What in the world am I doing in Springfield, Illinois? Regular readers will know that the United States doesn’t feature much in this blog. But your author is from the Midwest and I’m making my first journey home in eight years. Springfield, quite simply, is about as far as a jet-lagged Brit would want to drive from O’Hare on arrival day.
We’re headed to St. Louis for my high school reunion, but decided we didn’t just want to spend two weeks in a place we already know. So we’re saving the central weekend for my home town and filling the days on either side with luxury B&Bs in small towns, rural wineries, and spectacular landscapes starting to blaze with autumn colour. All linked by a meandering road trip in a rather flashy red Mustang convertible. The forecast for R&R is excellent.
We’re spending the majority of the holiday in my home state of Missouri, but Springfield was a logical first stop. Closer to St. Louis than Chicago, it always felt like part of my extended home turf and my childhood saw several visits to the Lincoln sites. More than 40 years on, things are looking a lot better than I remember.
The Lincoln home is now part of a two-block long restoration area closed to traffic and run by the National Park Service. Everything built after Lincoln’s time has been cleared away. Everything he’d recognise has been beautifully restored. The result is a peaceful, tree-lined street straight out of mid-19th century America, a short walk from the state capitol building.
Lincoln wouldn’t have recognised that soaring dome, however, since construction started on it three years after his death. It is a grandiose, if architecturally odd, mix of Greek revival, French and Italianate architectural styles, and is the tallest traditional-style capitol building in the United States. It’s higher than the capitol building in Washington D.C., only outstripped by the Art Deco tower blocks of Louisiana and Nebraska. Despite the architectural mash-up it’s a lovely building set in pleasant parkland with a statue of Abe Lincoln out front that’s a popular photo spot for visitors.
Lincoln himself would have known the older capitol building a few blocks to the Northeast. Smaller, squatter and surrounded by a square of early 20th century brick business buildings, it looks like any one of thousands of county courthouse squares across America. On one corner is the modern Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum; highly recommended by friends but we didn’t have time to get inside on our one day in town.
The one interior we did want to see (besides the Dana Thomas house, described here) was Lincoln’s tomb. It’s the centrepiece of Oak Ridge Cemetery, one of those classic 19th century necropolises full of impressive memorials and architecturally fascinating houses of the dead. (Londoners: Think Highgate with more space between occupants.) The president’s memorial is an obelisk sitting atop a square base with a rotunda protruding from its front. The first impression the lower walls give is of a fortress, one reinforced by the bronze sculptural groups of soldiers on four drums at the base of the obelisk. Lincoln was, after all, a leader defined by war, so the martial feel of his tomb is perfectly logical. Though the sad look on his face in the full length statue standing at the centre of it all speaks eloquently of how he felt about that.
There’s a surprisingly plain bronze door that leads inside through the centre of the round, projecting base. You find yourself in a beautiful, solemn rotunda lined with marble columns, topped with a shallow dome gilded with palladium, a rare, silvery relative of platinum. At the centre sits the original artist’s maquette of the famous seated statue from the Lincoln memorial in Washington. From here, sepulchral passageways lead around the rectangular base of the building, widening at each corner with apses displaying bronze statues of Lincoln at different significant times in his life. At the far side of the square from the entry rotunda stands a red marble cenotaph in a semi-circular apse, with “Now he belongs to the ages” carved above. Lincoln, his wife and two of his three sons are buried nearby.
A serious Lincoln aficionado could easily spend another day or two in the area, taking in the modern library and New Salem, the village where Lincoln grew up that is now run as a living history museum. But that wasn’t for us. Springfield was mostly a revival stop, giving us a chance to get into the US time zone and spend some time with my father, who’d driven over from another state capital … his home, Jefferson City, Missouri.
WHERE TO STAY
We stayed at The Inn at 835, a B&B converted from a prosperous turn-of-the-20th-century apartment building just a few blocks from the capitol. Convenient location, marvellously comfortable bed, lovely decor but a bit questionable on value for money. I need to get to the other two B&Bs on this trip to do a fair compare-and-contrast job on this category of US accommodation.
WHERE TO EAT
It’s worth noting that many things close down on Sundays in small town America. Springfield may be a state capital, but its population is less than 120,000 and most of the legislators and other government workers who do business there during the week return home on weekends. Due to current labour shortages, many restaurants are closing on Mondays, too. So the two places my pre-trip research suggested I would want to try weren’t open during our visit.
Maldaner’s is one of Springfield’s oldest continually operating businesses, a staunch bastion of tradition located near the old capitol building. It looked like a slightly dressier option that would have been nice for a “welcome to America” dinner. On the outskirts of town is the Cozy Dog Diner, one of several claimants to the title of inventor of the corn dog however they insist on avoiding the name … they’re cozy dogs. Both of these places sit along the legendary Route 66.
Any guide to Springfield will mention two famous diners, however, and Charlie Parker’s is open until 2pm on Sundays. The food is that classic combo of deep fried, griddled and cheese covered that hardens arteries across America. While the atmosphere was great … a repurposed Quonset hut packed with memorabilia and looking as if nothing has changed since 1962 … I wouldn’t recommend it if other things were open. My Rueben was tasty, though a bit skimpy on the pastrami, while Mr. B tried a local speciality called a “horseshoe” that just seemed to be a random variety of savoury dining items piled high, strewn with tater tots and slathered with tasteless cheese sauce. “Empty calories consumed with regret,” he mourned of his first diner experience this trip.
We had better luck that evening at Cooper’s Hawk, an outlet of a winery-based chain. It feels a bit like an upscale Cheesecake Factory, with a massive dining room and a wide-ranging menu. All the wine they serve is their own, made in a facility in Northern Illinois from grapes purchased from around the country. Everything on the menu had wine recommendations, detailed descriptions and could be purchased by glass or bottle. Most bottle prices hovered around $30, so reasonable for restaurant wine even with our collapsed currency. I’m never a fan of chain restaurants, but this was better than average and would certainly stand out on a limited list, especially if chains and mega-brands were the only offerings.
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