Author: lbchicago1@hotmail.com

The Medinah Temple building is located at 600 N. Wabash in Chicago. It was built in 1912 by Shriner architects Huehl and Schmidt. It was built in the Moorish Revival style. It was originally a large auditorium with seating for approximately 4,200 people on three levels. It was best known for hosting the annual Shriner’s Circus and the Bozo 25th Anniversary Special on September 7, 1986 was also telecast from there. The acoustics of the building also made it a favorite site for recordings of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 2000, the building exterior was restored and the interior was gutted and reconstructed for use as a Bloomingdale’s Home Store, which opened in 2003. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on June 27, 2001.

 

It’s begining to look a lot like Christmas…….everywhere you go (as the song goes). I went to Macy’s on State Street and Fox Valley Mall in Aurora and both were looking a lot like Christmas. I hope you enjoy these photos and maybe they’ll help motivate you in your holiday decorating. I started my holiday decorating today and could definitely have used some motivation!

Macy’s Photos:

 

Fox Valley Mall Photos:

 

Animal Kingdom was a pet store, but it was also so much more! It was first opened in 1944 at 3021 North Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood by owner Bernie Hoffmann. It later moved down the street to 2980 North Milwaukee Avenue and was owned by Bernie Hoffmann’s son Robert Hoffmann and his wife Sandra.

It started as a traditional pet shop selling puppies, kittens, and fish, but soon more non-traditional/ exotic animals were added to the fold. This was largely due to the growth of television. They started renting animals for TV show appearances and other events. This started when a magician came in and requested two doves to use in his act. Later, the regular house pets were joined by monkeys, tigers and exotic birds. It should be noted that this was before governmental regulations were added that regulated and/or restricted the sale of exotic animals. It’s also important to mention that the animals were very well cared for. Large animals were allowed to walk around the store before opening hours began and employees routinely took pets home to provide extra care if needed.

The most famous animal by far was Chelveston the duck from the Ray Rayner show. My parents and I visited Animal Kingdom at least once a week (since we lived only a couple blocks away) and I was so excited to see Chelveston the duck!!!! After all, he was a TV star on one of my favorite shows.  The store also hosted pet blessings and provided education programs for schools and libraries.

I have so many very positive memories of Animal Kingdom. It was a place I could visit with my parents and grandparents and later my friends. No matter what kind of day I was having …….when I saw the animals at Animal Kingdom it made me happy! My own cat’s six kittens also found homes thanks to Animal Kingdom. My Mom and Dad took me to visit them until they were sold.

Animal Kingdom closed in 2009 when the owners retired, but last week when I visited Milwaukee Avenue in Avondale and passed by where Animal Kingdom used to be it brought back all the wonderful memories and it made me change the title of this post from “Animal Kingdom – Lost Chicago” to  “Animal Kingdom – Fondly Remembered”.

• Note – photos are from the public domain

Chicago’s first hotel was called the Sauganash. It was built in 1831 and before it became a hotel it was originally known as the Eagle Exchange Tavern. It was located at Wolf Point at the intersection of the north, south and main branches of the Chicago River at Lake Street and Wacker Drive. The area where the Sauganash Hotel stood was designated a Chicago Landmark in 2002. The hotel operated there for about 20 years, and also briefly served as Chicago’s first theater.

The hotel was named after Billy Caldwell “Sauganash”. Sauganash was an interpreter for the Indian Agents. His mother was Pottawatomi Indian and his father was Colonel Caldwell, an Irish officer in the British Army in Detroit.

The hotel was built by owners Mark and Monique Beaubien, who were French Indian traders. They settled in a small cabin at Wolf Point in 1826 and started the Eagle Exchange Tavern. In 1831 they added a frame onto the log structure and created the Sauganash Hotel. The settlement consisted of only about 12 houses at the time and the hotel was only one of two buildings on the south side of the main branch of the river.

It has been described as a white two story frame building with bright blue wood shutters. Its facade was contemporary Greek Revival. The hotel’s guests included both natives and settlers. In 1833 the Sauganash housed the election of the first town trustees of the new Town of Chicago. The Beaubiens owned the hotel until 1834. In 1835 it was sold to a Mr. Davis. It was briefly a theater at that time and in 1837 it hosted the first Chicago Theater company. In 1839 it became a hotel again but it was destroyed by a fire in 1851 and torn down. The Wigwam Hotel was built there in its place in 1860. The Wigwam was a convention center that was the site of the 1860 Republican National Convention where President Abraham Lincoln received his party’s nomination and eventual presidency.

