Garfield Park Conservatory Thanks to its location in the less-than-media-friendly West Side, Garfield Park Conservatory was always one of Chicago’s underused gems. But all that changed this year with the blockbuster Dale Chihuly glass-sculpture exhibit. It’s worth returning after Chihuly’s gone, especially in the winter, when its warm, vegetated character on a subzero February day is conducive to tropical fantasies. Garfield Park Conservatory, opened in 1907 as a “work of landscape art under glass” by its creator Jens Jensen, is nothing less than a horticultural marvel, where 300,000 plants are grown annually.
The Mass Menagerie: How Suburban TV Pioneers Bruce and Claire Newton Connected and Collected the Ephemera of Al Capone, Garfield… The Newtons were extreme collectors. During the early 1980s, I visited their four-story, eighteen-room house in Aurora filled with antiques. A secret bookshelf door in the basement opened to a modest-sized workshop where dozens of marionettes and puppets were created, including Nautilus the Sea Dragon and Polly the Parrot, the latter of which was used for political campaigns of that…
Hoosier Savior?: A Pilgrimage to a Sort-of Christian Theme Park in Indiana The Shrine of Christ’s Passion is a multimedia, interactive, half-mile-long prayer trail and sculpture garden. It depicts the route Jesus Christ took to Mount Calvary, just outside the walls of Jerusalem, before He was crucified. The attraction is located in St. John, Indiana.
