Chicago Community Area #9 - Edison Park

Living in Edison Park is almost like living in the burbs. Very cozy and residential. Plenty of small shops and boutiques. I've always liked medium size grocery stores, not the megastores like Jewel and Dominicks. Happy Foods is one of my favorites. It always seems so retro and... happy. :)

I visited the Charles Turzak house, architected by Bruce Goff and built in 1938-39 at 7059 N. Olcott. This Chicago landmark was built as the home and studio of artist Charles Turzak. You can read more about him here and here. Although by today's standards, the Turzak doesn't seem unusual or breathtaking, Goff's design was ahead of his time. It incorporated many features which didn't appear commonly until 15 years later, such as a carport, corner picture windows and overhanging balconies. (Sorry for the bad photo. It was a hard day to capture this house.)

Chicago Community Area #10 - Norwood Park

I ventured out to the far northwest corner of the city yesterday and visited the Norwood Park neighborhood. Since old homes are one of my favorite sites to see, I stopped at a Chicago Landmark home on the western edge of the city. The John Wingert house, built in 1865 with an addition added in 1871, is located at 6231 N. Canfield.

Wingert was an immigrant who sought refuge from religious persecution in Germany and, along with other settlers, created a settlement on the prairie which they called Canfield. This house is one of the few surviving farmhouses within the Chicago city limits. The northern half (to the left in the photo) was the original structure. The two-story Italianate section of the house is a later addition.

Community Area #27 - East Garfield Park

East Garfield Park is a west side neighborhood, located about 4 miles directly west of the Loop. It's home to two beautiful landmarks: Garfield Park Conservatory and Garfield Park.

The conservatory was built in 1908 and was designed by famous landscape architect Jens Jensen in conjunction with the engineering firm Hitchings and Company.

Garfield Park Conservatory has 6 major rooms:
The Palm House - which includes a double coconut palm and a chocolate tree
Sugar from the Sun - with banana, orange and pineapple trees
The Children's Garden - my kids love the slide
The Desert House
The Aroid House
The Show House
The Fern House - in the middle of them all

Over on the east side of the building, there's a wing with meeting rooms. The long hall that leads to the meeting rooms is the Horticulture Hall and has a beautiful fountain in it. The intricate and complex detail on the fountain is fascinating.

South of the conservatory is Garfield Park, one of the three major parks on the west side - the other two being Humboldt Park and Douglas Park. The Garfield Park Fieldhouse was constructed in 1928. Designed by Michaelsen and Rognstad, it originally served as the administrative headquarters of the West Parks Commission. When the 22 independent parks commissions merged in 1934 to form the Chicago Park District, the building was converted to the park fieldhouse.


A large lagoon sits behind (to the west) of the fieldhouse. Two beautiful sculptures are along the southern path of the lagoon. One is Lincoln the Railsplitter. It was created by Charles J. Mulligan, a student of Lorado Taft and former head of the Sculpture Department at the Art Institute. Unlike other statues of Lincoln which portray him as a long-frocked statesman, this statue represents him as a workingman and a pioneer.

The other is a sculpture of the poet Robert Burns.

Community Area #25 - Austin

Austin is a community area on the far west side of Chicago. Unfortunately, it has more than its share of crime and poverty, both of which were evident on my ride through the area yesterday. Despite all that, I saw some really nice things in Austin.

The anchor of the southern portion of Austin is Columbus Park, named for Christopher Columbus and designed by the famous landscape architect Jens Jensen in 1916. On my visit, I was to meet my friends at the Columbus Park fieldhouse. I got there early and was waiting for my friends to arrive when some youngsters started throwing rocks at me. I decided I was a pretty easy target and figured I'd better leave. I'm glad I did. It gave me a chance to explore the park, find the ballfield and the golf course, ride around the lagoon a few times and snap a couple photos of a family of Canadian geese out for a swim.

After having been through Humboldt Park and Garfield Park several times, including earlier that same day, it's easy to see why Columbus Park was Jensen's favorite. The curving paths make you constantly feel like you're in an isolated part of the park. The rest of the park is always around the next turn.

Outside of Columbus park, my group went for a ride around Austin and saw some nice residential architecture representing almost all of the typical Chicago styles. The northern areas of Austin, known as Galewood and Montclare, were better maintained than the rest of Austin.

