100 miles from Dixon south to East Peoria, Illinois.
U.S. Route 20 is the longest road in the country. It stretches east to west from Boston, Massachusetts to Newport, Oregon– about 3,100 miles.
Route 20 began on the East coast in the early to mid1920’s. The road reached Illinois in 1938 and is mostly unchanged since that time.
In 1955 the Illinois General Assembly designated the length of U.S. 20 in Illinois the U.S. Grant Memorial Highway. The sign in htis photograph was produced in late 2006.
The Anderson Japanese Gardens in Rockford, IL, is a popular 12-acre Japanese garden established in 1978. The gardens are on lands surrounding Rockford businessman John Anderson’s home. Anderson was inspired by gardens he visited in japan and other Japanese gardens in the U.S.
Under the guidance of Hoichi Kurisu, renowned master craftsman and landscape designer, the Andersons’ land along Rockford’s Spring Creek was transformed into an outdoor space of water, wood, stone, and flora representative of 1,000 years of Japanese horticultural tradition.
White Fence Farm was established in the 1920s by Stuyvesant “Jack” Peabody (1888-1926), the son of a wealthy coal baron. Jack Peabody opened the restaurant to feed his guests who visited his nearly 500-acre horse farm on the opposite side of a newly-opened U.S. Route 66.
In the mid1930s Peabody started to promote the domestic wine industry by featuring California wines at the restaurant.
Since 1954, the Hastert family has owned and operated White Fence Farm. Advertising itself as the “World’s Greatest Chicken,” the restaurant building has been expanded many times under the Hasterts. Within a country farm manor ambience, the popular restaurant boasts several dining rooms that can seat over 1,000 diners.
White Fence Farm continues to offer some of freshest and best-tasting fried chicken in and around historic U.S. Route 66. The restaurant is a perennially popular destination, especially on weekends and during the warm weather months, where people in the area as well as tourists arrive in droves.
see – https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/207904858/francis-stuyvesant-peabody; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/213107315/may-henderson-osborne; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/176456605/stuyvesant-peabody – retrieved October 19, 2021.
The small frame house, c. 1860, was moved or demolished before November 2018. The candy store, in business in West Dundee since 1998, reopened in another location “around the corner” by March 2017. see – https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/elgin-courier-news/ct-ecn-west-dundee-around-corner-candy-moved-st-0312-20170310-story.html – retrieved July 2, 2021,
In the early 1950’s, Alfred, Jr. (Mitch) and Norma Mitchell opened a small grocery store on the corner of Raynor and Curtis Avenues. In 1957, it was expanded to the present location adjacent to the original building. A short time later, Harley Mitchell joined his brother.
Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the U.S. (1981-1989), is the only U.S. president who was born, grew up and received his education in the state of Illinois. Reagan was a Eureka College graduate, class of 1932.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Who practiced law from 1851 to 1859
Before the Supreme Court of Illinois
At its sessions then held in the old
La Salle County Court House on this site
Erected by the
Illini Chapter
Daughters of the American Revolution
1922
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Street Photography: TRAINS. (37 Photos & Videos).
FEATURE image: Metra Locomotive 129. Westbound, Union Pacific West Line. Author’s photograph, May 2018. More details on this train in post below.
Video of same run of Metra Locomotive 185 (above), westbound BSNF Railway Line, August 2022.
The Brown Line (also known as the Ravenswood Line) is part of the Chicago “El” or “L” rapid transit system. The Chicago public transportation train system offers a total of 8 color-named lines (Yellow, Red, Blue, Pink, Orange, Green, Purple, and Brown). All the lines begin in the downtown “Loop” and branch out from there in different directions throughout the city (except, of course, east into Lake Michigan).
The popular Brown Line travels over 11 miles from downtown Chicago to the north and west to the “Kimball” station in Chicago’s Albany Park. There are 27 stations on the Brown Line and the train runs entirely above ground. The Brown Line first opened in 1907.
https://www.transitchicago.com/visitors/ – retrieved June 30, 2021.
https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/ctamap_Lsystem.png – retrieved June 30, 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Line_(CTA) – retrieved June 30, 2021.
Locomotive METX 183, EMD F40PH-2 was originally built for Metra by General Motors in September 1989 at their Electro-Motive Division (EMD) plant (now closed) in LaGrange, Illinois. see – http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/Locopicture.aspx?id=2727 – retrieved July 1, 2021.
Video of same run of Locomotive 183 (above). BSNF Rail Line, westbound. June 9, 2023.
Locomotive 194 was the first Metra locomotive after 2015 to be completely rebuilt and repainted just outside Patterson, Georgia at the Progress Rail plant. The first F40(PHM) rebuilt “like new” engines were returned to Metra service in September 2016.
The F40PHM locomotives were originally built for Metra by General Motors in 1991 at their Electro-Motive Division plant (now closed) in LaGrange, Illinois.
This locomotive features a short nose and sloped cab improving engineer safety in the event of a crash. These rebuilt locomotives are essentially a brand-new locomotive in their original 1991 frame.
The paint scheme for the F40 was developed by a Metra engineer for earlier rebuilds of Metra F59PH and MP36PH locomotives with slight variations.
These rebuilds offer internal systems that are an improvement over the original—this includes better emissions. Locomotive 194 and the 40 other F40PH-2 and F40PHM-2 locomotives that were under contract to be rebuilt for Metra in 2015 are expected to be in service until around 2030.
The total cost for these 41 rebuilt locomotives was $91 million—that is, about $2.2 million for each locomotive. That is contrasted to the cost of a brand new locomotive (about $7 million each). These F40 rebuilds, which serve mainly on the BSNF line, are familiarly called “Winnebagos” for their sleek style reminiscent of the recreational vehicles of that well-known manufacturer.
https://metrarail.com/about-metra/newsroom/the-signal/welcome-home-locomotive-194 – retrieved June 24, 2021.
Metra Train 129 was built in November 1979.
Engine 5071, GE C30-7, was built in July 1980. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/Locopicture.aspx?id=63833
Retired trainman for Union Pacific Railroad.
http://rrpicturearchives.net/Locopicture.aspx?id=234122
Metra Train 188 was built December 1991.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoPicture.aspx?id=2101
Video of same run of Metra Locomotive194, westbound BSNF Railway Line, August 2022.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/Locopicture.aspx?id=40138
Metra 417 was built in October 2003. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/Locopicture.aspx?id=10585
