“The Archer Heights Branch of the Chicago Public Library” by S.M. O’Connor

The Archer Heights Branch of the Chicago Public Library is located in Archer Heights (Community Area #57) on the West Side of Chicago, southwest of the Chicago Loop. It is on Archer Avenue between West 50^th Street to the north, Karlov Avenue to the east, West 51^st Street to the south, and Kedvale Avenue to the west. This part of Archer Avenue is traditionally home to Chicago’s Gorale (Polish Highlander) community. The Archer Heights Branch Library serves the neighborhoods of Archer Heights; Sleepy Hollow (not to be confused with the exurb of Sleepy Hollow, Illinois); and West Elsdon. It is within a few blocks of two of the Chicago Park District’s parks, as it is about five blocks southwest of the 13.5-acre Curie Park and about seven blocks southeast of the 13.22-acre Archer Park.

This is the second iteration of the Archer Heights Branch Library. It opened on September 16, 2000. The Public Building Commission of Chicago oversaw the design and construction of this branch library for the Chicago Public Library. The Architect of Record was Antunovich & Associates. The general contractor was the Leopardo Companies. The previous iteration, the Archer Branch, was a rented storefront branch library at 5148 South Archer Avenue.

The new branch library has artworks by Brian Sikes, a member of the Art and Art History Department faculty at DePaul University, and Laura Mosquera, a Savannah, Georgia-based artist who was a visiting artist and instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2001 to 2007. The commissions were funded through the Percent for Art Ordinance administered by the City of Chicago Public Art Program. Ms. Mosquera executed her work in 2003-04.

The Featured Collections are Polish Language Materials and Spanish Language Materials). The Archer Heights Branch Meeting Room can hold up to 100 people (eighty seated). It has nine tables, eighty chairs, a screen, a lectern, and a sink. One can apply to book the room up to three months before the event, but not less than seven days before the event. The branch manager must approve the event. An applicant will be notified whether or not his or her application has been approved within three days. Groups that book the room are responsible for setup and takedown.

The address is 5055 South Archer Avenue. The phone number is (312) 747-9241.

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.