“The Field Museum’s Pop-Up Dino Dig Simulation on Michigan Avenue” by S.M. O’Connor

The Field Museum of Natural History’s Dig Site (temporary paleontological dig site simulation) is inside a storefront at 333 North Michigan Avenue (the Art Deco building at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive on the Magnificent Mile of Michigan Avenue). This is free and is open for a limited time through Sunday, June 30, 2019. The hours are 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Sundays and from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays.

This is a chance to examine a simulation of a paleontological dig site, take a picture of an eight-foot-long femur of the largest dinosaur, and learn about how paleontologists unearth the remains of creatures from the Cretaceous period, discover previously unknown creatures, help protect rainforests, etc.

The pop-up opened on Monday, April 1, 2019. Thus, The Field Museum made the announcement as a practical joke on April Fools’ Daywith a tweet and an e-mail as if paleontologists in the employ of The Field Museum had actually discovered dinosaur fossils in the foundation of a building on the Magnificent Mile.

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The Field Museum is celebrating the 125^th anniversary of its foundation. Open 364 days a year (every day but Christmas Day) from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., the last admission time is 4:00 p.m.

The new SUE gallery in Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet (formerly the movie theater in Evolving Planet) opened on Friday, December 21, 2018. SUE is the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton yet recovered. Her mounted bones went on display in Stanley Field Hall of The Field Museum on May 17, 2000.[1] More than 10,000 people visited The Field Museum that day. In one of the largest private gifts ever to a Chicago museum, the Tyrannosaurus rex SUE was remounted in a more scientifically accurate way and moved upstairs from Stanley Field Hall to the exhibit The Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet, as I wrote about in 2017. Meanwhile, a touchable cast of the biggest dinosaur yet discovered, Patagotitan mayorum, was installed in Stanley Field Hall, as part of The Field Museum’s 125^th anniversary celebrations in 2018, thanks to a $16,500,000 gift from the Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Trust. This titanosaur cast, which stretches across 122 feet of Stanley Field Hall, has been dubbed Máximo. The move of SUE upstairs and the installation of Máximo are part of the Griffin Dinosaur Experience. Last year, The Field Museum announced the $250,000,000 fundraising campaign “Because Earth. The Campaign for the Field Museum.”

The Field Museum has over 30,000,000 artifacts and specimens. Over 150 scientists, conservators, and collections staff members work there.

The address is 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605. The phone number is (312) 922-9410. The Website U.R.L. is https://www.fieldmuseum.org/.

[1] William Mullen and Alex Bordens, “Learning from Sue,” Chicago Tribune, 16 May, 2010, Section 1, p. 4

See also William Mullen, “T. Rex Proving to be $8.3 Million Bargain for Field Museum,” Chicago Tribune, 16 May, 2010, Section 1, p. 4

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.