When I saw the subject for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Any Type Of Light Fixture, this week, I thought ‘perfect!’ When I went to visit the Sanfilippo Estate in Barrington recently, one of the things I paid particular attention to was all the beautiful lamps, chandeliers and lighting fixtures that seemed to fill the house, even on the stained glass ceiling of the ornate elevator. Needless to say, the camera got a good workout.
In keeping with the Sanfilippo’s fabulous music collection, some of the lamps incorporate record turntables. No wonder they call it the Place de la Musique!
In the Music Room, where we were treated to a thrilling theater organ recital including an accompaniment to the silent movie A Christmas Carol produced by the Thomas Edison studios, the brilliant lighting matched the magnificent surroundings.
These splendid lamps and chandeliers made me want to run out and replace all my tatty light fixtures. Of course you need the grand rooms to carry it off, so maybe not.
It would be remiss of me not to say a big ‘Thank you” to the Sanfilippo family for graciously allowing us into their gorgeous home and making everyone feel so welcome. I hope you will join me here on Getting The Picture for part three of my visit to the Place de la Musique.
Last week, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Illinois Railway Museum’s annual fundraiser at the Sanfilippo Estate in Barrington. The house is not open to the general public unless you attend a fundraiser or are part of a group of at least 40 people who sign up to take a tour, so I was very excited to have the opportunity to see inside the Place de la Musique. Suffice it to say, this will be one of those multi part posts as I took more than 400 pictures while I was there.
Wow! What a place! And setting aside, for a moment, all the fantastic things that the Sanfilippo family have collected over the years, the house itself is amazing. Who knew there was that much money to be made from nuts! The Sanfilippos also own the Fisher nut company as well as many other brands.
We were free to wander around the house for an hour or more, and take the ornate elevator to all three floors to look at the different collections
The highlight of the fundraiser was an organ recital in the grand theater that is part of the house. The Wurlitzer opus #1571 was originally built for the Riviera Theater in Omaha in 1927. With five rows of keys and 8,000 pipes, it is one of the largest and most versatile theater pipe organs ever built.
The organist, Dave Calendine, plays the organ for the Detroit Red Wings hockey team games. He has also played for nine years for the Radio City Musical Hall Christmas Spectaculars featuring the famous Rockettes. He is the Chairman of the American Theater Organ Society and has a string of other credits to his name. He certainly put on a fantastic show for us and I was just in awe of the hand, eye and foot coordination needed to play this massive instrument. The concert included Christmas carols, hymns, excerpts from Star Wars and of course, a medley of tunes related to the railway. Talk about feeling the music! The notes reverberated throughout the house.
Although the concert was the main feature of the fundraiser, there was so much more to see and enjoy. I hope you will join me here next time when we take a look at some of the pieces in the Sanfilippo Collection.
It’s been a while since I participated in the Lens Artists Photo Challenge but when I saw Anne’s choice of subject for this week, I realized I was working on something that would easily Fill The Frame.
Welcome to The Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois. It is the largest of its kind in the United States. On our most recent trip a few weeks ago, we got to walk through five display barns and took a ride on a streetcar and an electric train. Although I’m not exactly a train buff, I enjoy any opportunity to take pictures and this was one of those times. It was a lovely day, not too hot, so just right for walking around and, if you want to see everything, there is quite a bit of walking involved, outdoors as well as inside.
I was intrigued by these two stone sculptures that I took to be from some now defunct station in Chicago but I couldn’t find anyone who could tell me where they originated. If anyone from the Chicago area has any ideas I’d be interested to hear.
There are elevated walkways in between the carriages in the display barns so you can get a good view of the inside of the cars. I haven’t traveled in anything other than the Metra and CTA trains in our area, and it’s been many years since I enjoyed my favorite mode of transport in the UK, so I can’t speak for rail travel in general, but these interiors certainly looked quite luxurious.
The streetcar ride took us on a loop around the museum and although it wasn’t what you’d call a scenic tour, it gave us a look behind the scenes at some of the old stock that wasn’t on display and other odd items like the London Transport bus.
The display barns are full of carriages, locomotives and all kinds of rolling stock, some dating back to the late 1890’s. There are over 500 pieces of equipment at the museum which covers 100 acres of land.
Our ride on the Chicago, Aurora and Elgin electric train took us on a 40-minute round trip on the several miles of track that the museum owns in the surrounding countryside. Nearly all the people who work at the museum are volunteers and are very knowledgeable about the railway and its history. They were a cheerful group who answered all our questions and shared their love of trains with us. The Museum was founded in 1953 and moved to Union in 1964.
My eldest daughter and her husband are real railway enthusiasts and last year attended the IRM’s annual fundraiser at the Sanfillipo Estate in Barrington, where they won a prize in the raffle. My son-in-law got to ride in the engineer’s cab in one of these beauties.
It’s not hard to see why IRM relies in large part on fundraising events. Restoration work on pieces like this costs thousands of dollars. In 2016 IRM purchased a 130ft turntable for $10,000 that will be used to store their steam locomotives.
