Our destination just south of Grafton was the brand new National Memorial of Military Ascent, which commemorates the Army Rangers who climbed up the 100 foot cliff at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Grafton is the perfect location for the memorial with its cliffs left from quarrying that began in the Nineteenth…
Tag: Sculpture
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama
Our final stop in Birmingham was the 16th Street Baptist Church, which is still in operation just outside of downtown. This was the site of the horrific bombing that killed four girls in 1963, which you can read about here. Here is the location on the side of the church where it happened, below. Across…
St. Paul Roman Catholic Cathedral, Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham was founded in 1871, and the first Catholic church, a rustic affair, was founded in 1872, so while Alabama is famous for the Southern Baptist Church, Catholicism still has a presence. The elegant church of St. Paul became the cathedral of Birmingham in 1969, after having been a co-cathedral with Mobile since 1955. Mobile,…
Vulcan, Birmingham, Alabama
Originally cast to represent Alabama’s industrial strength at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, the statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of the forge, the symbol of Birmingham is now situated high above the city on a tall plinth. Not surprisingly, the modello for the sculpture was created by an Italian sculptor Giuseppe Moretti, already…
St. Dominic Roman Catholic Church and Cemetery, Breese
St. Dominic Roman Catholic Church is the massive first parish in Breese, Illinois. Founded in 1858, the current church is from 1867. It’s a massive church, expressed in the German Gothic Revival style with a central spire and two octagonal turrets flanking. The interior, which was closed when we visited, is most likely a typical…
Big Bend Boulevard, Old Orchard, Webster Groves
Let’s head two Frisco Railroad stops to the northeast and get off our imaginary train and get off at the Old Orchard stop. Sadly, the station is lost, but it was located at the dead end of Old Orchard Avenue, at the railroad tracks, obviously. Old Orchard, not surprisingly, took its name from the large…
Cemetery, Sancta Maria in Ripa, Lemay, and San Francesco in Ripa, Rome
Word has come down in the news media that Sancta Maria in Ripa has been put on the market for sale by the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Lemay. I’ve looked at the majestic buildings twice, first in October of 2008, and then in December of 2020. The high school buildings are not for…
Epiphany Lutheran Church
I’ve become intrigued recently with the sculpting and shaping of wood in churches in St. Louis. Marble is always beautiful, and is the inheritance of the Greeks and Romans, who, living around the Mediterranean and its more volcanically active geologic topology, had access to metamorphic stone. But in the transalpine regions of Europe in places…
Interior, St. Mary’s of the Barrens, Perryville
The interior of St. Mary of the Barrens can easily rank as one of the most beautiful church interiors in the United States, and I’ve seen a lot of churches in my life. If you don’t remember my post on Il Gesù from back in November, go back and read it, and then come back…
Courthouse Square, Perryville
We’ll start our tour of Perryville in the courthouse square, with the Perry County Courthouse, constructed in 1904. The architects were Caldwell and Drake of Columbus, Indiana and the building cost approximately $32,000. It is on the National Register. And of course there’s a statue of a Union soldier in the lawn out in front….