• Note- Photos are from Wikipedia in the public domain

This past weekend I went on a walking tour of Riverside, Illinois. The tour was given by the Frederick Law Olmsted Society. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were the architects who designed and built the village of Riverside in 1869. Riverside is one of the earliest planned communities in the United States and the Riverside Landscape Architecture District was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

Riverside has been called a village in a park because of its curved roads that follow the bend of the Des Plaines River. Riverside also has a central village square that is located at the Metra BNSF Riverside train station. The train station was built in 1901. It also has a lot of greenspace because it has several large parks and 41 smaller parks and plazas at various intersections throughout the village. Many homes and estates were designed by famous architects of the time such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, William Le Baron Jenney, Frederick Clarke Withers, Calvert Vaux and Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Another major period of development happened in the 1920s and 1930s when smaller houses were constructed on smaller plots of land. The village has an eclectic mix of different types of buildings including smaller bungalows, larger Victorians and huge early twentieth century mansions. The photos below are from the South Side tour. I plan on taking the North Side tour next Spring. I hope you enjoy viewing these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them!

Last Sunday I visited The Growing Place in Aurora. It was my first visit to the very large and beautiful garden center and nursery. The Growing Place is located at 2000 Montgomery Road in Aurora. While it offers many varieties of plants, trees and shrubs, it’s also a fun place to visit because of the way it is arranged. There are picturesque displays of items throughout the space, as well as small houses in which to explore specialized merchandise. The larger white farmhouse on the property is beautifully maintained inside and out and offers eclectic antique like home decorations available for purchase. I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed my trip there. I found my new nursery!

Our first stop during Open House Chicago this weekend was the Wintrust Bank Building located at 231 South Lasalle Street in the downtown financial district. The site is more commonly known as the Central Standard Building (formerly the Continental Illinois Bank of Chicago). It’s located directly across the street from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. It was designed by architects Graham, Anderson, Probst and White in 1924.

It is a combination of neoclassical, Gothic Revival and Art Deco architectural styles. The second floor of the building boasts the grand banking hall. It consists of 88,000 square feet of space. It’s a huge space that has been recently restored to grandure.

The building is located on the former site of the Grand Pacific Hotel, where the U.S. was divided into four standard time zones during a commemorative event in 1883. This is commemorated by a plaque on Jackson Street.

The Bank of America was the primary tenant starting in the mid 1980s after Continental Bank folded. They remained there until 2014 when Wintrust leased the building and it became its permanent headquarters.

 

The Jane Addams Homes were built in 1938 by architect John Holabird and were one of the first projects the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) built to provide housing to the city’s poor in The Little Italy neighborhood on the Near West side. It was the first ABLA housing project. Four housing developments made up ABLA: Jane Addams Homes, Robert Brooks Homes, Loomis Courts, and Grace Abbott Homes.

The Jane Addams Homes consisted of 32 buildings containing approximately 1,000 units. They were built as a result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration (PWA) Program. They housed hundreds of families over several decades until they were vacated in 2002 and largely demolished by 2007. Below are photos of the only building that remains and plans are to have it house the National Public Housing Museum which is scheduled to open in 2019. The building is located at 1322-24 West Taylor Street.

 

The other day I took a walk on Downer Place in Aurora’s Westside Historic District. The City of Aurora has five historic districts. The historic homes and churches in this area were built in the mid to late 1800s or early 1900s. I hope you enjoy viewing the photos below, as much as I enjoyed taking them.

      

      

      

      

The Target store on State Street in Chicago is located at 1 South State Street, on the corner of State and Madison. It is also referred to as the City Target and is located in the historic Sullivan Center building. The building is named after architect Louis Sullivan who designed it. The building formerly housed the Carson Pirie Scott and Company department store.

It was built in 1899 for the retail firm Schlesinger and Mayer. Additions were also made to the building by Daniel Burnham in 1906 and Holabird & Root in 1961. It was sold to H.G. Selfridge and Company in 1904. Selfridge only occupied the building for a few weeks and then sold it to Otto Young who leased the space to Carson Pirie Scott for $7,000 per month. Carson Pirie Scott & Company occupied the building for greater than a century until 2007 when it was sold and then leased to Target which opened in 2012.

The building is one of the classic structures of the Chicago School of Architecture. It is a steel framed structure 12 stories high. A 40 foot water tower was placed on the roof to be used by the building’s sprinkler system in case of fire. That was a lesson learned from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Carson’s closed and left the building in February 2007. The new Target store opened on July 26, 2012. Target leases two floors of the building. Target has met with favorable reviews for the modern design of the interior while preserving the character of this historical building. Other building occupants include the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Gensler Architecture. The Sullivan Building has been a Chicago Landmark since 1975 and is part of the Loop Retail Historic District.