Founded in 1851 in Evanston, Illinois (a Chicago suburb), Northwestern University ranks among the top universities in the United States. Therefore, unsurprisingly, it has its own museum on campus. Mary and Leigh Block founded the Block Museum of Art in 1980 with the goal of educating both students and the public about art. Although most…
Author: Bet Arkeh
National Postal Museum
If you live in the United States, you may have noticed mail taking longer than usual to arrive, or mail just getting completely lost. As more people stayed home in 2020 because of COVID-19, they tended to do more online shopping, thus increasing our mail usage. However, COVID-19 also meant that postal workers frequently got…
Fort Sumter
On December 20, 1860, the state of South Carolina seceded from the United States. That led to a domino effect in which ten other states ultimately seceded from the Union as well. For obvious reasons, the United States was not pleased with South Carolina’s behavior, so on December 26, 1860, it secretly sent soldiers, under…
Poetry Foundation Library
Although public libraries are obviously the most popular types of libraries, there are so many other types of unique libraries that exist. Many of these are research libraries, which do not allow you to take their materials home, but do allow you to use their materials while inside the library. The Poetry Foundation Library in…
Driehaus Museum in Chicago
Some of the best museums are historic homes, because they provide you with an immersive experience into another era. Perhaps one of the most beautiful historic homes in Chicago is the Driehaus Museum. Completed in 1883, the home first belonged to a banker named Samuel Nickerson. However, over the years, it changed hands from private…
Marion, Indiana: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Marion is a city near the center of the state of Indiana with a population of approximately 27,000 people. Founded in 1831, it was named after Francis Marion (the “Swamp Fox)”, a man who fought the British during the American Revolutionary War. James Dean, the American actor, and Jim Davis, the creator of the cartoon…
Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History
What do Shemp, Moe, and Curly Howard from the Three Stooges; the violinist, Jascha Heifetz; the American, singers Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen; and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, all have in common? The answer is that all of these men have Litvak, or Lithuanian Jewish, decent. According to the World Jewish Congress, today (in…
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birth Home
Since it is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the United States this coming Monday, and since it is his birthday, I wanted to write about his birth home. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He lived in the home of his birth for the first twelve years…
Northwestern’s University and Deering Libraries
Founded in 1851 in Evanston, Illinois (a Chicago suburb), Northwestern University ranks among the top universities in the United States. In the tradition of all great universities, Northwestern has an amazing library system of over six million electronic and print resources. The main library building, University Library, was built in 1970, although it is connected…
Circle Studio, Inc. in Chicago
From the Gothic cathedrals of Western Europe, to the Tiffany stained glass of the United States, to the simple design of raised glass on a door, we can all appreciate the beauty of glass artists. Although I usually write about museums or libraries, for my first post of the new year, I would like to…
Bet Arkeh 