Author: lbchicago1@hotmail.com

As a child growing up in the Avondale neighborhood in Chicago I loved to go to the Olson Park & Waterfalls with my mother. My mother simply called it Olson Rug. I think we visited there at least once a week during the Summers. It was such a place of natural beauty right in the heart of the city. It was within walking distance of our house.

It was located at the corner of Pulaski and Diversey next to the Olson Rug Company (which owned and operated the park). It had 35 foot waterfalls, rock gardens with 3500 rare plants, shrubs, trees (such as junipers,spruce and pine), ponds with ducks, ravines and caves. It was also home to hundreds of wild birds. The park was a stark contrast to the surrounding industrial area. The Chicago Tribune called it one of Chicago’s Seven Lost Wonders. Admission to the 22 acre park was free and over 200,000 people visited annually.

The park opened in 1935. Walter Olson had the park built because he wanted to bring some natural beauty to the gray industrial background of the area. He wanted it to resemble his vacation home setting in Wisconsin. The building of the park was a huge project that took 200 workers approximately 6 months and was made of 800 tons of stone and 800 yards of soil. The Native American theme of the park included tee-pees and totem poles and events with Native American chiefs performing war dances. 1935 was the 100th anniversary of the forced movement of Illinois Native American tribes from Illinois across the Mississippi River. The park included a symbolic gesture deeding back the area of the park to the Native American tribes. The Olson Rug factory, mill and grounds were sold to Marshall Fields in 1965 and the park was closed in 1978.

I grew up in the Avondale neighborhood of Chicago. Avondale had a lot of industry. It seemed like there was a factory on almost every block. It’s no wonder Avondale has been referred to as the neighborhood that built Chicago! My parents both worked at factories. My Mom worked at Beltone hearing aid factory at Addison and Kimball and my Dad worked at Continental Can Company around Belmont and Cicero. Still, the factory that stood out to me the most was I.S. Berlin Press. It was a large building complex that was located on the Northeast corner of Belmont and Kimball. It was designed by A. Epstein and Sons architects.

Chicago was the the center of the printing industry when I.S. Berlin was located there in 1949. It had previously been located in the Printer’s Row neighborhood since it was founded in 1920, but was relocated to Avondale to make room due to the construction of the Congress Expressway.

I.S. Berlin Press printed children’s books, advertising literature with colored pictures, and other products using the lithography process. Manufacturing companies like I.S. Berlin were the base of the post-World War II industrial economy in cities like Chicago. When the plant first opened on Belmont and Kimball in 1949 they emplyed over 500 workers. A major $2.5 million expansion was made to the facility in 1961. This new addition was designed to reflect the curved shape of the new Northwest (Kennedy) Expressway built at the same time. The clock at the top became a true Avondale landmark. Growing up, I remember looking at the clock from my back porch window to check the time and it was also where we looked on the Fourth of July to view the fireworks.

I.S. Berlin was demolished in 1977 following a decline in the manufacturing industry which cost Avondale and other industrial Chicago neighborhoods thousands of jobs. It was replaced by the Kennedy Plaza Shopping Center.

           

This year I celebrated the New Year with my husband and son, as we always do. But, this year we also had a guest. My son’s friend, Wenwei stayed with us a few days while her car was being repaired after it broke down while she was on her way to our house. Wenwei is a graduate student at NIU, and I found out she’s also a talented artist! She shared some of her art with me and allowed me to share it with you. She said she does the drawings and clay figures because it’s fun. Wenwei is Chinese and one of the drawings is of Tian’an Men Square in Beijing, China. The clay piece is a figure about Illinois. Wenwei likes to travel and represents that in her art. One of the sketches shows a dog named Cammie Traveling Around the World wearing a pink backpack with a Leica camera around her neck, because Wenwei said her own backpack is pink and she’d like to get a Leica camera in the future. One drawing represents The Bean at Millenium Park. The other drawings are of places she’s visited, kind of like a travel journal of drawings. Thank you Wenwei!!

