Midwest Guest

More Tiffany treasures inside Wade Chapel at Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery

We loved the beautiful Tiffany-designed interior we saw at the Wade Chapel at Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery, and I thought I would share a few more photos from our visit today.

Tiffany's Favrile process gives his stained glass window an especially opalescent and iridescent quality and a more pastel and varied palette of colors that the usual primary palette of other stained glass windows.

The complex mosaic patterns in the floor thought to represent the sea.

The chapel's Moorish-influenced lamps, carved from a single piece of alabaster, were among the first electric lights in Cleveland.

The Jeptha Wade Memorial Chapel booklet issued by the Lake View Cemetery Association has a wealth of information about the architectural and design details of this beautiful chapel. I purchased my booklet at the gift shop in the cemetery's Garfield Monument building, which is open April 1 through mid-November.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Wade Chapel houses Tiffany treasure at Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery

We weren't entirely sure what to expect when Roger from Ohio's Tourism Division urged us to visit Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery because of our interest in history, architecture, and photography, but we took his advice and spent the better part of a day exploring this fascinating cemetery.

The 285-acre cemetery, established in 1869, gave planners plenty of space to execute their vision of a garden to rival the grand Victorian gardens in England and France.

Lake View Cemetery may be best known as the final resting place of U.S. President James A. Garfield (you can expect to see more stories here about Lake View's massive Garfield Monument and other interesting sites in the cemetery), but we didn't go to Lake View expecting to see one of the nation's best examples of the work of famed stained glass artisan Louis Comfort Tiffany.

The cemetery's Wade Chapel is one of Cleveland's most treasured architectural gems. The chapel's Tiffany-designed interior, which is one of few intact Tiffany interiors in existence, earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

The exterior's simple and classic Greek- and Roman-inspired lines don't really prepare visitors for the little chapel's intricate Art Nouveau interior, highlighted by Tiffany mosaics and a spectacular stained glass window depicting themes of spiritual fulfillment, resurrection and immortality.

You can tour the chapel's interior and meet with a docent to learn about the chapel's construction, history, and artwork between April 1 and mid-November.

Jeptha Homer Wade (1811-1890), a business man best known as one of the founders of Western Union Telegraph Company, was the first president of Lake View Cemetery's board of trustees. Wade died in 1890, and his grandson, Jeptha H. Wade II, Wade asked architect Dominick Benes to design Wade Chapel to honor the elder Wade.

The chapel, completed in 1901, was the first well-known Cleveland landmark designed by Benes, and his architectural partner Benjamin S. Hubbell. Benes and Hubbell designed several other important Cleveland buildings, including the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1916.

Two massive bronze doors open to admit visitors into the chapel's Tiffany-designed interior. The 7' x 9' Tiffany stained glass window depicting the soul's ascendance from earth to heaven stands at the front of the chapel, and the chapel is flanked by two gold-and-glass, 8'x32' mosaic walls designed by Frederick Wilson that depict the Prophecy and law of the Old Testament (east wall) and the fulfillment of those laws through the birth of Christianity and the New Testament (west wall).

The window takes on an especially ethereal quality due to Tiffany's Favrile process, where exposure of glass to chemicals and fumes of molten metal during processing gave the glass its unique opalescence and iridescence. Only Tiffany himself and a few trusted artisans knew the exact formulation of elements in the Favrile process, and that knowledge died with them.

Tiffany personally selected this window as one of 100 pieces he displayed at the World Exposition in Paris in 1900, earning a gold medal from the expo for his work.

The Wade Chapel docent tours last about a half-hour, and our docent was quite good about explaining the symbolism of each artistic element of the chapel's glasswork, architecture, and fixtures. I was also able to pick up an informative booklet about the chapel at a small gift store in the Garfield Memorial building, which is also open April 1 through mid-November.

Come back later this week for a closer look at some of the details of Wade Chapel's Tiffany-designed interior.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Cleveland

Happy Holidays!

