Frank Zappa, Uptown Theatre, 1980 Concert Tour T-Shirt

Happy Halloween, Uptown!

Cuckoo Club, 5138 Broadway, Chicago

This one kind of cracks me up. It's an old matchbook for the Cuckoo Club, once located at 5138 Broadway in Chicago. The outside graphic shows happy children playing with a dog. Good, wholesome family stuff. The interior image is of a nude girl with feathers ala Sally Rand.

The address puts it approximately where the former Burger King (soon to be a Dunkin Donuts) and Marathon gas station now stand.

Polynesian Village / Edgewater Beach Hotel

Polynesian Villiage /The Edgewater Beach Hotel. Polynesian and Cantonese Food and Drink in a Setting of Tropical Splendor.

Matchbook from Uptown National Bank

Thanks to B., who once worked as a building engineer at Bridgeview Bank, for this item. She found it in one of the old desks in the bank building.

Vintage Glasses from Aragon Ballroom, Edgewater Beach Hotel

These glasses were tricky to photograph, so I apologize for the quality of the image. They are probably from the forties.

The one in the middle is from the Edgewater Beach Hotel. The one on the far left is from the Aragon Ballroom, and the one on the far right says Trianon/Aragon.

The Trianon, once located at 62nd and Cottage Grove, was the most expensive ballroom ever built when it opened in 1922. It closed in the fifties, and was torn down to make way for public housing in the late sixties.

Sister to the Trianon, the Aragon Ballroom was built in 1926 by Andrew Karzas, who also owned the Trianon. Karzas built the Aragon, according to historian Scott Newman, to "silence those who criticized the city's commonplace dance halls as unhealthy, immoral venues for the seduction of women, the practice of prostitution, and the then-illegal distribution of alcohol."

I have them packed away at the moment, but in the near future I'll post some vintage blueprints and black and white images of the Aragon that I have in the collection.

Rice Bowl Ashtray

This probably dates to the 1940s. The address puts it between Wilson and Montrose, about where the Harris Bank is now.

Rice Bowl
4539 Broadway
Chicago, ILL.
Phone Lo-1-7129

Green Mill Cocktail Plate

This looks like a later plate from what is now the Green Mill Jazz Club then the one previously posted, as they dropped the "gardens" from the logo. It's very small, just under four inches across, and was probably used for lemon slices for cocktails or something like that.

Green Mill Gardens, Chicago

I picked this up early last year. It is one of my favorite Uptown memorabilia pieces. It's a simple dinner plate from the early days of the Green Mill Jazz Club, when it boasted a rather extensive beer garden.

I am always interested in buying Uptown collectibles. If you have something of interest, please drop me a line.