Month: May 2018

The Paramount Theatre and Arts Center in Aurora Illinois first opened in 1931. It is located in Aurora downtown at 23 E. Galena Boulevard in the Stolp Island Historic District. The building was designed by architects Rapp and Rapp in the Art Deco style with some Venetian details and it was commissioned by J.J. Rubens for one million dollars. The Rapps were famous for designing theaters. The building underwent a restoration in 1978 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. The building can hold approximately 1,885 people and was the first air conditioned building outside of Chicago. It’s owned and operated by the Aurora Civic Center Authority.

Paramount Pictures started establishing theaters to show their own films in the 1920s. Talkies had just started and Paramount predicted it would lead to high demand in the industry. The old theaters were primarily designed to show live theater, not films. The Paramount Theatre in Aurora opened in September 1931 with appearances by famous Paramount film stars: The Marx Brothers, Jack Benny and Burns and Allen.

Today, the Paramount Theatre and Arts Center features Broadway style live peformances, musical concerts and live comedy. Some upcoming performances include the 2018-19 Broadway Series, Once (the musical), Diana Krall, Judy Garland: Come Rain or Come Shine, Stayin’ Alive Bee Gees tribute band, Happy Together Tour 2018 and Classic Movie Mondays. It has more than 36,000 subscribers that enjoy the Paramount’s Broadway quality productions at affordable prices, making it the second largest subscription theatre in the nation.

• Note – Indoor photos are from Google and Wikipedia

El Centro is one of Northeastern’s four campuses in Chicago. It was founded in the 1960s. It all started with a storefront location called Aqui Estoy which served the West Town and Humboldt Park communities. The institution offered GED and ESL programs, counseling and tutoring to serve Hispanic students. College level courses were introduced in 1973 and the institution was renamed C.L.A.S.E.S. It moved to 2434 West North Avenue, but it never became operational.

In 1975 NEIU administration realized there was still a strong need for specialized academic programs to serve the needs of the Chicago Hispanic communities, and El Centro was established. From Spanish El Centro translates to English as “the center for the neighborhood.”

In 1991 El Centro moved to 3119 North Pulaski Road. To address the needs of the student body, El Centro went through major expansion and construction. By the Fall of 2009 El Centro had enrollment of more than 1,000 students.

Today, the new state-of-the-art El Centro campus is located at 3390 North Avondale in the Avondale community of Chicago. It was completed in 2014 and  is a 66,000 square foot building that is three stories tall. It is located next to the Kennedy expressway. The building was designed by Juan Gabriel Moreno of the Chicago architectural firm of JGMA.

 

The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) began operation on April 3, 1848. It is a futures and options exchange, and is one of the oldest in the world. It is currently owned by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group. It merged with the CME in 2007. Trading occurs on the floor of the exchange and is called “open outcry” trading. Since 2012, the CBOT also has electronic trading.

Open -outcry trading takes place in the pit. The pit is a raised octagon structure with steps up on the outside and steps down on the inside. It looks like an amphitheater and has acoustics that allow traders to hear the bids (buys) and offerings (sells).

The Chicago Board of Trade is located at 141 West Jackson in downtown Chicago. It has been there since 1930. The CBOT building was designed by architects Holabird & Root in the Art Deco style. It features sculptural work by Alvin Meyer and contains a 31 foot statue of the Roman Goddess Ceres created by sculptor John Storrs. Ceres was the goddess of agriculture, grain and crops. The building is 605 feet tall and was the tallest building in Chicago until 1965 when the Daley Center superseded it.

The Chicago Board of Trade building was designated a Chicago Landmark on May 4, 1977.

 

Monday was beautiful weather and a perfect day for a walk through a beautiful Chicago neighborhood – Avondale. The trip was even better, because I was with my good friend, Suzette!

The World’s Columbian Exposition, aka the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 marks it’s 125th anniversary today. The fair’s opening day was May 1, 1893 and it ran through October 30, 1893.  The fair was held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492. It was also a way to show the world that Chicago had successfully rebuilt after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. It was located on approximately 690 acres in Jackson Park and Midway Plaisance. It was attended by approximately 27,300,000 visitors from all over the world and 46 countries had booths set up at the fair.

The layout of the fairgrounds and buildings of the fair were designed by architects John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles Atwood. The fairgrounds came to be known as “The White City”. It was a prototype of what these architects thought a city should look like. The White City is believed to have started what is now modern city planning. The buildings were done in the Beaux Arts Neoclassical style with mostly white materials. Other architects of the time also played a part in designing the 14 main(great) buildings and the other nearly 200 temporary buildings and structures (canals and lagoons) of the fair.

The 14 main/ great buildings built around a giant reflective pool called the Grand Basin were: The Administration Building, the Agricultural Building, the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, the Mines and Mining Building, the Electricity Building, the Machinery Hall, the Woman’s Building, the Transportation Building, the Fisheries Building, the Forestry Building, the Horticultural Building and the Anthropology Building.

It was the largest world’s fair of its time and was a symbol of American Exceptionalism and industrialization. Many new products and services were debuted at the fair. The Midway Plaisance was the carnival and amusements area that contained the world’s first Ferris Wheel. The fair also introduced the first moving walkway, now known as a “people mover” like at airports. Advances in the use of electricity were also showcased. Other products such as Juicy Fruit Gum, Cream of Wheat, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Vienna Sausage frankfurters were introduced at the fair. American artists and musicians were also featured extensively at the fair. It was also the first time the Pledge of Allegiance was recited in public. There were many others first that are too numerous to mention.

Since the buildings and other structures of the fair were meant to be temporary, not many survive today, but a few did. What was known as the Palace of Fine Arts is now the Museum of Science and Industry. There is a Midway Plaisance ice rink where the Ferris Wheel once stood. The sculpture known as the Statue of the Republic is gone, but there’s a replica in Jackson Park. Also, Wooded Island that was at the center of the fair was restored in 2015.There’s also a star on the Chicago Flag to symbolize the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago!

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia –