“When is this Year’s Last Adults-Only Night Event at the Shedd Aquarium?” by S.M. O’Connor

The last adults-only event at the John G. Shedd Aquarium of 2019 will be Shedd After Hours: Polar Party on Wednesday, December 18, 2019 from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Join a “beluga chat” in the Abbott Oceanarium to learn how beluga whales thrive in icy waters. Food, beverages, and Polar Express 4-D presentations are available for purchase. There will be prizes for an Arctic aquatic trivia contest and a “holiday” sweater contest. Tickets are $24.95 ($19.95 for Chicago residents and $14.95 for Shedd Members). This event is for full adults (twenty-one-and-over). A photo identification card must be shown at the door. Tickets include all permanent and special exhibits,[1] touch experiences,[2] and entertainment. Click here to purchase tickets. If one has a request related to the accommodation of a disability, click here. For groups of fifteen or more, e-mail groupreservations@sheddaquarium.org.

Shedd After Hours events are a time for adults to look back at the Chicago Loop and larger cityscape from the vantage point of the lakeshore, meet beluga whales, bluegills, stingrays, and sturgeons. Events include a variety of special programs, from salsa dancing, animal encounters, and “science stories.”

For an additional $15, one can purchase an additional upgrade for the After Hours Polar Tour, including a look behind the scenes. In this thirty-minute-long tour, one will see how otters, beluga whales, and penguins adapt to frigid environments, then go behind the scenes to the Marine Mammals kitchen to learn how Shedd Aquarium staff prepares meals for those animals. Space is limited. Call (312) 939-2438 for the package.

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 and from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekends. However, it will close early, at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 22, 2019 and at 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday, December 24, 2019 (Christmas Eve). Of course, the Shedd Aquarium will be closed on Wednesday, December 25, 2019 (Christmas Day or the First Day of Christmas). 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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[1] Please note that for the health and safety of the animals concerned, some exhibits close early. Refer to event signs for more information.

[2] Stingray Touch is open from late May to early September.

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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.