An experienced business leader, Cameel Halim is the owner of the Halim Time and Glass Museum (www.halimmuseum.org). Under the leadership of Cameel Halim, the museum has grown from a collection of timepieces and stained glass artwork to include restoration services and wedding and business event hosting. Weddings at the Halim Time and Glass Museum are often held in the Wisteria Room, a large event space with beautiful furnishings and a masterpiece stained glass ceiling. The glass dome is appropriately decorated with a wisteria vine in bloom over an arbor. A series of Louis Comfort Tiffany landscape windows, including three rare Tiffany portrait windows, provide guests with a lovely fourth-floor view of the surrounding city. In terms of event hosting, the room features a dance floor, kitchen, and full-service bar. The museum provides a number of options in addition to the Wisteria Room. The Garden Room, for example, can comfortably fit 40 guests. The Museum Cafe Gallery provides an even more intimate setting, while the Rooftop Garden offers views of downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan.
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The real estate investor, Cameel Halim, manages and owns properties in the Chicago area. Cameel Halim founded the Halim Time and Glass Museum, which brings together an impressive timepiece and stained glass collection. A new addition to the museum is the Ascension window, a stunning stained glass window by the legendary glassmaker, Louis Comfort Tiffany. L. C. Tiffany, the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, the celebrated jeweler, was born in 1848. He established his glassmaking factory in Queens and went on to develop the form of glass called “Favrile.” His work enjoyed immense popularity. In the 1890s, one of Tiffany’s stained glass masterpieces was installed in Newark’s Trinity Episcopal Church in Ohio. Known as the Ascension window, the remarkable piece depicts Christ, flanked by angels, rising above his followers. After housing the Tiffany masterpiece for more than 100 years, the Trinity Church hit financial straits and had to close down. Halim was able to rescue the beautiful window, acquiring it for the Halim Time and Glass Museum’s collection. Learn more about the Ascension window and other exhibits at the Halim Time and Glass Museum by visiting the museum website, halimmuseum.org/. A project of timepiece collector Cameel Halim and his family, the Halim Time and Glass Museum showcases over a thousand clocks and more than 70 pieces of stained-glass art. The pieces have all been selected by Cameel Halim and the Halim family from their personal collection. The Halim Time and Glass Museum opened in 2017 after 11 years of planning and development. It is a four-story building located at 1560 Oak Street in Evanston, Illinois. According to Halim, most of the clocks are more than 300 years old. Timepieces are displayed in eight rooms, each specific to the collection’s country of origin. Four rooms, on the other hand, exhibit stained-glass pieces. The fourth floor is a designated banquet hall that can accommodate over 300 guests. The hall features a number of works of art, as well as Tiffany portrait and landscape windows. There is also a rooftop garden available for rental. The Halim Time and Glass Museum is open every day except Mondays and select holidays. Student discounts are available, and there is no charge for children under the age of nine. Based in Chicago, Cameel Halim is a longtime collector of antique and historically significant timepieces who along with his family recently launched the Halim Time & Glass Museum (halimmuseum.org). For many visitors, a highlight of Cameel Halim’s museum is the major stained glass collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany on display. Active in his craft from the 1880s to the 1920s, Tiffany pioneered the use of hues and textures that had not previously been incorporated into stained glass. He was able to create multilayered scenes through mixing a combination of metal oxides and minerals directly into the glass. This contrasted with other artists of the era, who simply painted on the surface of the glass. Tiffany’s laboratory experimentation was carried out by skilled glass workers and chemists working under his direct supervision. With the goal of creating delicately hued and differentiated colors, unique formulations were developed for each new shade. One major discovery was that the addition of various metals to the glass would give the glass color. Examples include gold, which would give red; cobalt, blue; iron oxide, green; and uranium, yellow. The exact chemical composition of each color was kept a company secret that was not shared with employees, and sometimes not even known by Tiffany himself. These glass formulations preserved a mystique and unique look to Tiffany pieces that kept them in high demand for decades, and has helped make them extremely collectable up to the present. Reflecting a longstanding passion for antique timepieces and stained glass, Chicago entrepreneur Cameel Halim and his family recently launched the Halim Time & Glass Museum. Among the noteworthy works within Cameel Halim’s collection of more than 1,100 timepieces are pocket watches, automatons, and chronometers. The chronometer represents an important stage in clockmaking technology and has its roots in the early 18th century. A British fleet of warships returning home from a failed port siege during the War of Spanish Succession missed sighting the Gibraltar straits just as a major storm hit. Even with known landmarks not visible, latitude could still be readily ascertained based on star and sun positions at specific times of the day. But longitude was almost impossible to calculate, and a system of dead reckoning, using the ship's direction and speed and requiring careful timing, was the only way of determining a vessel’s position. Unfortunately, the timepieces of the day could not accurately keep time, and the flagship HMS Association ran into the Scilly Isles’ Outer Gilston Rock. 1,500 sailors perished on the four ships that sank, and only 13 survived. This naval disaster led to an act of Parliament creating a contest with a major prize to anyone who could create a system of accurately determining longitude within a half degree throughout a transatlantic voyage. With none other than Sir Isaac Newton declaring that the task was impossible, it was ultimately John Harrison who, after four decades of research and refinement, created the pioneering H4 “marine chronometer.” The president of Chicago-based CH Ventures, LLC, Cameel