Terminal Garage -- 4464 Broadway, Chicago, Illinois

Thanks to Michael Finnestad for sending this photo, circa 1920. It's the Terminal Garage once owned by his great-grandfather, Fred Daniels (who also owned the Daniels Hotel on Winthrop we featured a few months ago). It was located at 4464 Broadway, in front of the Wilson Yards. It's a particularly rare image; I haven't found many of this stretch of Broadway. At the left in the photo is the Arcadia Ballroom.

To learn more about Michael's grandfather and see other documents he has posted, visit his web site at Emery Daniels History.

Own a Piece of Uptown / Edgewater History

For those of you who collect north side memorabilia, I thought I'd give a head's up on this one. A sugar bowl from the old Edgewater Beach Hotel and Resort. It's one of the nicest pieces I've seen, with a sharp, crisp logo. Get it here:

Edgewater Beach Hotel Sugar Bowl

Closeup of McJunkin Building, 1956

Closeup of the McJunkin Building from 1956. What is particularly distinctive is the decorative cast iron trim the building once sported. Purchase the original and see the full-size version here: McJunkin 1956

A Visit to the Uptown Theatre

Vince Michael, the John H. Bryan Chair in Historic Preservation at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, has a blog with a focus on historic preservation and Chicago landmarks. Read about his recent visit to the Uptown Theatre here. (Tip courtesy of Friends of the Uptown.)

Goldblatts by Night, Uptown Chicago, circa 1990s

Thanks to a Facebook fan for the head's up on these! Goldblatts building (now Borders) during the 1990s. Images by cbnight on Flickr.

1960s Men's Fashion Photo with Edgewater Beach Apartments in Background

A unique color view of the Edgewater Beach Apartments in 1960.

Get the original image here: Fashion at the Edgewater

Seller's description: Men's Fashion Summer Wear, June 1960.

Socialites at the Saddle and Cycle Club, 900 Foster Avenue, 1955

Socialites at the Saddle and Cycle Club, Foster Avenue, Chicago, 1955. Original image available for purchase here: Saddle and Cycle Club .

From the seller's description: Chicago socialites, Mrs. James H. Prentiss Jr., Mrs. Frederick C. Pullman, and Mrs. Edward Gardner III, at the Saddle and Cycle Club in Chicago, May 11, 1955. When built, the main club facilities were downtown and this facility was for cyclists and equestrians riding along the lakefront. Until the Lake Shore Drive was extended north of Foster Avenue in the 1950s, the club had its own private beach. In fact, the beach used to only be 100 feet from the original club verandah and there was a pier and boat house on site.

Sheridan Park Station, Uptown

A vintage snapshot, date unknown, of the Sheridan Park Station.

Now available at auction here: Sheridan Park Depot

Fran's Grocery Store, Ainslie and Bell, 1962

This little grocery is just around the corner from where my mom lived on Hermitage (near Ainslie) in 1962, the year this photo was taken. I'll have to ask her if she remembers it.

Original image available here: Ainslie and Bell The location today:


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Double Door, 1126 Argyle, Uptown Chicago

Purchase original here: Double Door Manager

Caption reads: Nate Treger, tavern manager of The Double Door at 1126 Argyle Avenue, in Shakespeare Police Station on January 19, 1957. He was questioned by police about the Day murder investigation.

When researching the address to see what else might have been here besides the Double Door, I found a 1909 reference that the address was a delivery station of the Chicago Public Library. "The public library is free to all residents of the city. Books may be borrowed for home reading either at the main building downtown or at any of the various delivery stations. The only requirement is that the borrower must furnish a certificate signed by a property owner guaranteeing the library against loss. At the close of September, 1909, the public library contained 369,247 volumes. The aggregate circulation for the year ending May 31, 1909, was 1,777,142 volumes, which does not include the use of books kept on the open shelves at the main library or its branches or the periodicals or newspapers used in the reading rooms."

Today, the address is one of two locations for QIdeas, where you can buy serving ware at wholesale prices..