I love checking out holiday lighting displays, and the Big, Bright Light Show in Rochester, Michigan, is one of the biggest and brightest displays around town!

Big Bright is one of the brightest spots in metro Detroit these days with over a million twinkling LED lights blanketing Rochester's Main Street and as part of several animated displays.  

Regular readers of Midwest Guest may remember my Photo Friday feature on the Big, Bright Light Show earlier this month, but I believe it is definitely worth visiting more than once during the season!

I've been playing a bit with my own early holiday present, a Flip video cam, and, as promised, took a bit of footage in Rochester the other night. I thought I'd share a couple of my very early results here.

This show draws streams of traffic through town. Listen closely to this clip and you'll hear a talking traffic signal admonishing pedestrians to "wait...wait"!

One of my favorite displays is an animated show of about 70 giant lighted snowflakes dancing across the face of a former knitting mill building. The clip below hardly does the display justice, but I thought it was fun to see the synchronized patterns formed by the flakes in this display.

I've obviously got a bit to learn about video, but taking a bit of footage, setting myself up with a YouTube account, and learning to do simple trims of my footage seemed like good first steps.

Anyone have some good resources or suggestions for those of us just beginning to play with video and use it in their blogs?

Here's hoping that everyone has a beautiful and bright holiday season, and that the New Year brings better days ahead for all of us!

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Cleveland home to Father Christmas Tree

Celebrating Christmas in a cemetery may sound a bit strange, but the beautiful Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, hosts a special gravesite tree-trimming each year to commemorate the life of a man many know for popularizing decorated and lighted Christmas trees in the United States.

I spotted this little evergreen standing guard by a marker for H.C. Schwan when we visited Lake View Cemetery earlier this year.

The graveside tree is a nod to Rev. Heinrich Christian Schwan as "father of the American Christmas tree", although the serene setting belies the turbulent times Pastor Schwan experienced as he first introduced the beloved tradition of a beautifully decorated Christmas tree from his childhood in Germany to the largely German congregation at Cleveland's Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1851.

Christmas trees as a regular symbol and tradition of the holiday date back to 16th century Germany, and most of the earliest instances of Christmas trees in North American seem to happen in areas home to concentrations of German immigrants.

It comes as no surprise then that the young minister from Hanover, Germany, wanted to share his traditional tree with his congregation during his first year celebrating the holiday in the United States.

Rev. Schwan brought a freshly cut tree in from the forests surrounding Cleveland and, with the help of his wife Emma, decorated it with cookies, colored ribbons, nuts, and candles. A beautiful silver star tree topper the minister treasured from his childhood provided the finishing touch for that first Christmas tree.

Most of his congregation enjoyed seeing the tree and the happy nostalgia it evoked from past holidays spent in their German homeland.

Many Cleveland residents and the local press were not so charmed.

Newspapers described the church's Christmas tree as a "nonsensical, asinine, moronic absurdity" and scathingly characterized the congregation as "these Lutherans...worshipping a tree...groveling before a shrub", while urging Cleveland residents to shun those engaging in "such heathenish, idolatrous practices" and refuse to patronize businesses owned by the German congregants.

Rev. Schwan kept his tree up for a little while, but eventually took it down and threw his tree topper into the trash.

Emma Schwan found the silver star, rescued it, and encouraged her husband to continue the Christmas tree tradition.

The minister researched the history of the Christmas tree and found much to support it as a Christian custom to express the joy of Christ's birth in many countries. So, he actively educated people about the tradition and displayed a Christmas tree his church the next year.

Rev. Schwan was not first to display a Christmas tree in the United States, but most acknowledge him as the first to have a decorated and lit tree in a church. His efforts to popularize the tradition apparently paid off, because the practice displaying decorated Christmas trees spread nationwide over the next few years, even appearing at the White House when President Franklin Pierce displayed the first Christmas tree there in 1856.

