“The U-505 In-Depth Experience”

On select weekends this summer, the Museum of Science and Industry (M.S.I.) is offering exclusive, two-and-a-half-hour-long, private group tours of the U-505 exhibit before the M.S.I. opens to the public. The “U-505 In-Depth Experience” tours start at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, June 16, 2018; Sunday, July 1, 2018; Saturday, July 21, 2018; Sunday, August 5, 2018; and Saturday, August 25, 2018. First, coffee and tea will be served. Next, there will be an in-depth guided tour of the exhibit. Then, there will an interactive on-board tour of the U-boat.

After these tours, there will be time to explore the exhibit before the Museum of Science and Industry opens to the public. United States Navy submarine veterans will be on hand to answer questions and share stories about serving aboard modern submarines.[1]

This experience requires a $40 ticket separate from a Museum Entry (general admission) ticket, which is also required to attend. Plan to arrive at 7:45 a.m. because it takes some time to reach the U-505 exhibit hall and then descend to the Lower Level.

This experience is for adults, teenagers, and children age ten and over. Please keep in mind while the 35,000-square-foot exhibit hall surrounding the U-505 is wheelchair-accessible, the same cannot be said of the U-505 herself.

Figure 1 Credit: J.B. Spector, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: This is the Forward Torpedo Room of the U-505.

Now through September 3^rd, the M.S.I. is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day except Thursday, July 19, 2018. On September 4^th, the M.S.I. will revert to regular hours (9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.). On Sunday, September 23, 2018, the M.S.I. will be open from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; and on Saturday, October 6, 2018, will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.; and on the weekend of Saturday, November 17, 2018 and Sunday, November 18, 2018, the M.S.I. will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The Museum of Science and Industry will be closed on Thanksgiving Day (Thursday, November 22, 2018) and the First Day of Christmas (Tuesday, December 25, 2018). Extended hours (9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.) will be in play again from Friday, November 23, 2018 to Sunday, November 25, 2018; Saturday, December 1, 2018 and Sunday, December 2, 2018; Saturday, December 8, 2018 and Sunday, December 9, 2018; Saturday, December 15, 2018 and Sunday, December 2016; Saturday, December 22, 2018 and Sunday, December 23, 2018; and Wednesday, December 26, 2018 through Sunday, December 30, 2018. Check this Webpage and the Museum of Science and Industry’s social media for updates.

The Museum of Science and Industry is located at the northern end of Jackson Park, on the south side of 57^th Street, between Lake Shore Drive to the east and Cornell Drive to the west, in the East Hyde Park neighborhood of the Hyde Park Community Area (Community Area #41) on the South Side of Chicago. The address is 5700 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60637. The Website is https://www.msichicago.org. The phone number is (773) 684-1414.

[1] Like all submarines built before engineer Helmuth Walther (1900-1980), an innovator in the fields of both rocket and submarine propulsion, invented air-independent propulsion (A.I.P.), the U-505 was designed to primarily run at the surface and dive occasionally, though when the Allies began to win the war, U-boats ran submerged during the day and surfaced almost exclusively at night. Today, Walther’s A.I.P. submarines – such as the famous Type XXI U-boat – that emerged toward the end of the war and nuclear submarines are considered true submarines and older model subs are considered submersibles because they were designed to mostly operate at the surface and only dive occasionally.

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.