Straddling the city of Peoria and suburb of Peoria Heights, Grandview Drive offers panoramic views of Lake Peoria, a widening of the Illinois River as its wends its way through the prairie, buffeted by bluffs to the west. Originally envisioned in 1894, construction began in 1903 and was completed several years later. Laid out like…
Tag: Central Illinois
Washington, Illinois, Spring 2024
At the intersection of Holland and South Main streets is an ensemble of Victorian Period houses in Washington, Illinois that I have revisited over the years, the first time in 2009 and the second time at least in 2022. This first house is on the northwest corner of the intersection. On the southwest corner is…
Around the Family Farm, Spring 2024
I checked up on the family farm east of Peoria in Central Illinois the last weekend of April, and things were looking good even if the fields were very wet, delaying spring planting. It was very windy, and it was alternating sunny and cloudy all day long. No longhorns could be spotted at the neighbor’s…
Deer Creek Township, Late January 2024
A dense fog blanketed the area around my family farm in late January as snow and ice persisted on the ground. January in the country is a time of hibernation and preparation, as the spring is closer than you think. If you look closely, you can see the neighbor’s longhorns, an ubiquitous presence now for…
Family Farm, August 2023
My last stop on my August travels was my family farm east of Peoria in Central Illinois. As longtime readers know, the cattle barn was destroyed by a tornado in late March. These photos are from late August, but the destroyed barn is now completely cleaned up. I also had a surprise, as the last…
Down By The River and the South Side, Peoria, August 2023
The public housing down by the river, which I first spotted way back in December of 2008, are finally being demolished. I had discovered they were built when Peoria demolished the red light district where Richard Pryor had grown up. The new buildings going up are nice, and they even feature the latest navy blue…
Grain Elevators, South of Peoria
These massive grain elevators south of Peoria along the Illinois River are slated for demolition–or maybe they aren’t. They’ll probably sit around for a long time until they’re finally, or completely, demolished.
Former Jubilee College
I’m always fascinated by the big plans people had in the early half of the Nineteenth Century when the Midwest was opened up to settlement. The former Jubilee College, founded by Episcopal minister Philander Chase in 1839 northwest of Peoria, was to operate as a seminary for priests serving the surrounding states. Only a small…
Southwest and Northeast of Downtown, Galesburg, Illinois
Heading southwest down Louisville Road, I spotted one of the grain elevators that line the train tracks in Galesburg. Now owned by ADM, it possesses one of the largest grain silos I have ever seen, at least in diameter. I worked my way back up on Monmouth Boulevard, which connects the center of town with…
Northwest of Downtown, Galesburg, Illinois
It’s always interesting to see a city such as Galesburg that is primarily a community of wood frame houses, its building materials brought south from the Northwoods by Chicago’s vast rail network. The house above is the first one north of the railroad tracks that separate the residential neighborhoods from downtown. Of course there are…