Rev. Schwan remained at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church as pastor until 1881. He also served as President of the church's Missouri Synod from 1878 until 1899, and he wrote religious texts that appeared in Lutheran catechism books for many years.

Rev. Schwan died in 1905, but the tradition of displaying Christmas trees lives on in the United States-a tradition I love carrying on in my own home each Christmas season.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Photo Friday: Chicago's Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows

The Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows on Chicago's Navy Pier was an unexpected discovery, found as we sought air-conditioned relief on an especially hot and humid summer day.

I think our accidental discoveries often turn out to be among our most memorable travel memories, and discovering this treasure trove of artifacts from Chicago's storied architectural history certainly ranks among the most memorable moments of our trip to Navy Pier.

I'm sharing a few visual details of our visit to this glorious glass museum today.

Want to learn more about our visit to the museum and the important role stained glass played in Chicago's culture and history from the city's rebuilding after a devastating fire in 1871 through the present day? Check out yesterday's story about the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Chicago's Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows

We weren't expecting to discover a colorful chapter of Chicago's architectural history when we ducked into an air-conditioned building along Navy Pier to cool off on a hot summer day, but we immediately knew we'd stumbled into a real gem when we entered a darkened hallway illuminated by a beautiful collection of stained glass windows.

Many know Chicago for its rich and fascinating architectural history, something we learned a bit about during an architectural boat cruise we took through the Chicago Architecture Foundation during our most recent visit to the city.

But we had no idea that the city was home to the only museum in the country dedicated exclusively to stained glass windows, and we didn't know about the important role that these beautiful windows played in the city's culture and history until we accidentally discovered the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows at Navy Pier.

The museum houses a permanent display of 150 stained glass windows along an 800-foot-long series of galleries in Navy Pier's Festival Hall. The windows, collected by Maureen and Edward Byron Smith Jr. and their family since the 1970s, offer a unique window into Chicago history and culture from the 1870s until the present time.

Chicago experienced an unprecedented surge of growth and new construction with the dawn of the 1870s, fueled largely by the need for the city to rebuild a devastating fire in 1871. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution further spurred growth and wealth in Chicago.

The city's voracious appetite for new construction, along with the wealth of industrialists and others able to fund building featuring opulent features like stained glass windows, attracted many of Europe's finest stained glass artisans to work in the city.

More than half of the museum's stunning windows originally graced homes, houses of worship, and businesses in Chicago.

Religious windows often reflected ethnic influences of Chicago's European immigrant populations, while secular windows served more as a showcase for the city's evolving decorative styles. Many of the earlier stained glass installations bore heavy influences of European styles and tastes, while later windows reflected the city's own influence as styles like Art Nouveau and the Chicago Prairie School associated with architect like Frank Lloyd Wright grew in importance.

The museum follows the evolution of Chicago's stained glass styles with galleries divided into sections for Victorian, Prairie, Modern and Contemporary styles. Chicago remains a center of world-class stained glass creation and restoration even today, but the Smith family's foresight in saving the windows during the late 1900s (when stained glass became less popular and many such windows risked being discarded or destroyed) means that visitors can continue to enjoy the stories represented by them.

I particularly loved the dreamy Tiffany Landscape windows and the large window featuring famous women "presented by Massachusetts for the Womans Building of the Worlds Fair at Chicago" in 1893.

The museum, like Navy Pier, is open year round, and admission is free.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Chicago

Midwest shop 'til you drop

I can't believe how quickly the holidays are approaching!

Here, just in time for some last minute shopping, are some suggestions for those special people on your gift list from some of my past stories about Midwest businesses.

 

• I love wind chimes, and The Wind Chime Shop is a must-see whenever I visit southern Ohio's Hocking Hills area. The selection of chimes is astounding, and I always end up with at least a few sets as gifts and for myself when I stop in the store. Check out the store's Web site, and look for my favorite Gentle Spirits chimes!

