“Brookfield Zoo Welcomes Hope the Polar Bear”

Hope, a five-year-old polar bear arrived at Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, Illinois on Friday, January 29, A.D. 2021, so she will be new to zoo visitors after the zoo re-opened on Monday, as I mentioned earlier today in a story about the Brookfield Zoo re-opening. The Brookfield Zoo announced on Wednesday, February 24, A.D. 2021 that Hope, the female polar bear, would eventually be introduced to Hudson, the fourteen-year-old male polar bear. [Introducing a female polar bear that zookeepers consider a potential mate for a male is a complicated affair that must be conducted in stages for her safety.] They should fully come into contact in mid-March.

Figure 1 Credit Jim Schulz, Chicago Zoological Society’s Brookfield Zoo Caption: This is Hope, a five-year-old polar bear that arrived at Brookfield Zoo on Friday, January 29, A.D. 2021. Needless to say, she arrived in Chicagoland at the right time of year.

Figure 2 Credit Jim Schulz, Chicago Zoological Society’s Brookfield Zoo Caption: This is Hope, a five-year-old polar bear that arrived at Brookfield Zoo on Friday, January 29, A.D. 2021. She came to the Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, Illinois from Utah’s Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City.

Figure 3 Credit Jim Schulz, Chicago Zoological Society’s Brookfield Zoo Caption: This is Hope, a five-year-old polar bear that arrived at Brookfield Zoo on Friday, January 29, A.D. 2021. Jim Schulz took this picture on the afternoon of Tuesday, February 23, A.D. 2021.

Figure 4 Credit Jim Schulz, Chicago Zoological Society’s Brookfield Zoo Caption: This is Hope, a five-year-old polar bear that arrived at Brookfield Zoo on Friday, January 29, A.D. 2021. She is new to *Great Bear Wilderness* habitat. With her inclusion, it is now home to two polar bears and two brown bears again.

Figure 5 Credit Jim Schulz, Chicago Zoological Society’s Brookfield Zoo Caption: This is Hope, a five-year-old polar bear that arrived at Brookfield Zoo on Friday, January 29, A.D. 2021. Zookeepers are gradually introducing her to a prospective mate, Hudson, the Brookfield Zoo’s fourteen-year-old male polar bear.

Utah’s Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City, Utah transferred Hope to the Brookfield Zoo upon the recommendation of the Polar Bear Species Survival Plan (S.S.P.) administered by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (A.Z.A.). This and other S.S.P.s are breeding programs under which accredited zoos and aquariums in North America make a cooperative effort for the management and conservation of an animal species.

Nan, the female polar bear visitors may recall seeing at the Brookfield Zoo as recently as last year transferred to Como Park Zoo & Conservatory in St. Paul, Minnesota, upon the recommendation of the Polar Bear S.S.P. The “What You’ll Be Able to see at Brookfield Zoo” Webpage on the Website of the Chicago Zoological Society (C.Z.S.)/Brookfield Zoo has not been updated to reflect that Hope has replaced Nan, as of 8:39 p.m. on Wednesday, March 3, A.D. 2021, because that document is dated Wednesday, July 1, A.D. 2020 and reflects what visitors could expect to see the first time the Brookfield Zoo re-opened after the first COVID-19 closure.

In a press release, the C.Z.S. stated, “Polar bears are currently listed as a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature…The main threat of the species’ decline is due to reduced access to their main source of food—seal—due to climate change melting the sea ice and other environmental factors. According to researchers, there are approximately 23,000-26,000 polar bears living worldwide today, including in and around Canada, Russian [sic], and east Greenland.”

The C.Z.S.is a private, non-profit organization that operates Brookfield Zoo on land owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. Founded in 1920 and chartered in 1921, the C.Z.S. brought to life the vision of Edith Rockefeller McCormick (1872-1932) to give Chicago a zoo without bars modeled on the Tierpark Hagenbeck, known in English as the Hagenbeck Animal Park, a privately-owned zoo in Hamburg founded in 1907 by Carl Hagenback, Jr. (1844-1913). The Brookfield Zoo opened in 1934, during the second year of Chicago’s second World’s Fair, A Century of Progress International Exposition (1933-34).

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. Under normal circumstances, the Brookfield Zoo is open every day of the year.

Through Saturday, March 13, A.D. 2021, the Brookfield Zoo will be open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Starting on Sunday, March 14, A.D. 2021, the Brookfield Zoo will be open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on weekdays (the Monday-through-Friday workweek) and from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekends.

Admission tickets are $24.95 per adult or $17.95 for children (ages three-to-eleven) or $19.95 for senior citizens (ages sixty-five-and-over).[1] Tickets must be purchased online in advance. They come in twenty-minute increments to enable social distancing on the 216-acre grounds. Tickets are not available for sale on-site. Tickets are non-refundable. No rainchecks will be made.

Parking is $15. All non-member guests who arrive via car, truck, van, or recreational vehicle are required to pay for parking on the Website and will need to indicate location – either the Main Gate or South Gate parking lots during the checkout process. One can review a map of the grounds and parking lots here. All Members receive free parking in the North Lot. Members only need to pay for parking if they choose to park in the South Lot and are not eligible for free parking in the South Lot.[2] For more information about COVID-19 protocols, click here.

The Brookfield Zoo 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. Check https://www.CZS.org/Info for General Information and www.CZS.org/KnowBeforeYouGo for status updates.

$5 Per Month IN THE GARDEN CITY Subscription Plan

$50 Per Year IN THE GARDEN CITY Subscription Plan

END NOTES

[1] Tickets are free for active-duty, reservist, and retired members of the United States Armed Services. These free tickets do not cover relatives. Nor do they cover parking. To enjoy this benefit, reserve a free ticket in advance online, purchase tickets for other members of your party, purchase a parking pass, and be prepared to show your ID card.

[2] Obviously, guests who arrive on foot or via public transportation are not required to pay for parking.

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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.