Ziggy's Painted Barns in Southeastern Michigan (#1)

Mona - Haggerty Road-Bloomfield Twp

 

The Painted Barns of Southeastern Michigan was the short-lived artistic expression of a 1970s MSU graduate student. Using the pseudonym Ziggy Grabowski, Doug Tyler painted a dozen barns after he was awarded a National Endowment for the arts grant in 1976.   Tyler adapted classical works of art on the sides of barn in Livingston, North Oakland and Ingram Counties. His classic portraits included two Mona Lisa, Paul Revere, and an Italian Noblemen Baldaissaire Contiglione. Back then anyone driving US 23 near Fenton had the pleasure of seeing his artwork headed in both directions north and south.

Baldaissaire - Northbound US 23 near Fenton

One summer in the mid to late 70s my mom read an article about Ziggy and as one of our many Sunday Drives, we set out to visit the ones in the article-about ten of them. I took pictures of all of them and made a collage on an old corkboard. When I moved to Kalamazoo to attend Western Michigan University in 1978 I took my barn collage and hung it in my tiny dorm room as a reminder of one of my many adventures with mom. She (and my dad) were truly the inspiration for my love of exploring the world around me!

That first semester, one of my fellow dorm mates admired the barn collage and every time she came to our room shPe commented how cool it was that Ziggy had painted all those beautiful old barns. On one of those occasions I gave it to her. She loved it! I had every intention of getting all the pictures reprinted when I returned home, but that never happened and over the years those negatives disappeared. I have thought of those barns often over the decades. 

In 2003 I graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a Masters in Historic Preservation. During my time in grad school I checked the Michigan Barn and Farmstead Survey looking and hoping someone had documented a few of them and posted a few pictures, but alas there were none that I found. I have thought a lot of them since then. They are now probably all gone, I know the two on US 23 are, but last year I was determined to find a few pictures to honor the memory of Ziggy's artistic endeavors during that decade of discovery. 

I placed an inquiry on one of my historic preservation focused Facebook pages and the two pictures above are a result. They deserve credit for the pictures, but like the negatives I have no idea who they are or the page I retrieved them. But now all these decades later I want you to know about them and I think they would too...enjoy!

A few days after I originally posted this article I had the pleasure of going to Mackinaw Island with my dear friend Lori and her grandson. On the way home we were talking about the barns and in what seemed like less than one minute Lori found a link to an article with almost all the barns and a link to Doug Tyler who was a professor at St. Mary's Notre Dame in 2014. 

Ziggy went on to teach the next generation! You can find links to see the other barns in other articles.

Murals on Barns?

Professor Tyler's Mural Gallery

A Delicious Bite From "The Big Apple" (#17)

How and why does an architectural historian with a big city heart avoid going to NYC until she is 52 years old? Me either. It's everything they say and more-this city eclectic, eccentric and electric. It's an architecture and art lovers mecca.

I had been all around the city from Long Island, along the NJ Palisades, across the entire length of upstate NY, but never, not even once, did I venture to the core of the Big Apple...until a baby shower took me to the Upper East Side, just a few blocks from the Jacqueline Onassis Reservoir in Central Park. And then by sheer luck, I was blessed with not one, but two six-day visits within one year, first in April 2012 and then again the following January.

Enjoyable mornings started with brisk walks around the Reservoir and often drew me further into the arms of this Frederick Law Olmstead masterpiece.  Central Park embraces its history and retains many of the original cast iron and stone bridges from the late 1850s and 60s guiding park goers from one meticulously manicured area to another like Belvedere Castle, The Ramble and Strawberry Fields.

This is truly architecture heaven, street after street excellent examples of every architectural style from every decade dating back to the late 1700s. Even post modern buildings are stunning.

Like every good tourist, I visited the top of Empire State Building, sat in the first pew at St. Patrick's Cathedral, rode the Staten Island Ferry, walked the Brooklyn Bridge and went into the Chrysler Building to view the lobby. But that is really the tip of the iceberg, because there is so much more like the new Beekman Tower, old Greenwich Village, the Roosevelt Island Tramway and the emotionally moving 911 Memorial. All this with the aid of a superb mass transportation system and a 7-day Metro Pass, this apple was mine!