Foster Avenue Extension, Uptown and Edgewater, Chicago, 1951

Another view of the extension, this one taken in 1951. At time of writing, the original was available for purchase here: Foster Avenue, 1951

Foster Avenue Extension, Uptown and Edgewater, Chicago, 1953

 

Purchase the original here: Foster Avenue, 1953

From the seller's description: Foster Avenue extension in Chicago, August 11, 1953... [The] landfill extension was completed in the 1950s between Foster Avenue and Ardmore Avenue, and the fill included a new beach at Foster Avenue. Planning and design for the extension started in 1947, but construction and fill did not begin until three years later. The fill project continued over the majority of the decade, and it was finally finished in 1958. E.V Buchsbaum designed the beach house for the site, which was constructed between the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the 1990s, a new beach house provided improved amenities, including bathrooms and concessions.

Celebrating the Statehood of Hawaii in Uptown Chicago, Argyle and Broadway, 1959

Purchase the original here: Hawaii Statehood

From seller's caption: Bob Boyajian, June Siegel and Mort Archer, employees of the Combined Insurance Company of America, celebrating Hawaii's statehood in front of their building in Chicago, at 5050 N. Broadway, March 13, 1959. Next door, barber John Schmidt watches from his storefront window.

First Home Built in This Part of Town

Grace Sulzer in front of her home at 4223 N. Greenview, the first house built in that neighborhhod.
You may recognize the Sulzer family name from Conrad Sulzer. In 1837, Conrad Sulzer of Winterthur, Zürich, Switzerland, became the first white settler to live in the area. The Sulzer Regional Library, which houses the Northside Neighborhood History Collection, was named for him.

Rogers Park Lifeguards

I think I'll finish my day's postings with something completely gratuitous--a 1930s image of the lifeguards of Rogers Park.

Purchase your copy here: Hubba Hubba

From the seller's description: The lifeguards at Rogers Park Beach at the end of Touhy Avenue in Chicago. The man at the far end in the white shirt is Sam Leone, director of lifeguards on the north side of Chicago until his death in 1964.

The May Queen of Mundelein College, Rogers Park / Edgewater Chicago

Purchase image here: Mundelein College

The May Queen of Mundelein College (Helen Walz) and her attendents place a veil and wreath of flowers on the head of the statue of the Blessed Virgin at their University May 24, 1945. Mundelein College was the last private, independent, Roman Catholic women's college in Illinois. Located on the edge of the Rogers Park and Edgewater neighborhoods on the far north side of Chicago, Illinois, Mundelein College was founded and administered by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1991, Mundelein College became an incorporated college of Loyola University Chicago and has since become completely affiliated. Mundelein College was located just south of Loyola's Lake Shore Campus.

Find Us on Facebook

If you haven't joined us on Facebook yet, now's the time. You'll find additional historic images there that you won't find on the blog! This week: The Wooden Nickel, Wilson Yard, and Essanay. Check it out.

1254 Leland, Uptown Chicago -- Home of the Touhy Gang

Roger Touhy (1898-December 16, 1959) was an Irish-American mob boss and prohibition-era bootlegger from Chicago, Illinois. He is best remembered for having being framed for the 1933 faked kidnapping of gangster John "Jake the Barber" Factor, a brother of cosmetics manufacturer Max Factor, Sr. Despite numerous appeals and at least one court ruling freeing him, Touhy spent the next 26 years locked in a prison cell. Touhy was not released until November 1959. He was murdered by the Chicago Outfit less than one month later (more at Wikipedia.)

On October 9, 1942, Touhy and six other men escaped from Stateville prison. Touhy and the others were eventually discovered living in a Chicago boarding house. Touhy and three others surrendered peacefully. The remaining escapees tried to fight their way out and were killed. Touhy re-entered Stateville on December 31, 1942, and was sentenced to an additional 199 years in prison for the escape. 

The above photo, available for purchase at time of writing here, is of 1254 Leland, where the Touhy Gang lived. In 1944, 20th Century Fox released a semi-biographical and highly fictionalized film based on Touhy's life, called Roger Touhy, Gangster.

To learn more about Touhy, read The Stolen Years.





and


When Capone's Mob Murdered Roger Touhy: The Strange Case of "Jake the Barber" and the Kidnapping That Never Happened 

Blessing of Cuneo Hospital, 750 Montrose at Clarendon, Chicago

This image is of particular interest to me, because I was born at Cuneo Hospital. Although we moved out to the suburbs when I was a wee toddler, I was born an Uptown Girl.