       

        

        

The Music Box Theater in Chicago opened on August 22, 1929. It is located at 3733 N. Southport Avenue in the Lakeview/Wrigleville neighborhood. The Music Box was considered small compared to the larger Chicago theaters of the time, such as the Chicago Theater downtown. It accommodated 800 versus 3,000 for the large theaters. As such, it ushered in the era of the small neighborhood theater. The building was designed by local architect Louis A. Simon.

The fact that the Music Box was small also represented the move to the motion picture industry from primarily stage productions. The large theaters of the time mostly had stage productions (musicals and plays) and very few movies. The Music Box had no stage, so it was only for cinema. At the time the Music Box opened, sound films were a new technology that sometimes didn’t work. So, the Music Box included an orchestra area and organ in case sound was needed.

The opening film in 1929 was “Mother’s Boy” starring Morton Downey, Beryl Mercer and Brian Donlevy.  By the late 1970’s and early 1980’s the Music Box venue was used for Spanish language films, pornographic films and Arabic language films. In 1983 the Music Box Theater was restored and became the venue for revival and repertory films. The opening shows were “Old Chicago” with Alice Faye and Tyrone Power and “Wabash Avenue” with Betty Grable and Victor Mature.

Since 1993, the Music Box has been showing specialty films, repertory, and independent and foreign films, as well as cult films such as the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is currently the largest Chicago venue for independent and foreign films.

I fondly remember the Music Box Theater because when I was a child in the 1970’s, my grandmother used to take me there to see Disney movies almost every weekend. My grandparents lived just a few blocks from there, so we would walk there, watch the movie and have popcorn and candy. That was my special time with my grandmother.  Then, in my teens I used to go there with friends to see the “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Those were good times!

 

Hollywood in Chicago? Yes! For a brief time in the early 1900s Chicago had the distinction of being the film making capital (before Hollywood took over). During that time, Chicago had the greatest number of film production companies.  Essanay Studios in the Uptown neighborhood was the largest studio and put the city in the center of world movie making.

The studio was founded in 1907 by George Spoor and Gilbert Anderson and was originally called the Peerless Film Manufacturing Company. That same year, the name was changed to Essanay (S and A for Spoor and Anderson). The studio’s first location was on Wells Street, but in 1908 it was moved to Argyle Street in Uptown.

Essanay produced silent films featuring stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, George Periolat, Ben Turpin, Colleen Moore, Francis X. Bushman, Florence Oberle, and Rod La Rocque. Spoor and Anderson received Oscars for their pioneering film work at Essanay Studios. The studio eventually also expanded to an additional location in Niles, California.

The Chicago studio produced famous movies such as the first American Sherlock Holmes (1916); the first American Christmas Carol (1908); and the first Jesse James movie, “The James Boys of Missouri.” They also produced some of the first cartoons in the world. Dreamy Dud was a popular cartoon produced by Essanay.

Essanay’s biggest star was Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin starred in 14 short comedies for Essanay (in both Chicago and California locations) in 1915. This included Chaplin’s 1915 film “The Tramp.”

Chaplin left the studio in 1916 and Essanay struggled financially since it lost it’s number one star. Essanay merged with V-L-S-E Incorporated in 1918 and was eventually absorbed by Warner Brothers in 1925.

Today, what’s left of Essanay Studios in Chicago is a landmark building at 1345 W. Argyle St. in Uptown and the Essanay lot is home to St. Augustine College, which named its’ meeting hall the Charlie Chaplin Auditorium.

        

Hull House was a Chicago settlement house founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. It was located at 800 S. Halsted St. in Chicago, in the area where UIC campus is now located. Hull House was named after the first owner (and builder) of the house/mansion, Charles Jerald Hull. It provided social services to the large numbers of immigrant families and individuals that came to Chicago to work in the many factories.

