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

The Mayfair Branch of the Chicago Public Library, located at the northwest corner of Lawrence Avenue and Kostner Avenue, is an offshoot of the Albany Park Branch Library. It serves the neighborhoods of Albany Park and Mayfair in the Community Area of Albany Park on the North Side of Chicago. [Albany Park (Community Area #14) is one of Chicago’s seventy-seven community areas. It is roughly in the center of the city’s thirteen northernmost community areas. The neighborhoods of Albany Park, Mayfair, North Mayfair, and Ravenswood Manor lie within the Albany Park Community Area.] On paper, it also serves the entirety of Jefferson Park (Community Area #11), which is to the west of Albany Park. However, there is a Jefferson Park Branch of the Chicago Public Library.

On a temporary basis, the Mayfair Branch Library serves Independence Park, which is a neighborhood in Irving Park (Community Area #16), south of Albany Park. [The Chicago Park District has an Independence Park.] The reason the Chicago Public Library states on its Website that the Mayfair Branch Library serves Independence Park is that the Independence Branch Library, which is a storefront branch library at 3548 West Irving Park Road is supposed to serve Irving Park residents, but the commercial block of which it is a part was damaged by fire on Friday, October 30, 2015. A new Independence Branch Library will be built at 4022 North Elston Avenue in partnership with the Chicago Housing Authority (C.H.A.), and it should open by the end of 2018. In the meantime, Irving Park residents are supposed to visit the Albany Park Branch Library, the Mayfair Branch Library, and the Conrad Sulzer Regional Library.

The first iteration of the Mayfair Branch Library opened as a storefront as a sub-branch of the Albany Park Branch Library in 1942. Several iterations followed in other storefront locations. The present iteration was rededicated on Saturday, June 29, 1996 and opened on Monday, July 1, 1996, after a move to a new expanded location in a red brick building. In 2002, Mayfair Branch celebrated its 60^th anniversary.

There are four Featured Collections at the Mayfair Branch: Arabic Language Materials, Korean Language Materials, Spanish Language Materials, and Mayfair Local History. The Community Meeting Room can hold up to seventy people, and cannot be subdivided.

The address is 4400 West Lawrence Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60630. The Mayfair Branch Library is closed on Sundays. It is open from 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The phone number of the Mayfair Branch Library is (312) 744-1254.

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.