Chicago memories: from library to cultural center

The central public library in downtown Chicago was intimidating to my 15-year-old eyes when I first saw it: huge rooms, echoes of footsteps on winding stairways, long wooden tables, hushed voices, and something called a card catalog. The latter probably evokes pity in anyone coming of age of the Google era.  What was a card catalog? We needed it when we did a term paper: find your topic, find the wooden drawer with the relevant letter of the alphabet, thumb through the index cards, and then track down a title of two. No relevant cards? Well, then, best to change my topic. I remember requesting a periodical by writing it's name and date on a small slip of paper and giving it to a librarian. As for architectural grandeur--Did decades of grime cover the beauty of this 19th century building or was I just oblivious?

I used to go to the library some Saturday mornings in the early 60s after my family moved back to Chicago from Hammond, Indiana. I took the bus from our Northwest Side neighborhood, transferring to the elevated train at Addison. Twenty minutes later I'd be at Michigan and Randolph, trudging up the stairs to one of the upper floors.  Today, so many years after high school, I don't remember any of the topics I researched, and I have no samples of my high school writings.  I do remember being groped by a boy one day, and after that, I didn't go very much anymore.

Then I graduated from high school and went to college. Not needing the city library, I relied instead on the basement library at Mundelein College, the women's college where I spent the next four years. I didn't think of the central library much until the early 70s when I learned that a group of Chicago's well-heeled and civic-minded citizens had organized to restore this 19th century architectural masterpiece to its former beauty and to turn it into a cultural center for the city. The Chicago Cultural Center opened in 1977, and since then it's become a larger part of my Chicago experience than the library ever was.

Reminders of the building's past are enshrined forever, though, and I seem to notice a different one each time I visit. There are some beautiful photos at Wikimedia online. Click here for more. I took these last week when I was in Chicago. Evidence of the center's past life as a library remain.

Stained glass remains one of my favorite features of this magnificent 4-story structure, an art form that always conveys reverence to me, no doubt from long association with churches. Long may it last, a reminder that the best of our cultural legacies deserve just that.

The central public library was not the only inhabitant back in 1892 when the building was designed. The land was donated by the post-Civil War Grand Army of the Republic, which has an interesting history--one I just learned from Wikipedia. (How, oh how, did I ever write school reports without Wikipedia?) The GAR used it as a meeting hall in those days. Today you can see the names of major Civil War battles engraved above the doorways, and here is one of them. Like the stained glass domes, this doorway and others like it remind us that to walk through a door is....Something.

A major tourist attraction, The Chicago Cultural Center is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The beautiful stained glass, marble and tile work designed by the 19th century architects are carefully maintained. It's the place to go for concerts, art exhibits, information on all sorts of happenings in town. I make sure to go every year when I visit Chicago, an easy stop on my itinerary, as my sister and brother-in-law live just a few blocks away. On the day I visited, there was a noontime classical concert. Impatient to be outside on that morning, I sat on a marble bench on the first floor and listened to part of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Selections from Suite for Keyboard in E Minor.

There was a quilting exhibit in the 4th floor gallery, which I also visited. Quilts, all by African-American artists, were on loan from a branch library. The styles were distinctly different from quilts I've seen elsewhere.

Here's an example of Marie "Big Mama" Roseman's work, discovered in the 1980s in an antique shop. Curator's notes say that the landscapes we see in a "delightfully idiosyncratic" pattern are very different from the geometric or abstract patterns we're used to seeing.

Arbie Williams (b. in 1916 in Texas) did Overalls in 1991. It's a "Britches" quilt, made from worn-out pants.

I left the Cultural Center, strolled down Michigan Avenue on that beautiful late summer day, and thought about libraries. Chicago has had a new central library since 1991 when the 10-story Harold Washington Library, named after the former mayor who fought for it, opened on South State Street. Like the urban library I enjoy in Denver, it is as much community center as reference archive. It's a multimedia center, offering author readings, computer and other classes, story hours, literary services, and resources for the differently abled--among other things. No doubt there's someone to talk to for patrons who are groped or have another bad experience there. I had left Chicago by the time the
library opened, but I visited once and was impressed. No stained glass, but it has a way with light in a postmodern setting. This is the Winter Garden on the 9th floor. (Photo from Wikipedia)

On days when it seems like so many things have gotten worse since I became an adult half a century ago, I think about the evolution of the public library and how that has grown ever so much better.