By day and most evenings, Downtown Rockford, Illinois, is home to family-friendly museums and community events. But every now and then the Rockford Main Street District throws a big nighttime party where the music rocks and adult beverages are the mainstay. Our visit to Rockford last summer happened to coincide with one of these events, the Two Block Party, so in the name of journalism, we were “forced” to cover it.
Sock monkeys got their start here. It was home to one of the best teams in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Its original name was Midway. These are some of the fascinating facts I learned about Rockford, Illinois, when I visited the Midway Village Museum.
The Rockford Art Museum began as a local sketch club over a hundred years ago. Today, with 17,000 square feet of exhibition space and 1700 works of art in its permanent collection, it’s one of the largest art museums in Illinois. The museum features 19th and 20th century art. A big focus is on modern and contemporary works of art, but also includes American Masters, photography, contemporary glass and outsider art collections.
The museum’s three galleries are spread over two floors. The lower level exhibitions are from the permanent collections, including a couple of sculptures by famed Illinois artist Lorado Taft. We had seen several of Taft’s sculptures at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, so seeing these additional sculptures was a nice tie-in.
Some of my favorite pieces, because they were really funky, were part of last summer’s Oddities and Curiosities exhibition. I was particularly fascinated by Scott Roberts’ video installation, Viola, a mirror in which you see an image of the artist’s grandmother instead of yourself when you look into it. However, it isn’t a still image; rather, you see her blink and move her eyes.
Don’t miss a Midwest Wanderer post. For a FREE subscription, enter your e-mail address in the Subscribe2 box to the left and click Subscribe.
One of the museum’s prized collections was a donation from Francis and June Spiezer, that includes pieces from Chicago artists, many considered to be the most important in the art world.
The main floor of the museum is designated for temporary exhibitions that change three times a year. Our visit happened to fall during the Rockford Midwestern Biennial. Every other year artists from across the Midwest submit pieces to this juried show, the jurors brought in from the outside. All pieces submitted are required to have been created within two years prior to the show. Besides monetary awards, one piece is awarded the Dean Alan Olson Purchase Award. That piece goes into the Rockford Art Museum’s permanent collection.
The main floor also is where you’ll find the museum store, a great places to purchase unique gift items.
The Rockford Art Museum, located in the Riverfront Museum Park at 711 N Main Street in downtown Rockford, Illinois, is open daily from 10 to 5. Check the web site for directions and admission rates.
The museum campus, a Rockford Park District property, is also home to the Discovery Center Museum, Rockford Dance Company, Rockford Symphony Orchestra and Northern Public Radio. I’m no art critic, but I thought this staircase in the entryway of the museum campus was a work of art itself.
Disclosure: Our visit to the Rockford Art Museum was hosted by the Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Rockford Art Museum. However, opinions expressed in this post are my own.
Thank you for reading Midwest Wanderer. Don’t miss a post. Enter your e-mail address below and click Subscribe to be notified whenever I publish another post. Subscription is FREE. After subscribing, be sure to click the link when you get the e-mail asking you to confirm. – Connie
Lobster for breakfast? Yep. Lobster Scrambler is on the menu at Egg Harbor Café. So is Joe’s Healthy Scrambler with fresh veggies, no-cholesterol eggs and low-fat cheese, served with fresh fruit and a wheat English muffin. Egg Harbor offers lots of other healthy options, too. What did I order? Meat, meat and more meat—Matt’s Meaty Skillet, loaded with bacon, ham and sausage and topped with melted jack and cheddar cheese. That’s besides the two eggs, potatoes and an English muffin. Sheesh! I’m almost embarrassed to admit it. That was before I went on my much needed calorie-counting kick. I didn’t eat the whole thing, but I’ll tell you what. It sure was yummy.
I’d seen Egg Harbor restaurants scattered around the Chicago area for some time but had never eaten at one until I was in Rockford. I had assumed they were a national chain. Not so. There are only 18 Egg Harbor Cafes: fourteen in Chicago’s west and north suburbs, one in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and three in the Bucktown area of Atlanta.
Don’t miss a Midwest Wanderer post. For a FREE subscription, enter your e-mail address in the Subscribe2 box to the left and click Subscribe.
The Rockford restaurant is located in a non-descript strip mall, but the inside is decorated in rustic country a la chicken. Decorative chicken statuary is everywhere in the restaurant. I could almost feel chicken eyes on me as I ate their unborn.