The services offered included: classes in literature, history, art as well as classes in domestic activities such as sewing. They also held free concerts, lectures on current issues and offered clubs for children and adults. Also, because the Hull House community/neighborhood was comprised of diverse ethnic groups such as Italians, Germans, Greeks, Poles and more, Addams and Starr decided to hold ethnic evenings at Hull House. During Italian night, for example, there would be Italian food and music and maybe a speaker of that ethnicity. The ethnic evenings helped the immigrants connect with memories of their homeland that they missed so much.

The Hull House also did important things for the neighborhood and is an important part of Chicago history. It established Chicago’s first public playground, bathhouse and public gym and instituted educational and political reforms to housing, working and sanitation matters, in an effort to improve the lives of immigrant families and children. They offered more than 50 programs at over 40 sites throughout Chicago and served approximately 60,000 people every year.

Hull House’s charter was: “To provide a center for higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago.”

Between 1889 and 1935, Hull House became a large complex, with 13 buildings surrounding the original Hull House mansion. It remained in the original location until 1963 when it was sold to University of Illinois Circle Campus (UIC).

Today, only the Hull Hose mansion building and Craftsman style dining hall remains and is called the “Hull House Museum”. The museum is a part of the College of Architecture and the Arts department at UIC and is a memorial to Addams and other social reformers. It houses over 1,100 artifacts related to Hull House history and over 100 oral histories/interviews about Hull House and surrounding neighborhood.

                   

The original Pilsen Mural located at 1831 S. Racine Ave was completed in 1970 by artist Ray Patlan and neighborhood youth from the Casa Aztlan Community Center. It showed Mexican cultural icons such as Rudy Lozano, Frida Kahlo and others. It was an important part of Chicago’s Chicano Movement and meant a lot to the Mexican community, because it depicted their history.

In 2013 the Casa Aztlan Community Center was closed, leaving the building that contained the mural empty. Then in June 2017 the new owner/developer of the building had the mural painted over with gray paint. This sparked outrage from the Mexican-American community in Chicago. The good news is – the developer listened to the community and had the mural repainted by the original artist and a couple additional artists. They listened to the community about who they wanted to be shown on the mural.

The local heroes depicted on the new mural are: Guadalupe Reyes, founder of the El Valor children’s center; Carlos Cortez, artist and poet; Rudy Lozano, labor organizer; Maria Saucedo, community organizer; Isaura Gonzalez, activist teacher; and Hector Gamboa, activist and former director of Casa Aztlan.The mural was completed in December 2017.

Aurora is an historic city in Illinois. It was first settled in 1834; incorporated as a village in 1845 and then became a city in 1857. With a population of over 200,000 it is the second largest city in Illinois behind Chicago.

Aurora has five designated historic districts. They are comprised of the Near Eastside Historic District, Tanner Historic District, Riddle Highlands Historic District, Palace Street Historic District and West Side National Register District. Aurora also has many buildings that are designated landmarks.

The Near Eastside Historic District primarily consists of East Galena Boulevard, Lincoln Avenue, South Avenue and South 4th Street.

The Riddle Highlands Historic District consists primarily of Sunset Avenue, Lawndale Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue and North Lake Street.

The Palace Street Historic District consists mainly of West Illinois Avenue, Palace Street and Plum Street.

The West Side National Register consists mainly of Highland Avenue, West Downer Place, Garfield Avenue, and Locust Street.

There are many benefits of having a historic designation in Aurora. It can increase property values and improve the character of neighborhoods. It allows neighbors to play a part in the preservation and beautification of their neighborhoods through ensuring improvements such as historic street lighting, historic plaques for homes and neighborhood organizations. Some other benefits are easier access for information on how to repair your house and research house history.

If a building is a designated historic landmark, the owner needs to apply for a COA (Certificate of Appropriateness) before making any changes. The COA is needed for outside improvements to windows, doors, roofs, siding, etc. Financial assistance, such as loans and grants are also available.  For more information you can contact the City of Aurora Preservation Division at 630-844-3648 or find information online at www.aurora-il.org/historicpreservation