From ChicagoHospitals.info:

Beginnings

The first reference in the Chicago Tribune's Historical Index to this hospital appears on July 7, 1944. It notes a benefit by the ladies' auxiliary for the Frank Cuneo Memorial Hospital. It notes the hospital at Montrose and Clarendon Streets was endowed by the late Frank Cuneo

A Chicago Tribune article on July 23, 1944 notes a substantial addition to the hospital has been made by John F Cuneo, who donated an apartment building on the northwest corner of Montrose and Clarendon. This gave the hospital a block long frontage on Clarendon, between Montrose and Agatite

Part of the block of flats will be used for living quarters for the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred heart. Nurses, interns and the hospital chaplain will also live there.

The other wing of the apartment building will be utilized as a children's hospital. This would be the first Catholic children's hospital in the city of Chicago.

At closure

100 beds

closed 1988

Purchase image here: Cuneo Hospital

Marines Training at Montrose Beach, 1959

Military training or synchronized swimming? You decide.

You can spot the Edgewater Beach Hotel and Apartments at the upper left.

Purchase the original image here: Marines

George K. Spoor, Founder of Essanay Studios and an Early Film Pioneer

This image is of George K. Spoor, founder of the Essanay Studios once located on Argyle. It was taken in 1953 from his home at 903 Argyle. This would have been the year he died.

A biography from Wikipedia:

George Kirke Spoor (December 18, 1872 – 24 November 1953) was an early film pioneer who, with Broncho Billy Anderson, founded Essanay Studios in Chicago in 1907.


Spoor and Anderson were responsible for discovering stars such as Wallace Beery, Francis X. Bushman, Ben Turpin, Gloria Swanson, and Charlie Chaplin. Allan Dwan, who was hired as a screenwriter, went on to become a famous Hollywood director. Louella Parsons, also hired by Spoor as a screenwriter, later became a famous Hollywood gossip columnist.

In 1894, while box office manager of the Phoenix Opera House in Waukegan, Illinois, George K. Spoor teamed with inventor Edward Hill Amet (1860-1948) to build and exhibit The Magniscope, the first practical 35mm movie projector ever designed and used in a large audience display. Spoor and Amet made films and distributed them with this device before the 1895 device by the Lumiere Brothers of France. Thomas Edison's more famous Kinetoscope was exhibited in 1891, but was only able to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole.

Spoor and Amet are credited for having filmed: the world's first newsreel, a film of the first Inauguration of President William McKinley in 1897; the first use of film miniatures (The Battle of Santiago Bay) in which tin replicas and cigar smoke created the illusion of live war footage; the first to experience local censorship (due to the graphic images of China's Boxer Rebellion); and even the first "fake newsreel" in which Spoor used neighbors to act out battles such as the Battle of San Juan Hill in a local park.

In 1926, Spoor and inventor P. John Berggren invented Natural Vision, an early 65mm widescreen process which was only used to film four movies, including Danger Lights (RKO, 1930). The trademark Natural Vision was later used for an unrelated system of making 3-D films in 1953.

In 1948, Spoor received an Oscar, specifically an Academy Honorary Award for his contribution to developing motion pictures as entertainment.

He died on 24 November 1953.

The image is available here: George K. Spoor

Carmen and Broadway, Uptown Chicago, 1960

Another great find from our favorite eBay seller. We've purchased a number of digital images from this seller's collection, and we hope to eventually find another spot in Uptown to display them. (If you haven't seen the historic images displayed at Fat Cat, it's worth a visit. Many of the enlargements of old postcards and other images of Uptown were made from our collection.)

This image shows the intersection of Carmen and Broadway in Uptown in 1960. 

While today it's a rather non-descript building (as seen on Google)...


View Larger Map

...it once housed the 5100 Club.

The 5100 Club was a forerunner of today's standup comedy club. It's also where Danny Thomas got his start. He was working a three-year contract gig at the 5100 in the late 1940s when he was discovered by the head of the William Morris Agency. He later went on to star in the very popular Make Room for Daddy / The Danny Thomas Show.

Eagle Food Center Grand Opening, 6009 Broadway, Edgewater, Chicago, 1958

Grand opening of the Eagle Food Center at 6009 Broadway in Edgewater. Today, it is a Dominick's.

We posted another image of the grand opening a while back, which can be seen here: Eagle Food Center. The link also provides a brief history of Eagle.

This image can be purchased at: Eagle Foods Grand Opening

Local History Book: Rogers Park

Occasionally, we feature books that might be of interest to far north siders. Here's a great photo history of Rogers Park.

