The Glory of Regional Silurian Dolostone, Part 37: A Golden Sort of Gothic | Episcopal Cathedral of St. James, Chicago, Illinois, USA (1857; partial rebuilding after 1871)
As with this set's preceding, whole-building photo, we're in the city's River North neighborhood, at the intersection of N. Wabash Avenue and E. Huron Street. Facing southeastward and looking at the facade beneath the belltower.
The Victorian Gothic Revival style and Lemont-Joliet Dolostone (LJD) were made for each other. And nineteenth-century Chicago architects knew that, at least until tastes changed and the LJD fell from favor in the decades after the Great Fire of 1871. Then the more workable but also much blander Salem ("Bedford," "Indiana") Limestone, shipped in from the farther reaches of Hoosierdom, became the predominant building material in town.
However, a goodly number of the Neo-Gothic churches built after the fire, both here and in Milwaukee and other Midwestern locales, are examples of a transitional phase when LJD or some other Regional Silurian Dolostone variety was still used for most of the building's exterior, while the more easily carved and cut Salem did duty as door and window trim, stringcourses, and buttress flaps.
This pairing of one beautiful but idiosyncratic local rock type with an imported one, boring but ever so obliging, proved to be a remarkably effective combination. It offered a subtle contrast more subliminally felt than consciously perceived.
But that contrast is not to be found at St. James, at least not to any significant degree. LJD is here employed both as random-set, rock-faced ashlar and smooth-cut ornamental details. For even though a lot of the stone visible in this image was added after the fire, the rebuilding of the cathedral took place before the use of Salem Limestone really took off.
All this architectural-history square-bashing is one thing; the visceral impact of the seasoned dolostone, with its glowing patina of buttery-yellow, ferric-oxide weathering compounds, is quite another.
Were I to rate the various members of the Regional Silurian Dolostone family, I would not give the LJD, taken from the Sugar Run Formation of the Lower Des Plaines Valley, highest marks for durability. It can shed like a sheepdog in summer. But who cares? It's the loveliest of the lot.
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 37: A Golden Sort of Gothic | Episcopal Cathedral of St. James, Chicago, Illinois, USA (1857; partial rebuilding after 1871)
As with this set's preceding, whole-building photo, we're in the city's River North neighborhood, at the intersection of N. Wabash Avenue and E. Huron Street. Facing southeastward and looking at the facade beneath the belltower.
The Victorian Gothic Revival style and Lemont-Joliet Dolostone (LJD) were made for each other. And nineteenth-century Chicago architects knew that, at least until tastes changed and the LJD fell from favor in the decades after the Great Fire of 1871. Then the more workable but also much blander Salem ("Bedford," "Indiana") Limestone, shipped in from the farther reaches of Hoosierdom, became the predominant building material in town.
However, a goodly number of the Neo-Gothic churches built after the fire, both here and in Milwaukee and other Midwestern locales, are examples of a transitional phase when LJD or some other Regional Silurian Dolostone variety was still used for most of the building's exterior, while the more easily carved and cut Salem did duty as door and window trim, stringcourses, and buttress flaps.
This pairing of one beautiful but idiosyncratic local rock type with an imported one, boring but ever so obliging, proved to be a remarkably effective combination. It offered a subtle contrast more subliminally felt than consciously perceived.
But that contrast is not to be found at St. James, at least not to any significant degree. LJD is here employed both as random-set, rock-faced ashlar and smooth-cut ornamental details. For even though a lot of the stone visible in this image was added after the fire, the rebuilding of the cathedral took place before the use of Salem Limestone really took off.
All this architectural-history square-bashing is one thing; the visceral impact of the seasoned dolostone, with its glowing patina of buttery-yellow, ferric-oxide weathering compounds, is quite another.
Were I to rate the various members of the Regional Silurian Dolostone family, I would not give the LJD, taken from the Sugar Run Formation of the Lower Des Plaines Valley, highest marks for durability. It can shed like a sheepdog in summer. But who cares? It's the loveliest of the lot.
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...