Beekman Tower-Frank Gehry

And no visit to this city would be complete without a trip to one of their then their great museums-both history and art. I discovered some treasures in the Met and at the American Museum of Natural History I followed the popular self paced Night in the Museum tour. Both of these museums are pay what you can. The Guggenheim and The Frick have special times to pay-as-you-wish, but prepare to line up around the building, so these times tend to be very crowded.

My second trip in January was dubbed the NYC Drinking Tour with visits to Heartland  Brewing before riding to the top of  Empire State building and drank beer at McSorley's Ale House, the oldest continuous pub on Manhattan. I splurged $20 for Bloody Mary at the St. Regis, where the French Red Snapper made its American debut, but the real highlight here is the opportunity to admire the recently restored Maxfield Parrish murals in the Old King Cole Bar with a history lesson for the friendly and attentive bar staff. And my last evening was spent in Greenwich Village sitting at the bar of the White Horse Tavern at the opposite end of the bar where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death-but I stopped at two-I want to make sure I get to come back.

Photo courtesy of the ultra cool bartender

Sweet Home Alabama (#45)

In June of 2007, our family was living in the twilight zone. Phil and Austin were living in the house in Michigan, while Jacob and I were living in our newly purchased house in Texas. We drove to Michigan as soon as Jacob got out of school for the summer and I "traded" vehicles with Phil so I could load up the van and head back to Texas. At this time I had been to 44 states and Washington DC and was missing three southern states. I took the opportunity and headed straight south from Michigan, picking up the Natchez Trace Parkway in Nashville and heading southwest toward Louisiana. When I got to Alabama, I turned east and headed for I-65 where I turned south toward my main destination...Birmingham.

I had read that Alabama had several covered bridges and decided to explore the east side of I-65 above Birmingham and visit a few. Most were in very haphazard shape, but one I found thoroughly intriguing near Oneonta. The Horton Mill Covered bridge is a town lattice truss bridge and considered the highest covered bridge above a US waterway towering 70 feet above the small river. Parking was very limited, so I parked out on the main road and scurried down to the bottom to see just how high this bridge really was. As I looked up from the river, I was glad I had already ventured across the bridge and back, because there was no way I was going back over it now...it looked like a covered bridge perched on toothpicks!

On my way into Birmingham I discovered one of the prettiest barns I have ever seen up on a hillside. I stopped to take pictures and the owner came over and struck up a conversation with me and offered to let me go into the barn to see the inside. He told me that the barn and property had been in his family for three generations and that they often had people from all over the US stopping to take pictures...I wasn't a bit surprised.

It had started raining by the time I found the Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark in Birmingham. I watched the short movie about the history of the pig smelting facility and ventured outside and took the self guided tour. It started to pour and I found myself playing hide and seek with the raindrops navigating through the various stages of pig iron smelting.


After my enjoyable tour at Sloss Furnaces, I headed to the highest point in the city to visit Vulcan. Built in 1904 as a tribute to Birmingham's iron roots, Vulcan is considered the worlds largest cast iron statue and underwent a complete multimillion dollar renovation in 1999. The park surrounding the colossal statue had a nice museum and it was a great place to picnic. The statue is open late and I thought an evening visit to the top of the 56 foot statue for a panoramic view of the city would have been another great option.

My day was fleeting fast, but I had just
enough time to head down I-59 towards Tuscaloosa for a stop at the Tannehill State Historic Park with more than forty-five historic buildings from its heyday as a bustling ironworks town. The staggering number of sites and activities included a museum, gristmill, farm, candy store and a small railroad as well as camping and cabin rentals. A great place to explore.

Gateway to the West-Nebraska (#27)

I used to consider Nebraska a mere pass through state...A necessary evil to labor across to get to the good states, on either side. Then again I never took the time to stop here before. This time I would stop, my destinations - Carhenge, Scotts Bluff National Monument and camping at Lake Minatare SNA-Home of Nebraska's only lighthouse...my thought was that anyplace with a lighthouse couldn't be all that bad. Nebraska was so much more than I originally expected and I hope to return someday and see more of this All-American state.

