North Shore Views

Archive for the 'Local curiosities' Category

Rock Candy

Last year the rock dressed as a ghost. This year it has donned something more colorful. Looks good enough to eat. Happy Halloween!

Ghosts in the Gardens

When it comes to Halloween the families in the Kenilworth Gardens neighborhood of Wilmette take their decorating very seriously. The name of the game is to have the ghastliest, grisliest decorations you can come up with.

Here are pix of some of the scarier yards in the ‘hood.

Tags: Halloween, Kenilworth Gardens

Pumpkins and Politics on Lawndale

Every year I look forward to seeing how the Weyermullers have decorated their yard for Halloween. For over ten years they’ve been lampooning local and national politicians with life-size statues and vignettes about some of the more controversial policy issues. They will happily skewer either or both political parties but say they draw the line on sex scandals. So you won’ be seeing any Anthony Weiner statues this year.

And the fun is not limited to politics. Being die-hard Cub fans (one can only assume) there’s always some “commentary” on the Cubs’ latest season. This year there’s a Cub fan rising from the dead with his heart in his hand and a sign that reads: “The Cubs yanked my heart out”  And, of course, there’s a statue of the Cubs’ new President of Baseball Operations, Theo Epstein.

Here are some shots of this year’s Halloween display. See if you recognize anyone…

Tags: 208 Lawndale, Halloween decorations

Elvis Sighting on Beechwood Avenue

Every weekend during the summer there is a block party going on somewhere in Wilmette. It’s a tradition that started out as basically a neighborhood pot-luck party in the street. Everyone would bring some food to share, along with their beverage of choice, and people of all ages would congregate in the street to talk, eat and drink.

Nowadays these get-togethers have become much more elaborate. Not only are there home-made goodies, but sometimes catered meals. There are bike parades, egg and water-balloon tossing contests, face painting, bouncy houses and corn hole games.

Beechwood Avenue had all that this year. But we also had a special guest who hasn’t been seen around these parts for quite some time. Elvis himself showed up at our event and even serenaded us with a few of his most popular songs.  The curious thing: he hadn’t aged a bit. In fact, he was looking very healthy indeed and as if he might have joined weight watchers.

Don’t believe me? I have evidence. Yes, I managed to get a video and here it is. So there!

Tags: block parties, Elvis, Kenilworth Gardens

Halloween Decorating: Wilmette’s Best Dressed Yard

Every October I make my annual pilgrimage down to Lawndale Avenue to check out the Halloween decorations in one particular front yard. This yard may not have the most decorations, but it certainly has the cleverest and most amusing.

This year’s decorations feature effigies our disgraced ex-gov, Rod Blagojevich and Sarah Palin, as well as the Cubs Cemetery of Excuses, with tombstones for all the years the team should have won a championship, but didn’t.

Tags: Halloween

Wilmette’s Spooktacular Rock

I’ve written before about Wilmette’s “famous” rock at the corner of Ridge Rd. and Thornwood Avenue. The rock is always dressed for the season and accordingly is already modeling its Halloween costume.

Tags: Wilmette's rock

North Shore Haunts: Calvary Cemetery

On the southernmost edge of Evanston lies Calvary Cemetery, a large Catholic cemetery first established in 1859. The main entrance to the cemetery is a pair of massive limestone gates designed by architect James Egan. There are some well-known locals buried here, including Charles Comisky (founder of the White Sox and the American League), John M. Smythe (furniture maker), Edward Kelly (former Chicago mayor) and Edward Hines (lumber giant).  But the most interesting thing about the cemetery may be one of its less earthly inhabitants.

For twenty years during the 40’s and 50’s an apparition would appear nightly to drivers along Sheridan Road. Thousands of stunned motorists reported seeing a ghost climb out of the lake and over the rocks, then stagger across the road dodging traffic to the cemetery entrance, where he would pace back and forth in front of the closed gates. Speculation at the time was that the ghost was a World War II airman who had crashed into the lake during a training exercise and his body never recovered.

