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

The Avalon Branch of the Chicago Public Library is located on Stoney Island Avenue, at the northwest corner of Stony Island Avenue and 82^nd Street, in Avalon Park (Community Area #45) on the South Side of Chicago. It serves Avalon Park; Calumet Heights (Community Area #48); Burnside (Community #47); Chatham (Community Area #44); Greater Grand Crossing (Community Area #69); South Shore (Community Area #43); South Chicago (Community Area #46); and Jeffery Manor, a neighborhood in South Deering (Community Area #51).

The library is one block northwest of Faith Tabernacle Baptist Church and a few blocks northeast of the Chicago Park District’s Avalon Park. The Avalon Branch Library opened in a 14,000-square-foot dedicated library building on Tuesday, March 7, 2006. This is a new iteration of a branch library that first opened in 1928 in the community house of the Avalon Park Church at 81^st Street and Dante Avenue. The previous iteration occupied a smaller facility, a rented storefront at 8828 South Stony Island Avenue.

The Public Building Commission of Chicago (P.B.C.) oversaw the design and construction of the Avalon Branch Library for the Chicago Public Library. Urban Works, Ltd. is the Architect of Record. The firm stated, “Concentric designs and patterns were integrated to conceptually represent the ripple effect of learning, while calming blue and green tones were used to design a positive learning environment.”

Architectural features of the new red brick library building include cathedral ceilings and clerestory windows. The original clerestory mural was funded by the City of Chicago Public Art Program under the Percent for Art Ordinance. It also funded the sculpture Current by Barbara Cooper and a (digital) photo collage by Stephen Marc.

The Avalon Branch Library was erected with environmentally sustainable construction methods. This was done in accordance with the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System.

It opened with a $400,000 collection of books and other materials. When I first wrote about the Avalon Branch Library (for Examiner.com Chicago) in 2010, the featured collection was African American Genealogy.

There are two meetings rooms that can each accommodate forty people, but they can be combined to accommodate around 100 people. Groups that need to book both rooms simultaneously to accommodate over forty people need to contact the branch manager for approval. Combined, the two rooms have twelve tables, eighty chairs, and a lectern with a microphone. The West Meeting Room has a screen. 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 a room or both rooms combined are responsible for setup and takedown.

The Avalon 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 address is 8148 South Stony Island Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60617. The phone number there is (312) 747-5234.

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.