My first surprise was prompted by a highway sign directing tourists to an original Pony Express Station. I ventured off I-80 at Gothenburg and followed the signs. While the Station was indeed the real deal, it had been moved from the original Pony Express Route about eight miles south of the highway. No matter, the road to the station was lined with historic homes in spring flower bloom and just off the highway was another surprise...a sod house museum. It was a quick visit but it was time to get back on the road and head to my camping destination - Lake Minatare just outside of Scottsbluff. I got hopelessly lost trying to find this lovely camping area, my GPS unit failed me and my husband Phil's attempts to direct me via cell and the Internet brought him nothing but borderline hysteria from me. What Phil had realized and I could not wrap my brain around was that there were a couple of identical intersections within Scottsbluff. Near dusk I finally found the campground with just enough time to climb to the top of the lighthouse and find a spot to bed down for the night. Ordeal over.

The GPS was back to its old
self in the morning and we arrived at Scotts Bluff National Monument just as the park road and museum were opening. After a lovely conversation with the NPS staff, I headed to the top of the bluff on Summit Road, the oldest concrete road in Nebraska they informed me. I was alone at the top, except for mule deer and a rabbit and the wind howled like a locomotive. I walked to both north and south overlooks and was astounded by the starkness the pioneers must have encountered a century and a half ago. Way off in the distance I could see Chimney Rock, a landmark pioneers used to mark their halfway point to Oregon.

I traveled back to the museum and took the path to walk part of the Oregon Trail. While researching our genealogy several years ago, we discovered that Phil's family had taken the Oregon Trail and had lived in the same two vicinities as Phil - one hundred years apart of each other. Oh what a thrill to have walked where ancestors may have walked! Interesting too was that The Mormon Trail, California Trail and Pony Express all converged here at Mitchell Pass. I had used Chimney Rock as a landmark to find my way here and the whole experience sent chills through my body.

It was time to head north with one short side trip to Alliance for
a visit to Carhenge. The town of Alliance was a quaint little town with great architecture. It was obvious this community took a lot of pride in their bustling downtown. I stopped to take pictures and a woman stopped to chat with me about the buildings and gave me a brief history of them and the town, the county seat. She told me to drive down to the county courthouse and see the decorative brackets along the roofline and I passed the old movie theater with its original neon.

Carhenge was just north of town in an open field. This was an outdoor sculpture like no other I have encountered. It was hard to pull myself away from this place and several other cars stopped and walked around spellbound like me. There are several Stonehenge replicas around the US...why I do not know...why are we drawn to them? I've visited two in Texas at Odessa and Hunt. Texas also may have Carhenges' inspiration - Cadillac Ranch with ten Caddies buried nose down...someone asked me if I considered it art.
Of course I do, and I am thrilled that this time I stopped to discover that Nebraska is definately not a mere pass through state.

Kansas (#34) - Nothing Lasts Forever but the Earth and Sky

A couple of weeks ago during a discussion about my obsession to see all 50 states and DC before I turn 50, a colleague asked me if there was a state I would prefer not to return. I thought for a minute and told him Kansas. I have driven the long way across Kansas more than a time or two...it is a big long and boring state when you just drive across its width. I really didn't think there was much to see. Then last week I drove it south to north on my way to visit my 48th state. That short conversation sparked me to find a few places to stop with the help of several websites including one called 8 Wonders of Kansas. And when I visited this time...I stopped...and was pleasantly surprised.

Lindsborg, Kansas - Little Sweden
Located north of Wichita in central Kansas is the little hamlet of Lindsborg. A metal through truss bridge beacons Valkommen and hints of the history that is found on the other side.

I immediately turned left to find a nineteenth century mill and heritage village with the old train depot, and the 1904 World's Fair Swedish Pavilion. After a quick visit I headed to the downtown area to find any Swedish bakery I could find! Instead I found what appeared to be a tour for young people walking around the old town with its Swedish twist buildings. I stopped a small group who informed me they were participants of a history tour involving education college students from Bethany College and local 8th graders. I tagged along and stopped at BlacksmithCoffee a gourmet coffee bean roaster where we were treated to the buildings local history. Afterward I bought a bag of delicious espresso beans and headed northwest to my next destination.

