“‘U-505 Submarine: 75 Stories’ Opens at Museum of Science & Industry” by S.M. O’Connor

The Museum of Science and Industry (M.S.I.) celebrated the 75^th anniversary of the U.S. Navy Task Group 22.3’s capture of the U-505 German long-range attack submarine,[1] which occurred on Sunday, June 4, 1944, on Tuesday, June 4, 2019 with a new exhibit, U-505 Submarine: 75 Stories.[2] Located in the John and Rita Canning Gallery in the Central Pavilion, east of the Lower Court, on the Lower Level (ground floor), the exhibit is comprised of seventy-five artifacts, documents, and photographs the curatorial staff chose from the Institutional Archives and Collections storage.

The artifacts include tools the officers and crewmen of the U-505 used to repair her while at sea. These objects illustrate what it was like to be both the American sailors and airmen of Task Group 22.3 and the German submariners of the U-505. The exhibit also includes two items – a board game and a comic book – inspired by the capture of the U-505. Visitors will see personal items, uniforms, and journals of German submariners, as well as photographs from the Archives of the U-505, her crew, and U.S. Navy Task Group 22.3.

After a conservation effort that lasted almost two years, guests who take the on-board tour will have an even more realistic sense of a submariner’s life onboard the U-505 during the Second Great World War by seeing her restored Control Room and Galley (kitchen).[3] The Conning Tower and the Aft Torpedo Room, which are not accessible to the public, have also been restored. Outside of the sub, guests can see a life raft that carried the U-505’s surviving officers and crewmen from the sinking U-505 to the American ships of Task Group 22.3, partially inflated and restored on display.

Figure 1 Credit: J.B. Spector, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: The exhibit U-505 Submarine: 75 Stories has artifacts and archival documents and photographs. The object in the case is a model of the subterranean U-505 exhibit – The New U-505 Experience – in the McCormick Foundation Exhibition Hall, which opened in 2005.

Figure 2 Credit: J.B. Spector, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: This comic book was printed for Captain D’s, a Nashville-based seafood chain.

Figure 3 Credit: J.B. Spector, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: Tools from a two-year-long conservation effort of the U-505 are on display in the exhibit U-505 Submarine: 75 Stories.

Figure 4 Credit: J.B. Spector, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: The exhibit U-505 Submarine: 75 Stories includes uniforms and journals of the German submariners.

Figure 5 Credit: Seán M. O’Connor Caption: On Tuesday, June 4, 2019, Bill Kurtis,[4] 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, which extends forty-two feet underground.

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.

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. from Saturday, June 22, 2019 through Sunday, June 30, 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] I am italicizing the U-505 when referring to her as a museum ship and not italicizing the U-505 when referring to her when she was in service of the Kriegsmarine (German Navy under the Third Reich) during the Second Great World War.

[2] I posted my first article on the exhibit, “How is the M.S.I. Celebrating the 75^th Anniversary of the U-505’s Capture?” on Wednesday, May 29, 2019. This new article reflects a press release dated Tuesday, June 4, 2019.

[3] 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.

[4] 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.