I stumbled upon this Catholic church in downtown Peoria when I was visiting nearby. The parish dates from 1878 but the current church is from 1903. While it’s known as the Sacred Heart of Jesus, when looking at the cornerstone, it says Herz Jesu Kirche, so I will assume it was a German national church…
Tag: Central Illinois
Family Farm and Environs, Early November 2025
I visited the family farm east of Peoria for the last time this year, but will be back up in the spring, as usual. The harvest has been over for weeks, so the landscape has been transformed to the fallow fields with its stark beauty. I photographed this corn crib to the northwest of the…
Storms, Central Illinois, August 2025
I determined with a weather app on my phone that the lightning I was witnessing was over fifty miles away, so I thought I would see what my iPhone would capture. These are raw, unedited photos that I thought turned out interesting. I never tried photographing thunderstorms so far away in the pitch darkness of…
Family Farm, August 2025
I somehow managed to miss the hottest day of August in St. Louis by escaping to the family farm near Deer Creek, Illinois. It was still hot up there, and I was treated to an amazing light show both nights as storm rolled through the area on Friday, and then on Saturday, I witnessed a…
Northeast Peoria, Early June 2025
It wouldn’t be a complete visit to Central Illinois without checking in on Northeast Peoria, those streets that stretch out in a diagonal fashion from downtown Peoria. It is an interesting mix of rehabbed and abandoned buildings. This gas station is a find; if you look carefully, there are the letters for Standard Oil on…
Family Farm, Early June 2025
I visited the family farm last weekend, and it’s perhaps evident, if it wasn’t already in the photos of the tornado damage, that the smoke from another natural disaster, the wildfires in Canada, was affecting the sky in the background. Longtime readers will know that the farm was hit by a tornado back in March…
Four Historic Districts, Bloomington, Illinois, Part Four: Franklin Square, Revisited
I’ve actually looked at Franklin Square in Bloomington before back in March of 2016, but I thought I would take another look. The square has served as a public forum in much of the city’s Nineteenth Century’s history, including a speech by William Jennings Bryan, the wedding of Adlai Stevenson’s daughter, and other events.
Four Historic Districts, Bloomington, Illinois, Part Three: Davis-Jefferson
The centerpiece of the Davis-Jefferson Historic District, east of the center of Bloomington is the David Davis House, Clover Lawn, whose estate clearly once encompassed much of the surrounding blocks. Davis was actually a friend and ally of Abraham Lincoln and served on the Supreme Court after being appointed by the President. French American architect…
Four Historic Districts, Bloomington, Illinois, Part Two: East Grove Street
East Grove Street is the next historic district, which extends out east from downtown Bloomington. It is primarily populated with Queen Anne style houses from the 1880s. There has been extensive rehabbing of the houses, and it is really an impressive group of homes from the period. There are one or two Italianate style houses…
Four Historic Districts, Bloomington, Illinois, Part One: North Roosevelt Avenue
I was up in Central Illinois, so I thought I would check out some of the historic districts in Bloomington that looked interesting. I’ve already checked out White Place, one of the other prominent historic districts, back in March of 2016. We’ll be looking at four in all, starting with the North Roosevelt Avenue Historic…