“How is the M.S.I. Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the U-505’s Capture?” by S.M. O’Connor

Tuesday, June 4, 2019 marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of U.S. Navy Task Group 22.3’s capture of the U-505 on Sunday, June 4, 1944. Today, the German long-range attack submarine is a U.S. Navy war prize, a museum ship, and a National Historic Landmark. She has been on display at the Museum of Science and Industry (M.S.I.) since 1954, and the M.S.I. is celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the U-boat’s capture with a special ceremony, free tours of the U-505, and a new exhibit. Further, June 3-5, 2019 are Illinois Free Days at the M.S.I.[1]

Ordinarily, there is no additional fee to walk around the U-505 in her exhibit hall, but the twenty-five-minute-long U-505 Submarine On-board Tour costs $18 for adults and $14 for children. Note that on June 4^th only, the U-505 Submarine On-board Tour will be free.

To help celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the U-505’s capture, a new exhibit will also be opening in the Rita & John Canning Gallery on the Lower Level (ground floor) on June 4, 2019, U-505 Submarine 75 Stories. It will consist of seventy-five photographs and artifacts that are normally kept in the M.S.I.’s Collections storage and Archives, including personal journals and log books. This is a chance to gain insight into the lives of the American sailors and German submariners, the battle in which Task Group 22.3 captured the U-505, and the capture itself. Bill Kurtis, whose voice can be heard giving narration to several videos in the exhibit (and has been a friend of the M.S.I. for a number of years), was also Master of Ceremonies at a wreath-laying ceremony in the McCormick Foundation Exhibition Hall.[2]

Often stylized as the “Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago” or the “Museum of Science + Industry” the institution is located at the northern end of the Chicago Park District’s Jackson Park, on the south side of 57^th Street, between Lake Shore Drive to the east and Cornell Drive to the west, in the East Hyde Park neighborhood of the Hyde Park Community Area (Community Area #41) on the South Side of Chicago. Founded by Sears, Roebuck & Company President Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932) in 1926, through The Commercial Club of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry opened in three stages between 1933 and 1940. It occupies the Palace of Fine Arts from Chicago’s first World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893).

Normally, the M.S.I. is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. However, it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 25, 2019; Monday, May 27, 2019; and from Saturday, June 22, 2019 through Sunday, June 30, 2019. It will be open from 11:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 26, 2019.

The address is 5700 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60637. The Website is https://www.msichicago.org/ and the phone number is (773) 684-1414.

$5.00 Per Month IN THE GARDEN CITY Subscription Plan

$50.00 Per Year IN THE GARDEN CITY Subscription Plan

ENDNOTES

[1] On Illinois Free Days, the Museum Entry (general admission to the M.S.I.) is free for residents of the state who show valid proof of residency. No further Chicago residency discounts apply on Illinois Free Days.

[2] Bill Kurtis has a special place in the hearts of Chicagoans because even though he is nationally known as a new anchorman for C.B.S., as producer and host of Investigative Reports and Cold Case Files for the A&E (Arts & Entertainment) cable station, and his narration for the Will Ferrell comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), he was a well-regarded news anchorman for Chicago’s C.B.S.-owned TV station W.B.B.M./Channel 2 both before and after his stint in New York City.

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.