Though as a young believer I was sure I was ready to go anywhere for the cause of Christ, you can imagine my gratitude when I found that cause brought me to within a mile or so of Wrigley Field — Mecca for a lifelong Cub fan. Being likewise a diehard fan of C.S. Lewis and his entourage of friends and influences, I feel (almost) equally privilaged to live but a Metra train ride from the Wade Center, the Wrigley Field of Lewisania. Each year for the past several, I've used any old excuse to make the pilgrimage.

Tucked in a set of rooms upstairs in the back of the Wheaton College library is an international study center and mini-museum devoted to the life and works of Lewis and six other British authors: J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield (contemporaries and friends of Lewis, with him part of an informal literary club known as "the Inklings"), along with Dorothy Sayers (not an official "Inkling", but also a contemporary and kindred spirit) and a pair of key influences on this group (especially Lewis) G.K. Chesterton and George MacDonald. The center has more than ten thousand volumes by and about these authors, along with manuscripts, letters, dissertations, and multimedia holdings.

The museum part of the center includes desks once owned by Lewis and Tolkien, Lewis' pipe and tea mug, and the original wardrobe from his boyhood home — according to his brother Warren, the inspiration for one third of the items mentioned in the title of the opening volume of the Narnia series.

Founded in 1965 by Wheaton prof and acquaintance of Lewis, Dr. Clyde Kilby, the Wade Center has become not just a repository of the many books about its seven authors, but a place where scholars can come do the necessary research to write even more. These new books, of course, end up on the Wade Center shelves and are reviewed in the Center's publication,SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review, which also features scholarly articles on Lewis, et al. Another atttraction for all those scholars is the center's collection of two-thousand volumes from C.S. Lewis's personal library, many annotated with his sometimes copious marginal notes.

The director of the Wade Center is Dr. Christopher Mitchell. Chris spoke at the 1999 Cornerstone Festival "Imaginarium" on a personal research project close to his heart, the history of Lewis and his participation at the Oxford University "Socratic Club." Currently on display at the center among Lewis's books are posters and artifacts from what must have been one of the most extraordinary debating societies ever conducted at Oxford. This spring, Chris will be working with the Imaginarium staff crafting a new seminar for the 2000 Cornerstone fest, on Lewis, his view of myth, and applications of such ideas and approaches to contemporary media, especially film. The hardest part about working on the seminar, says Chris, will be fitting the time into a schedule that's especially full this year: the Wade Center is in the midst of plans for moving to a new location.

Earlier this month, the Center announced it was going to construct a new facility on the campus of Wheaton College. Funded by a grant from the daughter of its original benefactor, ServiceMaster, Inc. founder Marion E. Wade, the new center will be located at the corner of Lincoln and Washington Streets in Wheaton. Ground-breaking is scheduled for March, with tentative plans to be open and operating in the new building by October of this year. The new Wade Center will resemble an English cottage on the outside, surrounded by manicured English gardens. Inside, there will be room to bring out and shelve properly all the books and research materials currently boxed in the basement and attic of the present facility. The New Wade will also feature expanded research areas, offices for the director and staff, and — this is new! — spaces for classes and seminars. And so the "Wrigley Field of Lewis studies" is soon to have a structure (almost) worthy of the comparison.

This would be the appropriate moment to send you to the Wade Center's official web site, but — alas! — the Wade Center on the web is but a single page of the college site. Chris Mitchell has assured the Imaginarium that after the move proper attention will be devoted to a similar expansion of the Wade on the web.