“Two Upcoming Fairy Castle Presentations at Public Libraries,” by S.M. O’Connor

Two curators of the Museum of Science and Industry will be making presentations about Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle at suburban public libraries in the next few days. Tonight, Friday, March 29, 2019, Margaret Schlesinger will be presenting tonight at the Elmhurst Public Library in west suburban Elmhurst, Illinois and Voula Saridakis, Ph.D., will be presenting at the Brookfield Public Library in west suburban Brookfield, Illinois.[1] Registration is closed for both events. Both presentations will begin at 7:00 p.m. and will last for somewhere between sixty and ninety minutes. These presentations are virtual tours of the Fairy Castle, which has been on display at the Museum of Science and Industry since 1949, give an overview of the conservation it underwent a few years ago, and relate how silent film star Colleen Moore brought the Fairy Castle into existence.

Colleen Moore Fairy Castle @ the Museum of Science and Industry — *Colleen Moore Fairy Castle* @ the Museum of Science and Industry

Figure 1 Credit: J.B. Spector, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: This is Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle, as seen on May 17, 2014. The nine-square-foot castle has 1,500 miniatures.

Figure 2 Credit: J.B. Spector, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: Former M.S.I. Preparator Mike Cowan and Liparini Restoration Studio conservator Inez Litas work on Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle, which is a modular structure with 200 pieces, on October 29, 2013.

The Elmhurst Public Library is adjacent to Wilder Park in downtown Elmhurst. It is west of the Elmhurst Art Museum. The address is 125 South Prospect Avenue, Elmhurst, Illinois 60126.

The Brookfield Public Library is at the southeast corner of Grand Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue. It is southwest of the Brookfield Zoo. The address is 3609 Grand Boulevard, Brookfield, Illinois 60513.

[1] The Websites of both libraries state Ms. Schlesinger will be giving the presentations, but as they are happening simultaneously and as she has not yet mastered the art of bilocation, her colleague will be giving the presentation in Brookfield.

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.