North Shore Views

Archive for the 'Local curiosities' Category

Wilmette's Rock

Right down the street from my house in Wilmette, there’s a rock by the side of the road…on the west corner of Ridge Road and Thornwood Avenue to be exact. It’s not a big rock. Maybe about as big as Plymouth Rock, which, if you’ve visited it, you’ll agree is pretty underwhelming. Anyway, what’s unusual about Wilmette’s rock is that it is always decorated in keeping with the season (or sometimes at the current whim of the artist) and yet the decorating is always done in secret.

Although I have passed this rock a zillion times, I have never seen anyone actually painting it, and I don’t know anyone else who has either. But sure enough you’ll see it painted one way one day and the next morning you’ll drive by and it will have morphed into something completely different. So I decided to begin documenting the many faces of the  rock.

Here’s my first picture of it, dressed as a turkey for Thanksgiving.

Ten bucks says it will be Rudolph come Friday morning.

Tags: Wilmette, Wilmette's painted rock

Winnetka- Home of the First Jungle Gym

Here’s a little known bit of North Shore trivia: the first-ever Jungle Gym, constructed in 1920, is still being enjoyed by children at Crow Island School on Willow Road in Winnetka.  It was invented and patented by lawyer and Winnetka resident Sebastian Hinton. Apparently Hinton’s father, a mathematician, had built a three-dimensional bamboo frame in their backyard in Japan in order to teach his children about Cartesian-coordinates. But Sebastian and his siblings thought it was just a toy where they could climb and swing like monkeys. As an adult he saw that it could be a fun and space-efficient way to encourage physical development in children and he proposed it to Winnetka school superintendent, Carleton Washburne.

The first prototype was placed at North Shore Country Day School. While it was a big hit with the kids, it also had some design flaws, which needed correcting. A sturdier version was installed at Horace Mann School (where the Post Office now stands).  When the school was demolished in 1940, the apparatus was then moved to Crow Island School, where it still sits on the southeast corner of the school’s playground.

Tags: Crow Island School, North Shore history, Winnetka