“When is the 2019 Community Tree Trim at Brookfield Zoo?” by S.M. O’Connor

The Community Tree Trim at Brookfield Zoo in west suburban Brookfield, Illinois will be the fourth weekend in November. It will be from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on both Saturday, November 23, 2019 and Sunday, November 24, 2019.

Community Group Tree Trim Package

Groups can register now to sponsor a Christmas tree at Brookfield Zoo to support the zoo and celebrate the 38^th annual Holiday Magic! festival. School groups, scout troops, and families are welcome. Click here to register. A tree trim community group receives twenty complimentary general admission tickets and five complimentary parking tickets, a fully LED-lit tree (so there is no need to bring lights), and a sign featuring the names of those people who decorated and donated the tree and their town. Trees are placed throughout the zoo on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to purchase a tree. The Early Bird Rate (through Friday, October 4, 2019) for a community group to purchase a tree is $140 each.

Corporate Tree Trim Package

A corporate group receives thirty complimentary general admission tickets, ten complimentary parking passes, a fully LED-lit tree, and a sign featuring the names of those people who decorated and donated the tree and their town. The rate for a 2019 Corporate Tree Trim Package is $500 for each tree.

Additional Admission Tickets and Parking Passes

Additional discounted admission tickets can be purchased separately for $10 each. The tickets are good for adults, children, and senior citizens and are available exclusively for the Tree Trim Weekend. These tickets must be purchased in advance and will be available to purchase online through Friday, November 22, 2019. Click here to purchase additional tickets. The tickets do not have to be purchased at the same time as the tree. These tickets are non-refundable. Tickets purchased at the gate during the Tree Trim Weekend will be regular price.

Additional parking passes can be purchased separately for the regular price of $14 each. Click here to purchase a parking pass.

2019 Tree Trim Patch

A 2019 Tree Trim Patch, which features, three giraffes, is $4. Click here to purchase a commemorative patch online. It can be picked up at the Wildlife Trading Post Gift Shop during Tree Trim Weekend. One can also purchase a patch at the Wildlife Trading Post Gift Shop from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 23, 2019 and Sunday, November 24, 2019.

Ornaments Guidelines and Removal

Click here for a complete list of suggested Christmas tree ornament guidelines along with ideas from previous years. If a group wants to keep Christmas tree ornaments, one can remove them from Wednesday, January 1, 2020 through Monday, January 18, 2020 during regular zoo hours (10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.). Ornaments left on Christmas tree after January 18, 2020 will not be saved.

The Community Tree Trim is presented by Raising Cain’s Chicken Fingers. It is sponsored by Target.

About the Chicago Zoological Society and the Brookfield Zoo

General zoo admission is $21.95 for adults and $15.95 for children (ages three-to-eleven) and senior citizens (ages sixty-five-and-over). Toddlers and infants two-and-under are free. Parking is $14.

The Chicago Zoological Society is a private, non-profit organization that operates Brookfield Zoo on land owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. It is accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums. The Brookfield Zoo met the American Humane Association’s rigorous standards for the care and welfare of animals to become the world’s first zoo to receive Humane Certified™ certification.

The Brookfield Zoo is open every day of the year. It is located between the Stevenson Expressway (I-55) and Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) and is also accessible via the TriState Tollway (I-294). The North Gate Main Entrance address is 8400 West 31^st Street, Brookfield, Illinois 60513. The South Gate Main Entrance address is 3300 Golf Road, Brookfield, Illinois 60513. A train station, the Hollywood (Zoo Stop) on Metra’s B.N.S.F. line, is a few blocks to the south of the South Gate entrance. The phone number is (708) 688-8000. The Website is www.czs.org/Brookfield-ZOO/Home.

$5.00 Per Month IN THE GARDEN CITY Subscription Plan

$50.00 Per Year IN THE GARDEN CITY Subscription Plan

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.