“Lego Group will Open First Dutch Lego Stores by Christmas,” by S.M. O’Connor

The Danish toy company Lego A/S (doing business as The LEGO® Group) is opening its first LEGO® Stores in the Kingdom of the Netherlands in time for Christmas. They will be in the cities of Amsterdam and Utrecht. The LEGO® Group is a family-owned company headquartered in Billund, Denmark with major offices in Enfield, Connecticut, U.S.A.; London, England; Shanghai, China; and the sovereign city-state of Singapore.

Figure 1 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: This is a LEGO® sign outside a LEGO® Store in London on the grand opening day.

Figure 2 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: This is the grand opening of a LEGO® Store in the U.K.

The Dutch Flagship LEGO® Store will be the one in Amsterdam and will have “a whole range of exciting LEGO retail innovations like Mosaic Maker” and “a nod to Dutch history and culture.” Both of the Dutch LEGO® Stores will sell a wide variety of LEGO® sets, in-store play experiences, Brick Specialists on staff to help customers choose sets, a Pick & Build Wall where one can choose bricks and elements in various shapes and colors, and Digital Boxes where one can scan almost any boxed LEGO® set and see the model in 3D.

Figure 3 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: This is a Mosaic Maker at a LEGO® Store in London.

Figure 4 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: This is the Pick & Build Wall at a LEGO® Store in London.

These LEGO® Stores in the Netherlands will offer products only available in LEGO® Stores and online at www.shop.lego.com such as LEGO® Stranger Things: The Upside Down and LEGO® Creator Harley-Davidson Fatboy. Both of the Dutch LEGO® Stores will have benefits for LEGO® V.I.P. members including exclusive V.I.P. gifts with purchases and double points events.

Alison Wood, LEGO Stores UK, Benelux & Scandinavia District Senior Manager stated, “Builders of all ages can visit and be inspired by the endless play opportunities inside our new stores in Amsterdam and Utrecht. Whether you’re 1 or 100 there is something for you to get excited about.”

Marco Capone, General Manager LEGO Benelux added, “We are very excited about the arrival of the two LEGO-stores. It shows our commitment to the overall toy market in the Netherlands. But most importantly, it is a key opportunity to offer the best possible LEGO experience.”

The Amsterdam Flagship LEGO® Store and Utrecht LEGO® Store will be opening their doors later this year (in the fourth quarter) with grand opening events, promotions and experiences. This will be happening around the same The LEGO® Group will be opening new shops in Birmingham and Southampton in England and Marseille in France.

Figure 5 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: This is the interior of a fairly typical LEGO® Store.

Figure 6 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: This is another view of a typical LEGO® Store. This one is located in the intu Milton Keynes shopping center in Buckinghamshire, England. LEGO® STAR WARS™, represented by the Chewbacca sculpture in the bottom right-hand corner, is the first and longest-running LEGO® licensed theme (product line).

Figure 7 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: This is another view of a typical LEGO® Store. This one is located in the intu Milton Keynes shopping center (which opened in 2000 as Midsummer Place) in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England, northwest of London.

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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.