“Lorient during the Industrial Revolution” by S.M. O’Connor

The city’s fortunes continued to rise under the so-called July Monarchy, when King Charles X of the House of Bourbon lost power in a revolution and his cousin Louis-Philip, Duke of Orleans, of the House of Orleans, a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon, proclaimed himself King of the French (rather than King of France and Navarre) with a reign that lasted from 1830 to 1848).[1] In 1833, a bronze sculpture of Lorient sailor Hippolyte-Magloire Bisson by Jacques-Edouard Gatteaux on a plan by architect Pierre-Marie Lussault was unveiled between Saint-Louis Church and the course of the Bôve. Bisson had died in 1827 when he scuttled the vessel he served aboard, The Panavoti, when it was attacked by pirates off the Greek island of Stampalia. The sculpture stands atop a column with bas-reliefs. Today, this sculpture stands near the Bisson School.

In 1839, barracks opened. In the second half of the 19^th Century, under the Second Republic of France, the Second French Empire, and the Third Republic of France, Lorient continued to expand and enjoy the fruits of the Industrial Revolution. A gasworks (an industrial plant that produced flammable gas) was built to provide light and heat for the city in 1845.

Julien Auguste Pélage Brizeux (1803-1858) was a famous poet, born in Lorient, who wrote in both French and Breton and shortly after his death Emperor Napoleon III of the Second French Empire (1852-1870) authorized a public subscription to create a monument for him. Finally, in 1888, a marble sculpture by Pierre Ogé was unveiled. It was originally in Cherbourg Square (renamed Brizeux) in New City, but is now in Chevassu Park.

In 1861, the original drydock was enlarged and a second one was built. In 1865, an ironclad ship, the Couronne, was built using the same design Henri Dupuy de Lôme (1816-1885) had made for the Gloire class of steam-propelled warships after the Crimean War (1853-1856), which were broadside ironclad warships with wooden hulls, but the Couronne had an iron hull. That same year, railroad service reached Lorient. In 1872-73, the Arsenal de Lorient built the world’s first steel warship, the Redoutable, which was a central battery and barbette ship. She was a forerunner of the pre-dreadnaught battleships. Launched in 1876, she was commissioned into the French Navy in 1878.

From 1870 to 1940, St.-Tudy, the largest community on the lightly-populated island of Groix, was one of the biggest tuna fishing ports in the Third Republic of France.[2] Such was the reputation of sea captains from Groix that France’s first fishing school was founded on the island in 1895.[3] Lorient gained a fish market in 1889 and steam-propelled fishing trawlers around 1900.

END NOTES

[1] Many European states had revolutions or upheavals in 1848, not just France.

[2] Philippe Barbour, Brittany. Updated by Robert Harneis. London: Cadogan Guides (1998, 2000, 2005), p. 350

[3] Barbour, p. 350

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.