The company is family owned, and talking with the managers of the Rockford restaurant, I found out that turnover in management is almost non-existent; the company is that good to work for. The company’s mission statement, “Improving service in every sense,” is based on food, service and atmosphere. Judging from my visit, they live their mission statement. The atmosphere is casual fun, our service was top-notch and the food tasty and plentiful with a range of breakfast options from sweet pancakes to savory Benedicts. Soups, salads and sandwiches are available at lunch.
I’m looking at the Egg Harbor Café menu as I’m writing this, and I see lots of choices that would fit my new eating plan, like a fruit cup and whole wheat pancakes. And then my eyes rest on a new item: Boston Cream Pancakes, layered with vanilla custard and thick dark chocolate sauce. Dark chocolate. If I were eating there right now, I don’t know if my will power would be strong enough to stay away from such a temptation. I do know, however, that the next time I’m in an area of an Egg Harbor Café at breakfast time, I’m going in.
Egg Harbor Café, located at 1603 North Alpine Road in Rockford, Illinois, is open from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily. Check the web site for the menu and additional locations.
Disclosure: My visit to Egg Harbor Cafe was hosted by the Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and Egg Harbor Cafe. However, opinions expressed in this post are my own.
Thank you for reading Midwest Wanderer. Don’t miss a post. Enter your e-mail address below and click Subscribe to be notified whenever I publish another post. Subscription is FREE. After subscribing, be sure to click the link when you get the e-mail asking you to confirm. – Connie
Restaurants that serve food made from Mom’s recipes are the best. That’s what you get at Lino’s Restaurant in Rockford, Illinois: Italian cooking made the way the family’s ancestors did it in Italy. Served with friendly conversation in a setting reminiscent of Italy, I felt like family or a good friend being welcomed into a home.
Lino’s is a Rockford staple, open since 1972, with three major expansions since then. Each of the rooms in the restaurant is decorated after a slice of Italy, including a Leaning Tower of Pisa in one room. According to a couple of customers I spoke with, Lino’s is the go-to place for family celebrations. Some dine there weekly.
Each day of the week Lino’s offers a different dine-in special. Although I was tempted by the baked lasagna, which another customer raved about, I went with the Friday cod special, which you can get either deep fried or baked.
Don’t miss a Midwest Wanderer post. For a FREE subscription, enter your e-mail address in the Subscribe2 box to the left and click Subscribe.
True to Italian mom cooking, you don’t leave the table hungry. The meal includes pasta or a potato, a salad, fresh warm bread, beverage and ice cream. I chose Lino’s Special Salad, greens topped with egg, Italian sausage and tomato and tossed with house-made Italian dressing.
I also tried the minestrone soup, chock full of ditalini pasta and veggies and not overpowered with garlic.
Since I didn’t order an Italian entrée, I had mostaccioli as my side dish. Again, the rich tomato flavor was enhanced, not overpowered by garlic. (Can you tell I’m not a huge fan of garlic overuse?)
The fish was extraordinary. Both the deep-fried and the baked versions were tender and flaky, and the batter on the deep-fried was light. Lino’s doesn’t have a specific recipe for the batter, they just toss the ingredients together, the way you do when you’ve prepared a dish over and over again.
When it came time for dessert, one of the servers mentioned she likes the combination of spumoni and rainbow sherbet, so I asked if I could have it that way, a half scoop of each. They were happy to comply, and I found that it’s true, you get a sort of Creamsicle taste, but with a variance on the flavors.
I couldn’t possibly eat all of the food that was served to me, but that’s what take-home boxes are for. I understand that Lino’s has been awarded the Readers’ Choice Award by the local newspaper for favorite Italian restaurant multiple times, as well as the award for favorite pizza. On my next visit I’ll have to try the pizza.
Lino’s Restaurant is open for dinner seven days a week and offers both dine-in and carry-out service. Check the web site for hours and menu.
Disclosure: My visit to Lino’s was hosted by the Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and Lino’s. However, opinions expressed in this post are my own.
