“Celebrating Earth Day at the Museum of Science & Industry” by S.M. O’Connor

The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is celebrating Earth Day by offering $5 off Museum Entry (general admission) tickets on Earth Day (Sunday April 22, 2018), so tickets for adults are $16.95 instead of $21.95 and tickets for children are $7.95 instead of $12.95. Use the code EARTHDAY, which will only be good on April 22^nd.

This will be an especially appropriate time to visit exhibits devoted to conserving energy, recycling, and sustainability: Extreme Ice and Earth Revealed. Reimagine Chicago’s power usage by designing more environmentally friendly homes, vehicles, roads, and more in Future Energy Chicago. This is also a chance to get a sneak peek at two new environmental science experiments designed for M.S.I.’s Summer Brain Games before their June debut. One can create a cloud in a bottle and make one’s own simple pH indicator from red cabbage. Guests who add a Wanger Family Fab Lab workshop to their visit will also take home an Earth Day globe, 3D printed using biodegradable materials. Please note that Fab Lab workshops and Future Energy Chicago are not included in Museum Entry tickets and required separate, timed-entry tickets.

The Museum of Science and Industry is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Earth Day and most days throughout the year. It has extended hours during peak periods. There are only two days when it is closed: Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.

Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), President of Sears, Roebuck & Company, founded the Museum of Science and Industry in 1926 through The Commercial Club of Chicago, of which he was a member. Mr. Rosenwald wanted Chicago to have a large science and industrial museum modeled on the Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft und Technik (German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology) in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. His fellow trustees named the museum the Rosenwald Industrial Museum in his honor, but he was a modest man and asked them to remove his name. In 1929, the trustees changed the name to the Museum of Science and Industry.

This year, the Museum of Science and Industry is celebrating the 75^th anniversary of its first opening ceremony, during Chicago’s second World’s Fair, A Century of Progress International Exposition (1933-34). It opened in three stages between 1933 and 1940. The building that houses the Museum of Science and Industry, the Palace of Fine Arts. Designed by Charles B. Atwood (1849-1896), it was built to house a temporary art museum for Chicago’s first World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), and afterwards it housed the Columbian Field Museum, which evolved into The Field Museum of Natural History, until 1920, when it moved into its new quarters. Consequently, this year the Museum of Science and Industry is celebrating the 125^th anniversary of the building and The Field Museum of Natural History is celebrating the 125^th anniversary of its foundation.

The Museum of Science and Industry is located at the northeastern corner of Jackson Park in the Hyde Park community area on the South Side of Chicago. It is at the southwest corner of 57^th Street and Lake Shore Drive. The address is 5700 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60637. The phone number is (773) 684-1414 and the Website is www.msichicago.org.

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.