When are the Illinois Resident Free Days at the Shedd Aquarium in September of 2022

The John G. Shedd Aquarium is free for Illinois residents on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays after Labor Day (Monday, September 5, A.D. 2022), from Tuesday, September 6, A.D. 2022 through Wednesday, September 28, A.D. 2022. Timed-entry tickets must be purchased online and in advance. Click here to purchase tickets online. Please note that a $3 fee applies to all Illinois Resident Free Days tickets purchased online. Free admission will not be given to visitors who purchase tickets onsite. All adults must furnish proof of residency when redeeming Illinois Resident Free Days tickets in person.

Illinois Resident Free Days in September of 2022

Week	Date
First Week of September	Tuesday, September 6, A.D. 2022 Wednesday, September 7, A.D. 2022
Second Week of September	Monday, September 12, A.D. 2022 Tuesday, September 13, A.D. 2022 Wednesday, September 14, A.D. 2022
Third Week of September	Monday, September 19, A.D. 2022 Tuesday, September 20, A.D. 2022 Wednesday, September 21, A.D. 2022
Fourth Week of September	Monday, September 26, A.D. 2022 Tuesday, September 27, A.D. 2022 Wednesday, September 28, A.D. 2022

On Illinois Resident Free Days, the Shedd Aquarium extends its hours to expand access for the benefit of workers and students who would be indisposed during the hours when the Shedd Aquarium would be open. For the latest information about Shedd Aquarium hours, check the Plan a Visit Webpage.

Illinois residents receive free general admission. This includes the exhibit Underwater Beauty, as well as daily animal spotlights. The latter features Pacific white-sided dolphins, beluga whales, penguins, or California sea lions. Visitors can also purchase tickets for Stingray Feeding, 4-D Experiences, or Virtual Reality Experiences.

Figure 1 Credit: John G. Shedd Aquarium Caption: This is the *Stingray Touch Exhibit*.

Figure 2 Credit: John G. Shedd Aquarium Caption: This is the Stingray Touch Experience.

Figure 3 Credit: John G. Shedd Aquarium Caption: This is the Wild Reef Shark Habitat.

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$50 Per Year IN THE GARDEN CITY Subscription Plan

Chicago police officers and firefighters enjoy free onsite general admission when they furnish their photo identification cards. Click here to reserve tickets. This offer does not apply to special events and the 4-D Experience (subject to availability).

Active-duty American military personnel Click here to reserve tickets. This offer does not apply to special events and the 4-D Experience (subject to availability). Please note that this offer does not cover dependents and other family members.

As a Museums for All partner, the Shedd Aquarium offers daily free and discounted admission to people receiving food assistance (known as SNAP benefits) by presenting their RBT cards. This offer is valid for people receiving SNAP benefits in any state. Online reservations are required. One E.B.T. (Electronic Benefits Transfer) card is required to be shown in person for every four Museums for All tickets. This program is thanks to the munificence of the Ford Motor Company.

All visitors with an active Bank of America®, Merrill® (formerly Merill Lynch®) of Bank of America Private Bank® (formerly U.S. Trust®) branded debit or credit card – physical or electronic/digital card – and an active, valid photo identification card shall receive one free general admission ticket to the Shedd Aquarium on select dates. Advance reservations are required. Admission benefits are not transferable and are valid for the cardholder exclusively. Click here to reserve such tickets and click here to purchase tickets for other guests. This offer is not valid during special events or for admission to the 4-D Experience (subject to availability).

Museums in the Park employees and volunteers enjoy free admission with up to two guests. Click here to reserve tickets.

As an Association of Zoos & Aquariums-accredited organization, the Shedd Aquarium offers tickets at 50% off for partner organizations enrolled in the Reciprocal Membership Program. Click here to reserve tickets.

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As with The Field Museum of Natural History, the source of the money to establish the Shedd Aquarium came from Marshall Field & Company, which at the time was a wholesaler as well as a department store. The founder and eponym of the John G. Shedd Aquarium was John Graves Shedd (1850-1926), one of Marshall Field I’s protégés. He was President of Marshall Field & Company from 1906 to 1923 and served as the first Chairman of the Board of Marshall Field & Company from 1923 to 1926.[1]

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The 90,000-gallon Caribbean Reef is home to 500 tropical Caribbean reef sea creatures. These include sharks, a moray eel, and a green sea turtle. The 750,000-gallon Wild Reef is housed in a $45,000,000 subterranean structure. It simulates a Philippine coral reef and is home to 540 species of sea creatures. The 3,000,000-gallon Abbott Oceanarium simulates the environment of the Pacific Northwest. It is home to beluga whales, Pacific white-sided dolphins, sea otters from California and Alaska, and sea lions from California. Before the COVID-19 pandemic closures, every year, approximately 2,000,000 people visited the Shedd Aquarium.

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The Shedd Aquarium is open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. It is located on the Museum Campus in the Chicago Park District’s Burnham Park, across from Grant Park in downtownChicago.

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

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ENDNOTES

[1] Shedd was also Chairman of the Board of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway, Director of the Illinois Central Railroad, and one of the forty-nine Governing Members and Trustee of the Chicago Zoological Society.

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.