“Admiral Byrd’s Penguins at the Brookfield Zoo and Field Museum” by S.M. O’Connor

During the Second Antarctic Expedition in 1935 Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd (1885-1967), captured eleven emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri), which he sold to the Chicago Zoological Society for Brookfield Zoo for the benefit of his men.[1] Admiral Byrd contacted anthracite coal mining magnate and boxing promoter George F. Getz, who had donated the 143 animals from his private menagerie at Lakewood Farm to the Chicago Zoological Society in 1933,[2] and Mr. Getz relayed the offer to the Chicago Tribune’s Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist John T. McCutcheon (1870-1949), President of the Chicago Zoological Society (1921-1948), who dispatched Brookfield Zoo Director Robert Bean with $5,000 to buy the birds and bring them back in a refrigerated car.[3]

The birds started to die off due to a fungal infection in their lungs, possibly contracted from hay when they were aboard ship. Subsequently, the Brookfield Zoo donated them to The Field Museum of Natural History.[4] McCutcheon recounted, “Our zoo bought them and they were shipped out in a refrigerated car. They… were the first of their kind in captivity and nobody knew just what care they needed. Their arrival was followed by two harrowing weeks. One of them died. A hurried autopsy was made in the hope of locating the trouble, thus saving the others. Great blocks of ice were put in their quarters. Another died. Some were put out in the winter cold; others in an air-conditioned cold room. But the tragedies could not be averted. Doctors skilled in bird treatment did what they could but every one of those splendid penguins died. A fungus growth in their lungs was the only trace of trouble that could be found. The assumption was that either they had picked up some infection from the hay used in their quarters on shipboard, or else that they lacked resistance to accommodate themselves to any air less pure than that of the Antarctic which contains no particle of dirt or vegetable matter whatsoever. Now they form a handsome group in the Chicago Natural History Museum.”[5] [The Chicago Natural History Museum, of course, was the name of The Field Museum at the time McCutcheon wrote his memoir, before it reverted to being called The Field Museum of Natural History.] The fungal disease that killed the birds was aspergillosis.[6]

Staff Taxidermist John W. Moyer mounted the eight emperor penguins in the diorama in a habitat group.[7] Charles Corwin and Arthur Rueckert painted the landscape for the Emperor Penguin Diorama to depict the Ross Ice Shelf.[8]

Emperor penguins live the farthest south of any other type of bird.[9] They are the tallest and heaviest penguin species, hence the name. An adult emperor penguin is about the size of a ten-year-old boy, four feet tall and weighing ninety-four pounds.[10]

Figure 1 Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: Staff Taxidermist John W. Moyer mounted the eight emperor penguins in the diorama in a habitat group.

Figure 2 Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is my nephew looking at the Emperor Penguin Diorama on Friday, March 9, 2018. As with the Four Seasons, the African Elephant Group, The Lions of Tsavo, and Bushman, families have been able to view the Emperor Penguin Diorama for generations.

Figure 3 Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: Charles Corwin and Arthur Rueckert painted the landscape for the Emperor Penguin Diorama to depict the Ross Ice Shelf. They painted additional penguins in the background the way filmmakers use practical and digital special effects to increase the number of people viewers see on screen.

[1] John T. McCutcheon, Drawn from Memory: The Autobiography of John T. McCutcheon. Indianapolis and New York City: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. (1950), p. 426

See also Sally Metzler, Theaters of Nature: Dioramas at The Field Museum. Chicago: The Field Museum (2007), p. 38

[2] Andrea Friederici Ross, Let the Lions Roar! The Evolution of Brookfield Zoo. Chicago Zoological Society (1997), p. 30

[3] Ross, p. 45

[4] Metzler, p. 39

[5] McCutcheon, p. 426

[6] Ross, p. 45

[7] Metzler, p. 39

[8] Metzler, p. 39

[9] Metzler, p. 39

[10] Metzler, p. 39

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.