Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Carl Milles in St. Louis

"The Meeting of the Waters" at Union Station

As we drove out of St.Louis heading east towards Illinois (and then Indiana), we stopped to see the famous fountain
by Carl Milles in front of the old Union Station where once hundreds of trains arrived and departed each day.
The fountain dates from 1939.

The water jets were turned off, but we enjoyed looking at the sculpture.
The fountain, titled "Meeting of the Waters," was a favorite of my mother's.

Milles at the Missouri Botanical Gardens

Several Milles sculptures are also installed in reflecting pools at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, which we visited Sunday.
I find these sculptures to be more graceful than the ones at Union Station. I also wrote about
the sculptures at Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina recently.
At left, you can see the famous "Climatron," a geodesic dome built in the garden in 1960. R. Buckminster Fuller's
invention of the geodesic dome was shortly before this, and this structure was the first conservatory using the invention.
Author of this post is Mae's food blog: maefood dot blogspot.com.
All my posts on Carl Milles are at
"https://maefood.blogspot.com/search/label/Carl%20Milles"
If you are reading this at another blog -- the other blog has stolen this content. Note copyright on photos.

3 comments:

Kitchen Riffs said...

Gosh, every single photo looks SO familiar. :D For those of us who live here, is't all too easy to forget how much swell stuff there is to see and do here.

Vagabonde said...

This station looks formidable. It is such a shame that in the US passenger rail transport is almost non-existent. I think there is a beautiful station in Nashville, but it is now a hotel (I have to go and visit it.) Your photos of the sculptures show how beautiful they are.

I read your comments on the Marmelade Gypsy regarding Notre-Dame de Paris fire and I answered. I include it here in case you don’t go back to read it: Mae Travels asks above “How could they have let this happen?” The answer is because since 1907 all religious buildings belong to the state, because the state is secular. The French tax payers are like in the US and don’t like to pay taxes so not enough is given to churches, many falling in disrepair, or not enough for their upkeep. Churches are like museums, castles, etc., and there are many of them. Even though 14 million tourists visit Notre-Dame yearly none pay admission, the French tax payers have to pay. At least 53% of French people say they are catholic (but not really.) I read on a 2016 survey that only 1.8% attends church weekly and Parisians even less. The fire was accidental but not enough safety precautions were taken, like in factories, this could have been prevented. The Catholics and Vatican don't own French churches.

Merryn@merrynsmenu said...

These statues are amazing, so diverse and all are so pretty. Beautiful photographs thanks Mae.