Thank you for reading Midwest Wanderer. Don’t miss a post. Enter your e-mail address below and click Subscribe to be notified whenever I publish another post. Subscription is FREE. After subscribing, be sure to click the link when you get the e-mail asking you to confirm. – Connie
Other posts you may enjoy:
Octane InterLounge, Rockford, Illinois: Food Prepared with Passion
Laurent House, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Little Gem: Rockford, Illinois
Frank Lloyd Wright referred to it as his “little gem,” the small house in Rockford he designed for Ken and Phyllis Laurent, the only house he designed for a person with a disability. The house, completely rehabbed by the Laurent House Foundation, opened to the public for tours in 2014. Jerry Heinzeroth, Foundation President, was kind enough to meet Skip and me at the Laurent House this summer for a tour of the home and to share the home’s history with us.
Shortly after Ken and Phyllis Laurent married in 1941, World War II broke out, and Ken enlisted in the Navy. During a tour of duty, Ken was experiencing painful problems with his back. He underwent surgery for a tumor on his spine, the surgery went awry, and Ken ended up a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down.
Don’t miss a Midwest Wanderer post. For a FREE subscription, enter your e-mail address in the Subscribe2 box to the left and click Subscribe.
While Ken was recuperating at Chicago’s Hines VA Hospital, Phyllis read an article in House Beautiful about the Pope House in Falls Church, Virginia, a Usonian house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. “Usonian” is the term given to the style of homes Wright designed for middle-income families. The term means “United States of North America.” Impressed with the design of the home, Phyllis shared the article with Ken, who wrote to Wright asking him to design a home that would accommodate his disability and at a price of no more than $20,000. At the time, Ken had no idea of Wright’s notoriety.
At 82 years of age, Wight took on the assignment. However, it was two years before the design was complete. Having thought it all out in his head, Wright put it on paper within two hours. A year later, in 1952, the house was completed, with much of the millwork done by local craftsmen. In 1960 an addition was put on the house, also Wright designed, that included a carport and dining room.
The house looks rather plain from the outside, but there’s no mistaken the Frank Lloyd Wright design, with its clean horizontal lines. As I entered the house, though, my jaw dropped. The open floor plan makes the house looks much larger than it looks from the outside. The design follows a solar hemicycle; if you look from one end of the house, you can see how the arcs continue to the other end.
The 60-foot window wall at the back of the house is the longest in any Frank Lloyd Wright home. The window overlooks the patio that conforms to the same curves as the interior of the home.
To meet the budget needs of the homeowners, inexpensive but sturdy materials were used, like the Cherokee red concrete floor, coated with wax. Bug and disease resistant red tidewater cypress wood was used throughout the house. Chicago common brick was used on the home’s exterior.
The home was built with Ken’s eye level in mind as he was seated in his wheelchair, so everything sits a little lower, including the furniture, all original to the home and designed by Wright. In fact, the Laurent House includes the largest Frank Lloyd Wright collection in a single property.
Wright owned a large collection of Japanese block prints. When he designed the windows in the master bedroom, he said it was like giving the Laurents three Japanese prints that would change with every season.
Every aspect of the home was built to accommodate Ken’s accessibility, including a bathroom large enough to turn the wheelchair as needed and a desk for the office corner of the bedroom. The dining room table only had seven chairs, leaving a space for the wheelchair.
About $400,000 went into the restoration of the home, including restoring the woodwork and rewiring all of the electrical. The ceiling that was badly damaged by rain was completely redone and now includes a supplemental heating system should the original radiant heat that runs through iron pipe beneath the concrete floor ever go out.
Many of the Laurents’ personal effects were left in Wright’s little gem, including a 108-year-old Schumann piano, made in Rockford. Like most Wright homes, nothing ever hung on the walls, as the walls were art in themselves.
The Laurent House is open for tours the first and last weekends (Saturday and Sunday) of every month, by reservation. Because there is no available parking on the property, tours begin at Midway Village, 6799 Guilford Road in Rockford, where you will board a shuttle bus and be brought to the Laurent House. Admission is $15 and best suited for children over eight years old. To make reservations or to learn more about the Laurent House, please visit the web site.
Disclosure: Our visit to the Laurent House was hosted by the Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Laurent House Foundation. However, opinions expressed in this post are my own.
Thank you for reading Midwest Wanderer. Don’t miss a post. Enter your e-mail address below and click Subscribe to be notified whenever I publish another post. Subscription is FREE. After subscribing, be sure to click the link when you get the e-mail asking you to confirm. – Connie
