“2018 Autumnal Events at the Brookfield Zoo” by S.M. O’Connor

Upcoming events at the Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, Illinois this autumn include Pumpkins to the Animals, Boo! at the Zoo, the Wines in the Wild: An Evening in Disguise fundraiser, and Veterans Day Celebration. Please note these planned events are weather-dependent and schedules may be adjusted.

Pumpkins to the Animals

Outside the Pachyderm House, watch pumpkins given to animals at 10:15 a.m. on Sunday, October 21, 2018. Pumpkins will go to rhinos, a pygmy hippo, and red river hogs.

At the Seven Seas/Pinniped Point, watch pumpkins given to animals at 10:15 a.m. on Saturday, October 27, 2018. Pumpkins will go to dolphins and the pinnipeds.

Inside the Hamill Family Wild Encounters/Play Zoo, watch pumpkins given to animals at 10:15 a.m. on Sunday, October 28, 2018. Pumpkins will go to goats, reindeer, and lemurs.

Boo! at the Zoo

Boo! at the Zoo will continue today, Sunday, October 21, 2018 and next weekend (Saturday, October 27, 2018 and Sunday, October 28, 2018). [It started last weekend on Saturday, October 13, 2018.] Click here to purchase tickets. It is presented by Ferrara Candy Company, Trolli, SweeTarts, Black Forest, Brach’s, Nerds, Laffy Taffy, and Now and Later. The sponsor are the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Revolution Brewing. Yorktown Center is the sponsor of the Corn Maze. Bring a bag and the kids can trick-or-treat at five candy stations throughout Brookfield Zoo from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Giant Pumpkin Carving will take place from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Watch a professional pumpkin-carver turn pumpkins that weight 1,000 pounds or more into jack-o-lanterns on the North and South Malls.

Halloween Craft will take place at the Hamill Family Play Zoo from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. A separate fee may apply.

Decorate Spooky Treats on the West Mall from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. This is a matter of decorating a cookie and cupcake with icing and sprinkles. A separate fee may apply.

The Haunted Hayride will pick up riders at the North Mall from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. A separate fee may apply.

The Carousel will be a Creepy Cowboy Carousel from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. A separate fee may apply.

The West Mall will host the “Crazed Maize” Corn Maze from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The Pumpkin Smasher will operate every hour on the hour on the West Mall from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

A Bat Zoo Chat will be in the Australia House at 11:30 a.m. A Spider Zoo Chat will be at the Hamill Family Play Zoo at 12:30 p.m. A separate fee may apply.

An Owl Zoo Chat will be at the Hamill Family Play Zoo at 1:00 p.m. A separate fee may apply.

The Costume Parade will start in front of the Discovery center at 1:00 p.m. and end at the West Mall. Afterward, the Costume Contest will take place in the West Mall at 1:30 p.m.

A Scorpion Zoo Chat will take place in the Hammill Family Play Zoo at 2:00 p.m. A separate fee may apply.

A Wolf Zoo Chat will take place in Wolf Woods at 2:15 p.m. A Large Snake Zoo Chat will take place in the Hammill Family Play Zoo at 2:30 p.m. A separate fee may apply.

A Raven Zoo Chat will take place in the Hammill Family Play Zoo at 3:00 p.m. A separate fee may apply.

Wines in the Wild: An Evening in Disguise

Wines in the Wild: An Evening in Disguise will take place in the Discovery Center at Brookfield Zoo on Saturday, October 27, 2018. The Women’s Board of the Chicago Zoological Society is hosting this event. The V.I.P. Reception will be from 6:00 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. During the V.I.P. Reception, one may purchase fine wines, visit Brookfield Zoo “animal ambassadors,” and receive acknowledgement in the program book at the event. The Main Event will be from 7:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. The address is 3300 Golf Road, Brookfield, Illinois.

Guests will be able to sample wines and liquors from Prestige Countryside Liquors accompanied by hors d’oeuvres prepared by the Brookfield Zoo culinary staff. Find something you really like and you can purchase it by the bottle. Ten percent of all proceeds from wine purchases during the evening will be donated back to Brookfield Zoo. Further, there will be a raffle and silent auction.

A $120 ticket for one person will give that person access to the wine-tasting and auctions at the Main Event that begins at 7:30 p.m., while a $275 V.I.P. ticket will give one person access to the private tasting at 6:00 p.m. For $500, one will get two V.I.P. tickets that will grant two people access to the private tasting at 6:00 p.m. The best deal is six V.I.P. tickets for $1,200, which, needless to say, will grant six people access to the private tasting at 6:00 p.m. Clicker here to purchase tickets or make donations online through the GiveSmart™ platform.

Veterans Day Celebration

To honor men and women who served in the United States Armed Services, the Chicago Zoological Society is inviting the public to a Veterans Day ceremony will happen at the Discovery Center on Sunday, November 11, 2018. On Veterans Day, admission to the Brookfield Zoo is free for all guests (though parking fees will still apply).

From 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., there will be a display of military memorabilia in the Founders Room in the Discovery Center, a military vehicle display in the Discovery Center Plaza, and an opportunity to learn about Cook County Military and Honor Flight Chicago. Ambassador Animals will be present from 11:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The Legacy Girls will perform from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. From 1:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m., one can see the posting of the colors, hear a performance of the National Anthem, and hear remarks delivered by Dr. Stuart Stahl, President of the Chicago Zoological Society. Thereafter, the Jesse White Tumblers will perform from 1:15 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.

The Chicago Zoological Society is a private, non-profit organization that operates the Brookfield Zoo on property that belongs to the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. Founded in 1920 and chartered in 1921, the Chicago Zoological Society (C.Z.S.) brought to life the vision of Edith Rockefeller McCormick (1872-1932) to give Chicago a zoo without bars modeled on the Tierpark Hagenbeck, known in English as the Hagenbeck Animal Park, a privately-owned zoo in Hamburg founded in 1907 by Carl Hagenback, Jr. (1844-1913). In December of 1919, Edith Rockefeller McCormick – the daughter of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. and wife of Cyrus McCormick’s youngest son Harold Fowler McCormick (1872-1941) – donated eighty-three acres of land to the Forest Preserve District of Cook County to be the site of a modern zoo, to which the Forest Preserve District added ninety-eight acres.[1] Charles L. Hutchinson (1854-1924), the President of The Art Institute of Chicago, recruited Chicago Tribune editorial cartoonist and correspondent John T. McCutcheon (1870-1949) to become the first president of the C.Z.S. McCutcheon attributed this decision to the book In Africa he had written after he participated in the 1909 Carl Akeley (1864-1926) expedition for The Field Museum of Natural History.[2] The zoo opened to the public on July 1, 1934. [3] The expectation had been that about 33,000 people would attend, but about 58,000 people turned out.[4]

Figure 1 Credit: Sean M. O’Connor Caption: This is the South Gate, as seen on July 9, 2011.

The North Gate Main Entrance is at 1^st Avenue and 31^st Street. The address is 8400 31^st Street, Brookfield, Illinois 60513. The South Gate Main Entrance address is 3300 Golf Road, Brookfield, Illinois 60513. The Website is https://www.czs.org/Brookfield-ZOO/Home.

ENDNOTES

[1] Andrea Friederici Ross, Let the Lions Roar! The Evolution of Brookfield Zoo. Chicago: Chicago Zoological Society (1997), p. 2

[2] John T. McCutcheon, Drawn from Memory: The Autobiography of John T. McCutcheon. Indianapolis and New York City: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. (1950), p. 422

[3] Ross, p. 34

[4] Ross, p. 40

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.