Our family does have a history with the railways in the UK. My 2nd great-grandfather started out as a plate-layer for the railway in 1853. He went on to become a railway guard, then stationmaster and at the time of his retirement was a railway inspector. When I researched his history I found that at the time of his marriage in 1853, he was unable to write his name in the registry, so I thought his rise through the ranks from plate-layer to railway inspector quite impressive. I couldn’t help wondering what he would have made of some of these displays.
It’s not always easy to give an indication of just how enormous some of these locomotives are. The wheels on some of them were taller than my 5ft 3in height.
Before we left, we stopped in at the hobby shop where they had a grand layout of model trains and shelves full of items for sale.
Welcome back to the final part of my piece on The House On The Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin. With all the weird and amazing things that we’ve seen so far, these next two rooms are even more astounding. At 80ft in diameter and 35ft in height, The Carousel is claimed to be the largest in the world. There are 269 creatures and more than 20,000 lights, while hovering overhead, hundreds of mannequins that look like winged rejects from Victoria’s Secret look down on the scene below.
It’s a case of look but don’t touch. The Carousel is not for riding on. It’s interesting to note that there are no horses on this bizarre roundabout. That was an omission deliberately planned by Alex Jordan. Some of the creatures may have originally been horses but he saw to it that they underwent a remarkable transformation in the workshops of The House.
The whirling movement of the Carousel is accompanied by the cacophonous sound of a pneumatic organ accompanied by huge automated drums playing fairground favorites. The sights and sound in this room are almost overwhelming. And here again, we see Jordan’s penchant for including unclothed, well-endowed female figures in his displays, leading us to suppose that he was a bit of a lad for the ladies.
Alex Jordan eventually sold The House to a friend in 1988 but not before he had completed what has to be the most spectacular creation of his fertile imagination, The Organ Room. As the old guide book states, ‘It might well have been designed for a staging of a Jules Verne epic.’ The consoles shown below are purported to be the largest in the world.
Ramps and catwalks allow us to view from all angles the massive hydraulic machinery, enormous pipes, drums, timepieces and brewery tanks that fill this room. You get the impression that Jordan bought up everything he could lay his hands on to make this bizarre and baffling array which suggests an amalgamation of Heath Robinson and Barnum and Bailey. What a show! And as always, it is accompanied by that blaring automated organ music, on this occasion playing The Skater’s Waltz. Phantasmagorical!
One final, parting shot. The House On The Rock may not be for everyone, but as a phenomenal piece of showmanship it is definitely worth a look.
Welcome back to the glitzy, kitschy and somewhat disturbing world of The House On The Rock. It’s a place of smoke and mirrors that some might call magical. But the word ‘magical’ conjures up images of Disney World and this, my friends, is anything but. At every tortuous turn you are confronted with the astounding, the astonishing and the bizarre.
Everything is on a grand scale as you will soon find out when you enter the Magnificent Music of Yesterday. From the giant Gladiator calliope to the automated music machines in The Blue Room and The Red Room, all are designed to amaze you. My favorite, The Mikado music machine, which is large enough to fill an entire room by itself, was created from designs by Alex Jordan. The organ, accompanied by flutes temple bells, kettle drums and cymbals crashes out music like Dance Macabre and the Ritual Dance of Fire. Here again, not everything is as it seems. Many of the instruments that make up these music machines are not actually playing. The music is already recorded. But you are so mezmerised by what you are seeing that it doesn’t seem to matter.
Possibly still reeling from what you’ve already seen, you enter the Heritage of the Sea exhibit. Wow! It’s just about impossible to get the entire scene into one single shot. This monstrous diorama shows a 200ft whale-like creature battling a giant octopus while being chased by an old-time whaling expedition. As you climb the ramps and steps leading to the top of the creature’s head, you pass walls lined with display cases containing model ships and other seafaring artifacts many of which, I suspect, are the products of the House’s workshops.
From sea monsters we move on to something slightly less threatening. Dolls. There are probably hundreds of dolls at the House On The Rock and most of these are displayed on two carousels in The Doll Room, one of them a 6-tiered creation, the other with 3 tiers. At first glance you might think, how cute! But as your eye travels to the uppermost tier you are met with the sight of naked ladies (which seem to be a recurring theme throughout the House) and satyrs. Not exactly something for the kiddies.
Even the doll houses have a sinister look to them. Although they are lit from within, the room itself is in near-darkness. There are more than 250 doll houses in the collection, some set against a backdrop of large stained glass windows.
The Circus Building houses over one million pieces that comprise the collection of miniature circus dioramas. And just when you have become accustomed to looking at things in miniature, you enter a room with life-sized elephants and a colossal band wagon. You begin to think you’ve seen it all, and then there’s the The Circus Band with 80 life-sized mannequins playing various instruments. It took 14 people three years to create this automated 120 piece ensemble which includes 37 miles of wiring and 2300 pneumatic motors.
And that’s not all. I hope you will join me next time when we will explore two of the most fantastic rooms at the House On The Rock. Prepare to be amazed!