The nicest thing we saw was the M&M Mars candy factory where they make Snickers bars, among other delicacies. This block of Oak Park Ave has an honorary street name: Milky Way. The building is awesome and the smell of the chocolate was in the air, even on a Sunday afternoon. We had thought that the plant was closed down, but there's no denying that there was some chocolate cooking yesterday.

Neil Steinberg on Abortion

Neil Steinberg wrote a piece in today's Sun-Times entitled "What's behind anti-abortion frenzy?". He raised some interesting questions for the anti-abortion crowd, and I'm going to respond to them from my personal point of view.

First, Steinberg thinks that those who believe abortion is wrong under all circumstances are "only willing to play a game where you are guaranteed to win at the end". I think that criticism is a bit short-sighted. I think those who belive that deserve a place at the discussion table just as much as anyone else. If there were those who believe that abortion should be allowed in all circumstances, even late-term abortions, I would want to hear their side of it as well.

Steinberg boldly says "Abortion isn't murder - well, not until the last stage of pregnancy, when it is." He doesn't support this opinion with any reasoning. Neil, I'm surprised. At what point does abortion become murder? At exactly how many weeks? If you tell me some number of weeks, I would ask for the reason why you chose that number. I would also ask what you would do in a case where we often don't know precisedly when conception took place. In such a case, I suppose we would have to err on the strict side and assume that conception took place at the earliest likely time and assume that the pregnancy is as far advanced as is reasonable in order not to be committing murder.

I come to this discussion with no compressed rage, anger, intensity or frenzy that Neil has apparently met with some other pro-lifers. However, he says he would understand those feelings if we felt them about other issues, such as:
Human Rights Watch - yep, I support that vehemently.
Opposing capital punishment - Amen!
Vigorous battling of AIDS in Africa - you bet. I support that effort as much as I can.
Anti-handgun - let's get rid of as many as we possibly can.
Anti-war - mhmm. Despite the objections of most of my friends, I'm an avowed pacifist.
In favor of contraception - yessir, teach them the right way to prevent the problem in the first place.

So, Neil, you need to revise your assumptions on who pro-lifers are and what they think on other issues.

Chicago Community Area #17 - Dunning

Yesterday, I rode out west on Addison to the far west neighborhood of Dunning. The remote area was originally home to a poor farm, tuberculois sanitarium and an insane asylum. None of those facilities is in operation today. At the corner of Addison and Oak Park, the Okocim Bar & Grill has a rather interesting sign (with very unique punctuation) painted on the side of the building.

Turning south on Oak Park, I came to a sub-neighborhood called Schorsch Village. The small enclave was named for an area real estate developer and consists primarly of well-kept, Tudor-style homes from the 1930s and 40s.

Chicago Community Area #12 - Forest Glen

Forest Glen is a far northwest side neighborhood and one of the only neighborhoods where there are many angled streets, i.e. streets that don't run straight north-south or east-west. Part of the reason for that, I believe, is because the old Indian boundary line ran diagonally from northeast to southwest through this area and much of the land was divided along that line. Rogers Avenue runs directly along the Indian boundary line.

The Indian boundary line was established by the treaty of 1816 in which the Europeans were guaranteed safe passage along the Chicago River and were allowed to settle anywhere 10 miles north and south of the river. The 10 mile north spot is in Rogers Park where Rogers Ave meets the lake. it then runs diagonally through the northwest side of the city.

An elm tree once stood along the Indian boundary line that people would use as a guidepost. Today, there is a commemorative marker at the 5-way intersection of Rogers, Kilbourn, and Caldwell in Forest Glen. It reads:

OLD TREATY ELM

The tree which stood here until 1933 marked the northern boundary of the Fort Dearborn Reservation, the trail to Lake Geneva, the center of Billy Caldwell's (Chief Sauganash) reservation, and the site of the Indian treaty of 1835.

For more information about the Indian Boundary Line, see the Forgotten Chicago web page.

Forest Glen has many large and beautiful homes. One that I thought was particularly unique was at the corner of Forest Glen Ave and Latham Ave. It has sign in front of it welcoming you to the community of Forest Glen and the sunken backyard has a windmill and other kitschy decorations.