Rogers Park bears the name of Philip McGregor Rogers, an intrepid and enterprising Irish immigrant who purchased the first tract of land in the area in the 1830s, a time when it was prairie and woodland, populated by Native Americans and white birch trees. As the federal government forced the Native Americans west, European immigrants arrived in greater numbers, forming a community of woodcutters and farmers. The Great Chicago Fire ushered in an era of economic development, and in 1878, Rogers Park incorporated as a village. In 1893, the town was annexed to Chicago, becoming the city’s northernmost neighborhood along Lake Michigan. During the Roaring Twenties, Howard Street’s grand theaters, jumping nightclubs, and glitzy fashion shops drew adventure seekers by the thousands. The onset of the Depression saw the rise of an art deco skyscraper housing Mundelein College for women. In the coming decades, local movers and shakers made great strides in social justice and racial equality. Today Rogers Park is one of the most ethnically and socially diverse neighborhoods in the country.

About the Author

Jacque Day Archer is a producer, journalist, editor, award-winning writer, and current resident of Rogers Park. She is museum director for the Rogers Park/West Ridge Historical Society. Jamie Wirsbinski Santoro is a social and cultural ethnographer and award-winning writer. She has lived in Rogers Park for more than two decades.

Buena Park Hotel, 4139 Broadway, Chicago

From HauntedHouses.com:

"Imagine a building with regular, run of the mill business storefronts. One of these storefronts has a hidden, huge disguised back room created for party festivities featuring 'a marble-floored ballroom, terra cotta moldings, a four-foot marble clock placed over the bar area and even ornate drinking fountains mounted into the walls.' Needless to say, many a good time was experienced here, through dancing, drinking and by partying hardy..."

When the hotel had a hidden speakeasy, you could escape police raids through ten different doors. In an interview with the Tribune, Larry Bryan, of National Pastime Theatre (which now resides at this address), says, "You could escape into three different storefronts, into the alley, down into the basement and then up the steps into an apartment building. And from the balcony, which is now our control booth, you could quietly ease into a hallway and head toward an elevator in the same building as if you'd never been there."

Read more about the hotel, built in 1929, here:

http://www.hauntedhouses.com/states/il/national_pastime.cfm

Felix Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge, 1101 W. Lawrence, Uptown Chicago

1101 W. Lawrence is currently the location of the Chase branch at Lawrence and Winthrop. (If you ask me, I think I'd rather have a restaurant and lounge there.) You can get this matchbook here: Felix

Edgewater Beach Hotel Pool, Chicago, 1961

Edgewater Beach Hotel pool, 1961.

The original image is available here: Edgewater Pool

North Shore Congregational Church, Wilson and Sheridan, Uptown Chicago

Today, you know it as the Uptown Baptist Church, located at 1011 Wilson, at Sheridan. A hundred years ago, it was known as the North Shore Congregational Church, established in 1900. This image is from my personal postcard collection.

In her book about the North Shore’s history, Matilda Carse writes, “The North Shore Congregational Church was the first church organized for Christian worship and work in the territory, more than a mile square, extending from Graceland avenue to Argyle avenue, and from Lake Shore to Clark street. An excellent class of people, of moderate means, were making their homes here, and readily responded to the first call for a church." (Thanks to elgatonegrobar.com for the quote.)

Carse further writes, "After a careful search for the ideal location for [a] new church (every possible site from Montrose boulevard to Lawrence avenue having been investigated), it was unanimously voted that the corner of Sheridan road and Wilson avenue was the strategic point. Accordingly, by vote of the church, the Trustees were authorized to purchase this site for the sum of $14,500.”

A radio show was later broadcast from NSC, We Preach Christ Crucified. An advertisement for the show read, "This building is located on a busy corner, 4600 North, in Chicago. More than 250,000 people pass the corner of Sheridan Rd. and Wilson Ave. every 24 hours."

McJunkin Building, Wilson and Broadway, Uptown Chicago

Another great image from our favorite eBay seller. It shows the McJunkin Building, at Wilson and Broadway, in 1956.

It is available for purchase here: McJunkin Building

For a 1970s image of the McJunkin we posted way back in 2007, go here: McJunkin in the Seventies.

The McJunkin building was designed by Arthur Gerber, who also designed the Wilson Avenue El Station.