Halim is a real estate investor and developer with over 5,000 units under his management. Since he was a little boy, Cameel Halim has been fascinated with watches. For years he, his wife, and their three daughters have been collecting timepieces from around the world. Today, this rich collection of timepieces can be explored by the public at the Halim Time & Glass Museum in Evanston, Illinois. The museum is five stories tall and houses a collection of over 1,100 timepieces, 30 masterpiece stained glass windows, and many other works of art. Admission costs adults $17, with reduced prices for children, seniors, and students. There is also a one-year membership option which costs $85 for individuals, $125 for two people, and $175 for families. Two-year membership is $160 for individuals, $230 for two people, and $295 for families. Membership to the museum symbolizes support for the preservation and restoration of timepieces and stained-glass art. Membership benefits include unlimited admission to public programs and exhibitions, access to members-only events and tours, discounted tickets to premium events such as films, lectures, and performances, and a 10 percent discount on gifts, books, and jewelry at The Museum Shop. To learn more about the museum and its collection, please visit halimmuseum.org. An accomplished investor with over 40 years of experience, Cameel Halim leads CH Ventures, LLC, in Wilmette, Illinois. In September 2017, Cameel Halim and his family celebrated the opening of the Halim Time and Glass Museum, which displays the Halim Family’s vast collection of timepieces and stained glass. A decorative tradition going back many centuries, stained glass has been produced since ancient times. While the use of stained glass in windows dates back to at least the 1st century AD, one of the earliest examples to have been unearthed was found in England at St. Paul’s Monastery, a building established in the late 7th century. In Europe, stained glass had become an art form by the turn of the 13th century. As the art continued to develop, most stained-glass pieces were used in churches and cathedrals, but they began to appear in homes and public buildings during the Renaissance period. The glassmaking tradition was carried to the New World and became one of the first industries set up in Jamestown during the early 1600s. The earliest examples of stained glass in America were created in the mid-17th century, but it wasn’t until the 19th century that a distinctive American style of stained glass developed. The best-known American stained-glass makers include John La Farge, Richard Lamb, and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Leveraging more than four decades of experience in the field of real estate, developer Cameel Halim buys, renovates, and sells properties across Illinois through his company CH Ventures, LLC, a real estate development firm he operates with his wife. Outside of his professional pursuits, Cameel Halim enjoys collecting antique clocks.
Many of the pieces in his collection extend back to before the 1800s, and the number of antique timekeepers in his possession is more than 600. The long-time collector purchased a home in Evanston, Illinois, and is in the process of converting it into a museum. The types of clocks to be displayed are not only keepers of time, but also of history. For instance, the collection includes a piece once owned by an 18th-century Japanese shogun, and one of the collection's oldest piece, an elephant clock from what is present-day Germany, dates back to 1520. Visitors will soon be able to view the collection for themselves, when the Halim Time & Glass Museum opens in the fall of 2017. A native of Egypt who immigrated to the United States in the late 1960s, Cameel Halim has found considerable success in the real estate market. Over the years, he has established himself as key renovator of apartment buildings throughout the greater Chicago area. In 2007, Cameel Halim provided critical assistance in his daughter Nefrette’s campaign to preserve the Skiff House. As the head of the community organization Citizens for Kenilworth, Nefrette Halim led extensive efforts to save the Skiff House from demolition. The Skiff House is a striking old home located at 157 Kenilworth Avenue, in one of the oldest and most affluent suburbs north of Chicago. The product of the legendary architectural firm of Daniel Burnham, this 1908 structure was scheduled to be torn down in the fall of 2007. After fighting for months, Nefrette Halim and the Citizens for Kenilworth had all but given up. Their concerted efforts had failed to secure protection for the Skiff House, and its demolition date was less than a week away. Inspired by a visit to Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History (another building of Daniel Burnham’s design), Cameel Halim decided that he simply couldn’t let the demolition happen. He entered into last-minute negotiations with the property’s owners and ultimately purchased the Skiff House for $2,350,000. Engineer and developer Cameel Halim has been active in the real estate industry in the Chicago area since he immigrated to the US from Egypt. One of Cameel Halim’s famous purchases was the very nearly demolished historical Skiff House. Skiff House was designed by the architect Daniel Burnham (or possibly by his firm while he was ill). Burnham became famous for his work in the Chicago area around the turn of the century. The house was built for Frederick Skiff, the first director of the Field House Museum, which was also designed by Burnham. The old house stands on Kenilworth Avenue in a suburb of Chicago mostly populated by wealthy citizens. Skiff House had been bought for $1,875,000 by Antoinette Vigilante, a local developer who sold it at a loss for $2,350,000, taking into account the cost of taxes and maintaining the old building. While organizations like the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois work to protect historical areas in and around Chicago, the Village of Kenilworth did not have any ordinances in place to prevent tear-downs for development. While this may benefit property owners, without protective ordinances in place, the historical character of these Chicagoland neighborhoods is threatened. The community celebrated the last-minute salvation of Skiff House, and the Village of Kenilworth raised around $50,000 to help ease some of Vigilante’s financial loss on the sale. |
AuthorA successful real Chicago estate investor, Cameel Halim supports his community through a variety of charitable efforts. Archives
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