Post Rock Scenic Byway
When researching for the trip I found a great Kansas Scenic Byway website. Included in the many byways was this short 18 mile byway located almost dead center within the 100 Amazing Miles along I-70. Post Rock Scenic Byway starts in the town of Wilson and proceeds north to Lucas. Czech emigrants who settled this area long ago left their indelible stamp on the landscape using special locally quarried limestone for their buildings and fenceposts. The byway includes six miles along Wilson Lake with lakeside camping at the US Army Corps of Engineers Sylvan and Lucas Parks on the north side of the lake.

Lucas
The byways northern terminus is Lucas; the self professed Grassroots Arts Center of Kansas. You can visit the Arts Center in the center of downtown with it outdoor courtyard. Lucas is also the home of an unusual folk art house named the Garden of Eden and (if it isn't - it should be famous) Brant's Meat Market.

Listed on the National Register, Garden of Eden folk house was "built" by a civil war veteran who added bizarre concrete scenes to the exterior of his postrock limestone home.

Do not pass up eating some of the best Czech bologna you will ever encounter at Brant's Meat Market two blocks north of the Grassroots Art Center. Mr Brant is the third generation to make this his family's ring bologna recipe that is more reminiscent of sausage than the ring bolgona I shared with my dad as a kid. He told me that they haven't changed the recipe in more than 70 years...I say "Why ruin perfection!" I ordered a 1/4 pound and a chuck of sharp smoky cheddar cheese to eat with my crackers and apple for the perfect lunch. Just before I left town, I went back and got a 1/2 pound more for another day or two. DELICIOUS!

Benini Sculpture Ranch - On the Road to Fredericksburg Texas (#44)

With the Austin City Limits Festival in full swing this weekend, it seemed a good weekend to travel west of the city on US 290 to one of my favorite Texas destinations...the quaint German town of Fredericksburg. This is a destination that I have not tired of in the dozen or so trips I have made in my last two years here in central Texas. New discoveries abound each time I travel west through this beautiful Hill Country

Today was truly a special discovery when our attention was caught by an gentleman photographing a metal Texas longhorn on the southwest corner of US 290 and CR 204. This was no ordinary longhorn, but a marvelous sculpture named Marathon created by artist Bettye Turner. A quick U-turn and short photo session with the bovine proved to be one of the smartest decisions we would make this day as this glorious creature marked the intersection that would take us to the real bonanza, the Benini Sculpture Ranch located 1.2 miles west of Johnson City and approximately five miles south of this intersection. Small

blue arrows beckoned us to meander the delightful road that led us to the 130 acre sculpture ranch with an astonishing array of works by a variety of talented artist. We stopped at the office to register as requested and were greeted by a lovely Texas friendly lady who gave us a short overview of the ranch and encouraged us to explore the grounds to further view their extensive holdings.

A few short hours later we were on our way again to Fredericksburg, marveling at our discovery and discussing the various pieces that decorated the rugged landscape. One such piece entitled The Bride at 3 a.m. by Jack Gron ignited a flurry of speculation such as

Was this before or after the wedding?

Maybe one day we will have an opportunity to talk with her creator during one of the ranch's Art Encounters at the Beninis held on select weekends throughout the year. There is no doubt this will not be the last time we visit this Hill Country Ranch with its delightful blend of hospitality, artistic talent, and scenic beauty.

We arrived in Fredericksburg just in time to take a quick stroll down main street and visit a few of the great shops and eateries nestled within the middle to late nineteenth century stone buildings that parallel both sides of this historic main street. How fortunate for us that a large population of adventuresome Germans would establish wonderful little towns like this with the its beautiful stone architecture.

We wrapped up the evening at my favorite venue on Main Street, the Fredericksburg Brewing Company. Usually the consummate dark beer snob, tonight I felt we should continue the adventure and try one of their samplers consisting of little four once glasses of all five current brews. In an unusual turn, tonight I went light with Hauptstrassa Hellest (Mainstreet Light), which turned out to be their 2005 Great American Beer Festival gold metal winner in the Munchner-Style Helles beer catagory. Life is SO GOOD, especially when you take the slow road to Fredericksburg...Cheers!