Reflections on Ancestry

So, we discovered something really cool this weekend while we were down in the city. One of my ancestors was the architect who designed the Fourth Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue. My grandmother had told me about this guy before. His name was Ralph Adams Cram, and I think he's a great, great uncle, or something like that. He was the originator of the Gothic Revivalist style of the late 19th- and early 20th-century, and he's famous for having built St. John the Divine in New York. I just never knew he had designed this church which I've walked past so many times.

With my curiosity piqued, I went on the web and found out that in the 1920s, he was the chief architect and builder at Princeton University. He designed the chapel and numerous other buildings at Princeton, and he's responsible for the Collegiate Gothic architecture that dominates that campus.

Anyway, I thought that was pretty cool. Next time I'm down in Chicago, I'm going make sure to take lots of pictures of Fourth Presbyterian Church. I'll post them after I've taken them.