“January is the Right Time to Visit the Chicago History Museum” by S.M. O’Connor

During 2018 Chicago Museum Week, the Chicago History Museum is offering 25% off admission on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and 10% off today, Sunday, January 21, 2018. [In 2018, “Chicago Museum Week” is a “Week” in name only as it lasts for nine days, from Thursday, January 18, 2018 to Friday, January 26, 2018.[1]] Admission will be free on Tuesday, January 23, 2018. Further, the Chicago History Museum will offer 20% off memberships, provided they be purchased on site or over the phone. Adult group tours of the facility will cost $12 per person with a minimum group size of ten people.

Special events began last week with the opening of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Photography Exhibit. Tomorrow, Monday, January 22, 2018, the thirty-minute-long History Highlights Gallery Tour will start at 1:30 p.m. This is a tour of the Chicago: Crossroads of America exhibit.

On Tuesday, January 23, 2018, the Chicago History Museum will host the History Happy Hour from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Taste spirits while learning about local history. This month’s beverage partner with the Chicago History Museum is Beam Suntory. Consequently, the drinks that will be served are Maker’s Mark® Bourbon Whiskey and EFFEN® Vodka. A D.J. will provide music. This event will take place in the Chicago Authored gallery. The event will include themed activities and fifteen-minute-long flash tours of galleries. Admission will be $15 (or $10 for members). One must be age twenty-one or over to purchase a ticket for this event. A ticket covers admission to the Chicago History Museum, two drinks, and tours.

This year, Illinois Resident Days when the Chicago History Museum admission fee is waived for Illinois residents every Tuesday – excluding Tuesday, December 18, 2018 and Christmas Day (Tuesday, December 25, 2018) – from 12:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. and on Commemorative Days. The remaining Commemorative Days are President’s Day (Tuesday, March 4, 2018) and Independence Day (Wednesday, July 4, 2018).

General admission fees for adults and teenagers will rise at the Museum of Science and Industry and for adults at the Chicago History Museum, but will be waived for teenagers who are Illinois residents at the Chicago History Museum, effective Thursday, February 1, 2018. On Wednesday, January 10, 2018, the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners voted to approve admission fee increases at the Museum of Science and Industry, which sits in Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago, and the Chicago History Museum, which sits in Lincoln Park on the North Side of Chicago. The Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners previously approved fee admission hikes for the Museum of Science and Industry in 2013 and the Chicago History Museum in 2016. “It’s important to point out in Chicago, where civic, public and private partnerships are so important, this validates those partnerships as part of the fabric of this city,” said Commissioner M. Laird Koldyke, according to the Chicago Tribune’s Leonor Vivanco-Prengaman. “These museums, all of them, they bring people to this city.”[2]

At the Chicago History Museum (C.H.M.), adults who are residents of Chicago general admission will rise from $14 to $17. General admission for adults who are not residents of Chicago will rise from $16 to $19. The C.H.M. will offer a $2 discount to college-age Illinois residents (ages nineteen-to-twenty-two), senior citizens (ages sixty-five-and-over) who are Illinois residents, and teenagers and young adults (ages thirteen-to-twenty-two) who are not residents of Illinois. Admission will become free for teenagers (ages thirteen-to-eighteen) who reside in Illinois. Right now, the C.H.M. charges senior citizens (ages sixty-five-and-over) and teenagers (ages thirteen-to-eighteen) $12 if they reside in Chicago and $14 if they reside outside the city. [Last year, the Museum of Contemporary Art introduced free admission for teenagers from all over Illinois. The Art Institute of Chicago was able to implement the same policy thanks to philanthropic gifts.] All children ages twelve-and-under get in without charge, and that will continue to be the case. [3]

Admission is also gratis for members of the C.H.M., the DuSable Museum of African-American History, the National Museum of Mexican Art, and The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture. The C.H.M. waives admission fees for active-duty members of the U.S. Armed Services and veterans (with valid identification cards), active-duty members of the Chicago Police Department and Chicago Fire Department (with valid identification cards), Illinois teachers (with valid identification cards), pre-registered school field trips, Park Voyagers (who must show passes), and Kids Museum Passport Holders (who must show passes). Under the Museums for All program, the C.H.M. offers a discounted admission fee of $3 to individuals and families presenting an Electronic Benefits Transfer (E.B.T.) card and a valid form of photo identification card. Please note a maximum of four adults will be allowed in at this discounted rate per one E.B.T. card. The Chicago History Museum is a Blue Star Museum. The C.H.M. offers free admission to active-duty members of the U.S. Armed Services (U.S. Army, U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Coast Guard, Reserves, and National Guard), as well as up to five family members. This program runs at the C.H.M. from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Please note that prices are subject to change.

Figure 1 Credit: Photo courtesy of the Chicago History Museum Caption: This is the main entrance of the Chicago History Museum on Clark Street. The Chicago History Museum is located at the northeast corner of Clark Street and North Avenue in Lincoln Park.

The Chicago History Museum is located in Lincoln Park at the intersection of Clark Street and North Avenue. The Chicago Historical Society, founded in 1856, is the city’s oldest non-religious cultural organization. In 2006, the C.H.S. renamed its facility the Chicago History Museum.

Normally, the C.H.M. is open from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Sundays, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:40 p.m. on Mondays, from 9:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, and from 9:30 a.m. to 4:40 p.m. Wednesday through Saturdays. The Research Center is open from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturdays. The Café is open from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sundays, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Mondays, from 9:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, and from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. The address is 1601 North Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois 60614. The phone number is (312) 642-4600.

[1] The twelve participating institutions, in the order in which they were founded, are the Chicago History Museum, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (the museum of the Chicago Academy of Sciences), the Lincoln Park Zoo, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Field Museum of Natural History, the John G. Shedd Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Adler Planetarium, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the DuSable Museum of African American History, the National Museum of Mexican Art, The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture. They are organizing 2018 Chicago Museum Week through an umbrella organization: the Museums in the Park. The first Chicago Museum Week was October 1-7, 2015.

[2] Leonor Vivanco-Prengaman, “Admission-fee hikes approved for Museum of Science and Industry and the Chicago History Museum,” Chicago Tribune, 10 January, 2018 (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-museum-admission-fee-increase-vote-20180110-story.html?utm_content=bufferdf9ff&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer) Accessed 01/18/18

[3] Leonor Vivanco-Prengaman, “Admission-fee hikes approved for Museum of Science and Industry and the Chicago History Museum,” Chicago Tribune, 10 January, 2018

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.