“When is Shedd After Hours: Halloween?” by S.M. O’Connor

Shedd After Hours: Halloween will be at the John G. Shedd Aquarium on Thursday, October 31, 2019 from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Food, beverages, and 4D tickets will be available for purchase. The Shedd Aquarium’s culinary staff will prepare “festive bites.” This event is for adults (twenty-one-years-of-age-and-over) exclusively. Guests should be prepared to show a photo identification card.

The Shedd Aquarium is promising “surprising animal encounters and a hair-raising shark chat that proves facts are stranger than fiction.” At the Science Pub, one can drink “a spooky spirit” while learning from a Shedd specialist “just how unearthly the deep ocean really is.”

Figure 1 Credit: John G. Shedd Aquarium Credit: This picture of an owl on a pumpkin was taken on October 15, 2018.

There will be a costume contest with prizes. Please note, however, that facemasks and “costumes with weapons of any kind” are prohibited.

Tickets are $24.95 ($19.95 for Chicago residents) or $14.95 for Members of the Shedd Aquarium. The Website is being updates as of this writing. To order tickets, call (312) 939-2438. The call center is open until 6:00 p.m. Alternatively, one can e-mail contactus@sheddaquarium.org.

After Hours Upgrade: Halloween Behind-the-Scenes Tour

According to the Shedd Aquarium, the thirty-minute-long Halloween Behind-the-Scenes Tour is “a pop behind the scenes: in the Wild Reef exhibit. It is a chance to learn how sharks catch prey, how animals hide in the open, and “the real stories behind some of Shedd’s spookiest animals.”

The price is a $15 add-on to one’s Shedd After Hours ticket. Space is limited. Reserve a spot by calling (312) 939-2438.

Figure 2 Credit: John G. Shedd Aquarium Caption: This is the Shedd After Hours logo.

Shedd After Hours events are always for adults (twenty-one-and-over). They are opportunities to take in views of the Chicago skyline, and meet beluga whales, bluegills, stingrays, and sturgeons. Every Shedd After Hours event features salsa dancing, animal encounters, scientific stories, food, and drinks.

The Shedd Aquarium is a Smithsonian Affiliate. It is located on the Museum Campus in the Chicago Park District’s Burnham Park. Normally, the Shedd Aquarium is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. during the workweek (Mondays through Fridays) and from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekends (Saturdays and Sundays). Click here for updates on hours. The last ticket sale is forty-five minutes before closing.

The address is 1200 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605. The Website is https://www.sheddaquarium.org. The phone number is (312) 939-2438.

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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.