Finally, in 1960, the gates were inadvertently left open one night, which allowed the ghost to enter and find himself a permanent resting place. After that night he was never seen again.

Tags: haunted places

Contagion in Wilmette

Wilmette is in for a bad case of celebrity-itis.

Even those of us who spurn Us Weekly and its ilk, will not be immune to the fever when the cast and crew from a new movie descend upon the town in a couple of months.

The movie is called “Contagion” and it is an action-thriller about the worldwide outbreak of a deadly disease, and the international team of doctors contracted by the CDC to deal with the epidemic. Apparently it won’t be a sensationalist sci-fi movie, but rather an examination of how different groups (media, politicians, medical community and the general public) deal with the threat of a worldwide pandemic.

Director Steven Soderbergh must have liked the North Shore when he was here last time (shooting Ocean’s Twelve in Winnetka and Lake Forest), but this time he’s going to show Wilmette some love. He has several locations already scouted, including Central School, Gillson Park, a private home on Greenleaf and the Wm H. Scott Funeral Home. (Guess that’s where they’ll take all the bodies of people killed off by the virus). Filming in Wilmette is set to take place between November 23 and December 9.

It’s got quite the star-studded cast:

Gwyneth Paltrow as Beth Emhoff, a business woman who returns from Asia and comes down with a mysterious ailment.

Matt Damon as her husband, who is forced to care for her as her condition worsens.

Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Ellis Cheever, head of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control)

Kate Winslet as Erin Mears, a doctor for the CDC.

Jude Law as a blogger with an unfortunate interest in conspiracy theories.

Parts of the movie will also be shot out in Elgin at the old Sherman Hospital, as well as outside a Yorkville High School.

The movie is set for release in October 2011.

Tags: Contagion

Wilmette’s Brick Streets

There are a few towns in the Chicago area with brick streets. Downers Grove has some. Forest Park has about a dozen. Oak Park has one or two. But as far as I know, no town has as extensive a network of brick streets as Wilmette. Wilmette has thirteen miles of brick streets (with another three and a half under asphalt) and they are one of the things that gives our village its charm.

The paving of our streets began in the 1880’s with Forest Avenue (east of the tracks) being the first to be paved with brick. By 1916 the village had over 24 miles of brick streets. They make for a bumpy ride and they are harder to plow in the winter but they are also a natural “traffic calmer”. And they do last longer than asphalt streets.

Many of the bricks used to pave Wilmette streets came from the Purington Brickyards in Galesburg, once the largest brick maker in the world. More recent renovation and repairs have used recycled bricks supplied by Gavin Historical Bricks in Iowa City.

Pavers are different than ordinary building bricks. They are made from a mix of shale, clay, sand and kiln-fired at extreme temperatures making them very hard, smooth, non-porous and heavy.

During the Depression a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project was initiated to relay the bricks to preserve the character of the eastern part of the village while providing jobs. The bricks were removed and turned upside down to put the worn side down and the “new’ side up.

Tags: Wilmette's brick streets

Proof there’s a buyer for every house…at the right price

Do you remember that bizarre story about the Evanston woman who was living in her house with the bodies of her dead siblings?

As I recall, the bodies of her two sisters and brother were discovered in the fall of 2008 after a neighbor became concerned because she had not seen the woman’s sister around lately. When the police went into the house they discovered the body of one sister, who had been dead for 30 years, the body of the brother, who died in 2003, and the body of the other sister, who had died recently (all of natural causes).

Today there was a story in Crain’s saying that someone has actually bought that house (the owner has moved into a nursing home).  An Evanston couple made an offer on it just one week after it was put on the market. They knew about its gruesome past but were undeterred. It’s a pretty 1890s-era house in east Evanston and I guess once it’s gutted and redone  the new owners won’t find it so creepy.

Until the deal closes we won’t know how much they paid, but presumably they got a good deal. It just goes to show that, at the right price, every house will sell…even in this market.

Tags: haunted houses, pricing your house to sell, Strange real estate stories