Frito-Lay Free Day at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry

Saturday, January 13, 2018 is Frito-Lay Free Day at the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park on the South Side of Chicago. Free Museum Entry (general admission) tickets and special activities are courtesy of the Family Edition of Frito-Lay’s Dreamvention Contest. Note that special exhibits like Brick-by-Brick and Robot Revolution, movies in the Giant Dome Theater, an on-board tour the U-505, Coal Mine tours, and the WOW! Tour of the Museum of Science and Industry (M.S.I.) require separate timed tickets that cost $12 per adult or $9 per child. There will also be a free day on Wednesday, December 13, 2018 at the New York Hall of Science in New York City.

For a chance to win $250,000 in the Family Edition of the Dreamvention Contest, take these four steps. Firstly, go to the Website www.mydreamvention.com/home. Secondly, dream up an invention with one’s (a) family, or (b) group of friends, or (c) classmates, or (d) team. Thirdly, draw it with the Website’s tool or draw it with one’s own tool. If one has a photograph, it should be in .jpg or .png format and not exceed 10MB. Fourthly, upload it by Monday, February 26, 2018. A household can submit up to five Dreamventions. In order to qualify, an invention cannot have already won awards and the inventor cannot be in the process of receiving a patent for it. Five finalists will be announced in October of 2018. If one has questions, one should call Frito-Lay Customer Service at 1-800-352-4477.

To get 25% off a Lyft ride to M.S.I. for Frito-Lay Free Day, click on this link to get the code. There is a maximum savings of $5 per ride.

The M.S.I. opened within the Palace of Fine Arts in three stages between 1933 and 1940, as construction work was completed and exhibits were installed. The Palace of Fine Arts is the last exhibit building from the White City at the heart of Chicago’s first World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893) to remain standing in Jackson Park. The first opening ceremony of M.S.I. occurred during the first year of Chicago’s second World’s Fair, A Century of Progress International Exposition (1933-34).

The Museum of Science and Industry stands at the north end of Jackson Park, along 57^th Street, between Lake Shore Drive to the East and Cornell Drive to the West. Jackson Park is in the neighborhood of Hyde Park on the South Side of Chicago. The University of Chicago campus is west of the Museum of Science and Industry on 57^th Street. The M.S.I. is open every day except Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. Most days, it is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., but during peak periods it has extended hours (until 5:30 p.m.). The address is 5700 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60637. The Website is https://www.msichicago.org and the phone number is (773) 684-1414.

Figure 2 Credit: J.B. Spector, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: The south façade of the Museum of Science and Industry faces the Columbia Basin in Jackson Park.

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.