 

• Love cheese? Then you'll love Cheese Haven near Port Clinton, Ohio. We like stopping by on our way home from Cleveland, or when we drive on out to the Marblehead lighthouse and picking up some of the store's cheddar cheese spread (check out No. 6 on Cheese Shop list at the Web site).





 

• I'm ready to place my order for cherry goodies from Cherry Republic! The company in Glen Arbor, Michigan, offers dried cherries, cherry jellies and jams, cherry salsa, cherry barbecue sauces, chocolate covered cherries, gummy cherry Sour Patch candies (my favorite), and almost any other product that incorporates one of Michigan's signature crops.

 

• Zingerman's family of businesses is another Michigan foodie delight-a family of companies dedicated to sharing the best in regional fare and fun food finds at their Ann Arbor deli, Roadhouse restaurant, through local outlets like Detroit's Eastern Market, and their mail order catalog. Our favorites include pimento cheese and their dense, rich coffeecakes (the coffeecakes freeze well if you can't eat them all at once).

 

• You can order a canoe from the Piragis Boundary Waters Catalog (we did), but you can also order a lot of other gifts from this Ely, Minnesota, outfitter. You can find plenty of outdoor gear, as well as gifts like jewelry, posters, photographic prints, and other hand-crafted items from northwoods artisans.

 

• For some curious reason, my story about our visit to Sechler's Factory Pickle Store in Fremont, Indiana, is one of my most popular posts. We occasionally find Sechler's Pickles in grocery stores in the Detroit area, but you can view a bigger variety of pickled products and gift packs at the Sechler's Web site. You'll have to call or fax in your order, but you can pick up a free pickle recipe book in PDF format before you log off to place your order.





 

• Looking for a funny gift and can't make it all the way up to Ishpeming, Michigan? Check out Da Yoopers' online store for beer...um...accessories, Upper Peninsula souvenirs, John Wayne lunchboxes, Elvis shopping bags, and the full catalog of Da Yoopers music and DVDs. Check the Rock Knockers section of the site to shop for the rock hound on your list.

 

• Visiting Bronner's near Frankenmuth, Michigan, is definitely worth the experience, but if you're short on time and still need that one special ornament for your tree or as a gift, you can always check out the huge Christmas store's online catalog.

 

There are a few of our favorite places for gifts from the Midwest. Do you know of others I should check out?

Join Passports with Purpose in planting seeds for success

Travel bloggers working together through this year's Passports with Purpose fund raising drive quickly reached their goal of raising $13,000 to build a school in rural Cambodia.

Passports with Purpose is working with American Assistance for Cambodia (AAfC), the organization founded by American journalist Bernie Krisher in 1993 and responsible for the construction of more than 400 primary and secondary schools in rural Cambodia.

That's all well and good, but what school is complete without a school nurse? Plus, how does a child without access to plentiful clean water and nutritious food concentrate on their studies?

With a week left in the Passports with Purpose fund raising session left, and plenty of great prizes to bid on, let's plant the seeds for serious success at our school by raising an additional $13,000 to provide a school nurse, a garden and gardener, a cook, and a water filter.

Check out Passports with Purpose's progress toward the fundraising goal by checking out the widget on the right-hand side of my blog.

Better yet, go to the Passports with Purpose site, select the prizes you'd love to win and help give the gift of a brighter future to children whose prospects are dim without the resources to become educated and build better lives for themselves.

For each ten dollar donation you make between now and December 21, Passports with Purpose enters you into the raffle for your prize of choice. Note as you bid for prizes that shipping restrictions, terms, and blackout dates might apply in some cases.

One hundred percent of the donations go directly to AAfC, a 501 (c)(3) charity.

Passports with Purpose will announce the prize winners on January 5, 2010.

© Dominique King 2009 All right reserved

Photo Friday: Michigan's Point Betsie lighthouse in winter

Point Betsie lighthouse, and this remote stretch of Lake Michigan beach near Frankfort in Michigan, is one of my favorite places in any season.

Winter brings an especially stark and crystalline beauty to the snow-kissed beach, accenting the crisp contrast between the red-roofed white lighthouse and, on this day last February, a brilliant blue sky.

