Cranbrooks House and Gardens

It's summer time! Time to go out and have some fun under the sun!
Got our Museum Adventure Pass for our free pass to selected museums in Michigan, and this time we're heading to Cranbrook.

THE CRANBROOK STORY
It began in 1904 when George Gough Booth, publisher of the Detroit Evening News, and his wife, Ellen Scripps Booth, purchased a neglected, barren farm in Bloomfield Hills, naming it "Cranbrook" after his family's English village. The Booth family moved into the Albert Kahn designed home in 1908. Landscape architects, gardeners, and laborers planted thousand of trees, created gardens, built walks and walls, and added sculpture and fountains to create these outstanding gardens. The Booths, who lived at Cranbrook until their deaths in the late 1940's, devoted their personal wealth and energy to establish what is now Cranbrook Educational Community.

CRANBROOK HOUSE AND GARDENS
The Cranbrook House and Gardens are the centerpiece of the Cranbrook Educational Community campus. Ten first-floor rooms can be seen on guided tours, and contain tapestries, hand-carved woodworking and English Arts and Crafts-style antiques. The upper floors of the house are used for the executive offices of Cranbrook Education Community. The 40-acre gardens were originally designed by George Gough Booth, and include a sunken garden, formal gardens, bog garden, herb garden, wildflower garden, Oriental garden, sculpture, fountains, specimen trees and a lake.

The house and gardens are open to the public from May through October but during our visit, the house was temporarily closed.

Garden highlights and shots:


The reflecting pool with the Cranbrook House at the background.



Macro shot from the Sunken Garden. Got lucky enough, a tiny bee landed after I pressed the shutter button.



Another macro shot from the Sunken Garden.



La Bocca Della Verita Fountain.



A beautiful view.



Facade of Christ Church Cranbrook.

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Cranbrooks Institute of Science

These are the shots taken from our visit in Cranbrooks Institute of Science:

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The Windy City

Last May 2009 we had the chance to travel to Chicago for a passport renewal.

Traveling in spring is for us the perfect time as compared to going there during summer. Hotel accommodation is much expensive and a lot of people flock to Chicago for vacation at summer time.

We have booked a month ahead for our hotel, Candlewood Suites, and planned the attractions to visit - we only have a 2-day stay, half day for the passport processing, not to mention 10 plus hours of driving from and to Michigan which by far, was the longest drive I've ever had.

Chicago is best known as the "Windy City" for the climate of the city, bordering on a huge lake. It is the third-most populous city in the U.S., and the largest city in the Midwest and is also a major business, financial, and industrial center. It was chosen as one of the final four world city candidates to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, and is the only American city on the list. (source: Wikipedia)

With limited time and some other constraints, we only got to visit a few attractions.

.:MILLENIUM PARK
Millennium Park is an award-winning center for art, music, architecture and landscape design. The result of a unique partnership between the City of Chicago and the philanthropic community, the 24.5-acre Park features the work of world-renowned architects, planners, artists and designers.

Millennium Park is located in the heart of downtown Chicago. It is bordered by Michigan Avenue to the west, Columbus Drive to the east, Randolph Street to the North and Monroe Street to the South.

The Park is open daily from 6am - 11pm. Admission is free.

Visitors are encouraged to make the Millennium Park Welcome Center their first stop at the Park where specialists are available to help plan their Park visit. The Welcome Center is located at 201 E. Randolph Street in the Northwest Exelon Pavilion.

.:CLOUD GATE
This hugely acclaimed public sculpture was designed by Anish Kapoor. Nicknamed "The Bean" because of its legume-like shape, its exterior consists of 168 highly polished stainless steel plates.

I was totally fascinated on how this object was made.


Cloud Gate with sketch on the foreground.


Family picture.

.:JAY PRITZKER PAVILION
The most sophisticated outdoor concert venue of its kind in the United States, designed by Frank Gehry.



.:CROWN FOUNTAIN
An interactive work of public art and video sculpture. The fountain is composed of a black granite reflecting pool placed between a pair of glass brick towers. The towers are 50 feet tall, and they use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to display digital videos of Chicago residents, as well as those of natural scenes.


Airborne.


The fountain is a public play area and offers people an escape from summer heat, allowing children to frolic in the fountain's water.

.:LURIE GARDEN
Designed by Kathryn Gustafson, Piet Oudolf, and Robert Israel. It has a combination of perennials, bulbs, grasses, shrubs and trees. It is the featured nature component of the world's largest green roof - a roof of a building that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and soil, or a growing medium, planted over a waterproofing membrane.




Close up shot.

.:MILLENIUM MONUMENT
A nearly full-sized replica of the semicircle of paired Greek Doric-style columns.



.:BUCKINGHAM FOUNTAIN
This fountain is one of the largest in the world.



.:SHEDD AQUARIUM
For sometime it was the largest indoor public aquarium in the world.



.:ADLER PLANETARIUM
Was the first planetarium built in the Western Hemisphere and is the oldest in existence today.


I took this shot outside of Shedd Aquarium.


Chicago has the best attractions to offer and if given the chance again I will surely come back.


Your comments are always welcome. Happy trip!

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