“When is The Field Museum’s Science & Fireworks Cruise?” by S.M. O’Connor

The Field Museum of Natural History will present the Science and Fireworks Cruise on a cruise ship on Lake Michigan with the line Chicago’s First Lady Cruises on Wednesday, August 21, 2019 from 7:15 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Chicago’s First Lady Cruises is docked on the south bank of the Chicago River, on Lower Wacker, east of Michigan Avenue. It is accessible from the Chicago River Walk. There is an entrance on Upper Wacker that leads to stairs descending to the river bank. This entrance is next to the Michigan Avenue drawbridge, at the southeast corner of Wacker and Michigan. The address is 112 East Wacker Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60601.

A ticket is $140 per person ($125 for Members). Tickets cover light hors d’oeuvres and complimentary soda, beer, and wine. There will also be a cash bar. Click here to purchase tickets.

Please note that the ship cannot accommodate electric wheelchairs or motorized scooters. A manual wheelchair can board the cruise ship, but the upper deck can only be reached by stairs.

Boarding will begin at 7:15 p.m. The cruise ship will depart at 7:30 p.m. Fireworks will begin at 9:30 p.m. The cruise will end at 10:00 p.m.

Stunning architecture on Chicago's Museum Campus

Figure 1 Credit: Thomas Barrat Caption: This is The Field Museum of Natural History, as seen on June 17, 2008 at 11:43 a.m.

Figure 2 Credit: Adahm Faehn Caption: This photograph, entitled “Chicago Night Skyline,” depicts the Chicago skyline as seen on the night of February 26, 2014.

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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.