The Glory of Regional Silurian Dolostone, Part 36: Risen from the Flames | Episcopal Cathedral of St. James, Chicago, Illinois, USA (1857; partial rebuilding after 1871)
In the city's River North neighborhood, at the intersection of N. Wabash Avenue and E. Huron Street. Facing southeastward.
This portion of the Windy City boasts an impressive collection of Gothic Revival churches whose main exterior building material is rock-faced ashlar of the Silurian-period Lemont-Joliet Dolostone (LJD). It was quarried in the Lower Des Plaines River Valley southwest of the metropolis.
St. James is one of my favorites of these houses of worship, because it shows off this rock type's tendency to weather to ocher and buttery tones. This lovely patina develops as the stone's iron impurities change with exposure to the atmosphere from the ferrous to the ferric state.
As its original completion year indicates, the cathedral had been standing for almost a decade and a half by the time the Great Fire of 1871 swept through many of the city's existing neighborhoods, including River North. And it suffered grievously from the conflagration. Only its belltower and a portion of its nave walls were left standing afterward. But, as part of the great flurry of civic reconstruction that followed, new LJD was added to complete the church's reconstruction.
It's tempting to think that the heavy coating of soot visible today on the tower's railing and finials bears witness to the disaster. But, as I explain in Chicago in Stone and Clay, I've come across a stereograph photo pair that shows the church soon after the fire. On it, the tower top is clearly as pale-toned as the ashlar below it, and utterly grime-free. So the blackness seen today must have accumulated in the years of rampant bituminous-coal burning that followed. This makes sense when one also notes that the building's central chimney, which had to be rebuilt after the blaze, is now similarly sooty.
The LJD here was deposited about 425 Ma ago, in a shallow saltwater sea that covered the Kankakee Arch. That narrow crustal upwarp separated the deeper waters of the developing Michigan and Illinois Basins. At this point in the Paleozoic era, the American Midwest was situated in the subtropics south of the equator.
The other photos and descriptions in this series can be found at Glory of Silurian Dolostone album.
And for even more on this architectural and geologically impressive building, immediately and unhesitatingly get a copy (or two or three) of my book, Chicago in Stone and Clay. Here's the publisher's description: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765063/chicago-i...
The Glory of Regional Silurian Dolostone, Part 36: Risen from the Flames | Episcopal Cathedral of St. James, Chicago, Illinois, USA (1857; partial rebuilding after 1871)
In the city's River North neighborhood, at the intersection of N. Wabash Avenue and E. Huron Street. Facing southeastward.
This portion of the Windy City boasts an impressive collection of Gothic Revival churches whose main exterior building material is rock-faced ashlar of the Silurian-period Lemont-Joliet Dolostone (LJD). It was quarried in the Lower Des Plaines River Valley southwest of the metropolis.
St. James is one of my favorites of these houses of worship, because it shows off this rock type's tendency to weather to ocher and buttery tones. This lovely patina develops as the stone's iron impurities change with exposure to the atmosphere from the ferrous to the ferric state.
As its original completion year indicates, the cathedral had been standing for almost a decade and a half by the time the Great Fire of 1871 swept through many of the city's existing neighborhoods, including River North. And it suffered grievously from the conflagration. Only its belltower and a portion of its nave walls were left standing afterward. But, as part of the great flurry of civic reconstruction that followed, new LJD was added to complete the church's reconstruction.
It's tempting to think that the heavy coating of soot visible today on the tower's railing and finials bears witness to the disaster. But, as I explain in Chicago in Stone and Clay, I've come across a stereograph photo pair that shows the church soon after the fire. On it, the tower top is clearly as pale-toned as the ashlar below it, and utterly grime-free. So the blackness seen today must have accumulated in the years of rampant bituminous-coal burning that followed. This makes sense when one also notes that the building's central chimney, which had to be rebuilt after the blaze, is now similarly sooty.
The LJD here was deposited about 425 Ma ago, in a shallow saltwater sea that covered the Kankakee Arch. That narrow crustal upwarp separated the deeper waters of the developing Michigan and Illinois Basins. At this point in the Paleozoic era, the American Midwest was situated in the subtropics south of the equator.
The other photos and descriptions in this series can be found at Glory of Silurian Dolostone album.
And for even more on this architectural and geologically impressive building, immediately and unhesitatingly get a copy (or two or three) of my book, Chicago in Stone and Clay. Here's the publisher's description: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765063/chicago-i...