Point Betsie lighthouse celebrated its 150th anniversary last year, and the ambitious renovation I wrote about then continues at the lighthouse this year. Exterior work at the main lighthouse building and the fog signal building is largely complete, while rehabilitation of the lighthouse's interior continues with a projected 2010 completion date.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique 2009 All right reserved

My three best Detroit-area travel secrets

The Detroit area may be one of the best-kept travel secrets around.

Sure, Detroit may be facing some challenges these days, but the spirit and perseverance of metro Detroiters is still strong-and I can't count the number of times I met or read about Detroit visitors who say how warm and welcoming metro Detroiters are to those who visit our hometown.

So, when I received an invitation to join travel bloggers and share my three best travel secrets, I immediately knew I had to share some of my favorite Detroit-area destinations!

Most people seem to think of automobiles when they think of Detroit, and while the automotive industry may drive much of Detroit's fortunes and misfortunes, I'd contend that music really represents the heartbeat of Detroit.

Growing up in the Detroit area meant that I grew up hearing music from an amazing array of Motown talent. It's easy to take that musical heritage for granted when it was essentially the soundtrack for your early life, but Motown's 50th anniversary celebration this year gave me a new appreciation for the music and the people responsible for making it.

Detroit's Motown Museum is in the modest blue-and-white house that served as Motown's original home and today draws avid Motown fans from around the world, although few Detroiters or other visitors seem to make the trip. Motown's story is one of pride and empowerment, and it holds a unique place in the city's music, culture and politics of the volatile 1960s. The museum tour is well worth taking, if only to see the fabled Studio A and be amazed at how many big sounds came from such tiny quarters.

The Detroit suburb of Dearborn is home of one of the largest Arabic populations in the nation, so it makes sense that it is home to the Arab American National Museum (AANM). The museum looks rather nondescript from the outside, except for a bright blue tile facade over the front door, but visitors will find a sun-filled interior centered by a spectacularly domed, three-story atrium. Ornate woodwork and intricate tile mosaics lining the walls give visitors a sense that they are visiting an exotic location, while the thoughtful displays tell the story of Arab American history, culture, and contributions to society.

The AANM also plays a large part in sponsoring one of our favorite events every year, Detroit's multi-day world music and diversity festival, the Concert of Colors. Festival highlights the last couple of years for us came when Detroit's own, musician and super producer Don Was, orchestrated Super Sessions highlighting an eclectic bill of new and vintage Detroit talent.

The third secret I'll share with you is Woodward Avenue. I drive a portion of this road nearly every single day, but maybe the recent designation of Woodward Avenue as one of a select group of 31 routes qualifying as All-American Roads through the National Scenic Byways program will give me a greater appreciation for this gem in my own neighborhood.

Woodward isn't scenic in the classic sense, but it has its own urban beauty and holds a unique place in the country's automotive history. Self-guided tours of the road available through the America's Byways Web site allow visitors to easily locate Woodward landmarks like the location of the world's first four-way, tri-color traffic light, Henry Ford's innovative assembly-line factory that spurred Detroit's growth by drawing workers in the early 1900s to take then-generous five-dollar-a-day-jobs, and the mile of road that was the world's first mile of concrete roadway.

Woodlawn Cemetery is also another interesting stop along Woodward. It is the final resting place of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks and many well known early auto makers, as well as home to a unique tribute to Michael Jackson.

Classic car buffs may know Woodward best as the site of the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise, a celebration of vintage vehicles that draws more than a million people each August.

So, come to Detroit! There are plenty more great Detroit-area "secrets" where these came from, many which you'll read about here at Midwest Guest.

Meanwhile, I'm tagging five more members of our travel blogging community to see what secrets they may be willing to share with readers!

TheWordWire.com

A closer look at flyover land

Wandering Educators

The Vacation Gals

Perceptive Travel

Things To Do
Detroit