“When is the Maker Showcase at the Museum of Science & Industry?” by S.M. O’Connor

The MSI Maker Showcase will be on Saturday, July 13, 2019 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. This is an opportunity to meet Chicagoland makers and designers, learn how they got their starts, get hands-on with their handiworks, and learn how to become a maker at home. The event will be on the Main Level, Museum-wide.

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, the M.S.I. is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day in July, except on Thursday, July 18, 2019, when it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. From Thursday, August 1, 2019 to Saturday, August 17, 2019, and on Saturday, August 31, 2019, it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; and from the 18^th to the 30^th of August, it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. On Sunday, September 1, 2019 and Monday, September 2, 2019, it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Otherwise, in September, it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., except on Saturday, September 29, 2019, when it will be open from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Throughout the whole of October, it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., except on Saturday, October 5, 2019, when it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

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.

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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.