Two schools for the price of one

Is there an alternative to tearing down Enos Elementary?

On Sept. 11, the District 186 board announced that it would cancel classes forever at Enos Elementary School. The board approved plans to demolish the aging building on the north side and replace it w

Get smarter about a Smart Grid for utilities

Gov. Pat Quinn recently vetoed a “Smart Grid” bill that was pushed through the General Assembly this past spring by ComEd and Ameren, the two biggest electric utilities in the state.Politi

Temples in ruins

The old Franklin Life complex did not get the owner it deserves

I left one question unanswered when I wrote recently that the Horace Mann Educators Corp. building in downtown Springfield was one of four in the capital city designed by a world-famous architecture f

Looking back

Updates and addenda to recent columns

Satchel Paige wisely advised us, “Don’t look back: Something may be gaining on you.” He’s right.I addressed the time and energy costs of daily commuting to jobs in Springfield

Unscientific methods

Why aren’t kids learning science?

As news goes, it wasn’t very new. The company that administers the ACT college prep tests announced recently that fewer than a quarter of Illinois’ 2011 graduating high school class met th

Stuck in Carlinville with the Springfield blues again

“Commuter.”A lot of Downstaters hear that word and think of a driver trapped during an afternoon rush in August on Chicago’s westbound Ike, which – and I know what I’m ta

Modern minstrels

The heirs to Vachel Lindsay’s performance poetry

Poets, we are reliably told, once were creatures of the street and the court, not the study, and poetry was sung, or at least recited. That past lives again every year when Springfield area schoolkids

Going against the flow

Need Springfield gag on stormwater?

My advice is, don’t ever invite the executive director of the Springfield Metro Sanitary District and a carp to the same party. Springfield, you see, is one of dozens of Illinois cities and town

Architectural dreams

There are famous buildings, and buildings by famous architects

Springfield’s Trivial Pursuit is not a party game that is much played these days, except by candidates for state representative seats. Several different versions were released over the years in

Anti-urban urban renewal

Horace Mann’s HQ looks better at 39 than its neighborhood

The downtown headquarters building of the Horace Mann Educators Corp. is getting its first major fix-up since it opened in 1972. Whatever its merits as a work of design, the building certainly was wel