Springfield
— — the prairie town that kept Lincoln's house.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Illinois, on the open Sangamon River prairie about halfway between St. Louis and Chicago. Abraham Lincoln practised law here for twenty-four years and left from the train station for Washington in 1861. The house he lived in is still standing on Eighth Street, painted the brown it was in 1860. Around it the old neighbourhood is held as a quiet national site, and the limestone capitol three blocks away catches the same low evening light it has caught since 1888.
Springfield, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Springfield is the capital of Illinois and the seat of Sangamon County, sitting on the Sangamon River in the central Illinois prairie roughly 320 kilometres southwest of Chicago and 160 kilometres northeast of St. Louis. The population is about 114,000. The city was platted in 1821 and named the state capital in 1839, largely through the political efforts of Abraham Lincoln and the so-called Long Nine, a group of Sangamon County legislators. The current Illinois State Capitol, completed in 1888, is built of Niagara limestone with a dome rising 110 metres.
Lincoln lived in Springfield from 1837 to 1861. His home at the corner of Eighth and Jackson Streets, the only house he ever owned, is preserved by the National Park Service as Lincoln Home National Historic Site. The Old State Capitol nearby is the building in which he delivered the House Divided speech in June 1858. Lincoln's tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery, a granite obelisk reaching 35 metres, holds the remains of Lincoln, his wife Mary, and three of their four sons.
Most visitors centre a trip on the four blocks of preserved 1860s streetscape around Eighth and Jackson, free to enter with a timed ticket from the National Park Service visitor centre. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, opened in 2005, holds the largest single collection of Lincoln material in the world. Route 66 ran through downtown Springfield from 1926 until decommissioning, and the original alignment along Sixth Street is still drivable. The State Fair runs the second half of August.