A Virtual Trip to the Windy City Chicago IL
Seminars@Hadley
A Virtual Trip to the Windy City Chicago IL
Presented by
Judy Green
Doug Anzlovar
Moderated by
Doug Anzlovar
July 16, 2015
Doug Anzlovar
Welcome to today’s seminar at Hadley. My name is Doug
Anzlovar. I am the Vice President of Education and
Training here at the Hadley School, and I will be your
moderator and co-presenter for today’s seminar. Our topic
is within our geography series, and today we’re going to
be talking about the Windy City Chicago, Illinois. Let me
introduce you all and invite Judy Green to speak next.
Judy is a member of the faculty here at Hadley.
Judy Green
Hi. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Windy City. I’m glad
you were able to join us today to travel through time to
learn about how our great city came to be. Chicago is
located in the Midwest region of the United States. The
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city sits on the tip of Lake Michigan, one of the five Great
Lakes in the United States. It is the largest city in the State
of Illinois with a population of 2.71 million people, a whole
lot of people. Chicago is the third largest city in the United
States after New York City and Los Angeles, California.
The climate of Chicago is classified as humid continental.
We experience four distinct seasons wet spring, hot humid
summers, pleasant and colorful autumns, and cold snowy
winters. Mother Nature seems to be a little confused this
year. We experienced a very cold winter. In fact, 95% of
Lake Michigan froze, so it is taking a long time for spring
to arrive. We have experienced a cool wet spring so far.
One day you need the air conditioner, and another day
you are turning on the furnace. Those who live in Chicago
have learned to go with the flow and dress accordingly.
So where was Chicago’s humble beginnings? Chicago
was originally inhabited by many Native American people.
In fact, the Potawatomi Indian tribes. In the late 1600’s
and early 1700’s, many French and Canadian explorers,
fur traders, and missionaries sailed the seas, looking for
shorter routes through the Great Lakes. Chicago’s first
permanent resident was a fur trader named Jean Baptiste
du Sable. A free black man apparently from Haiti who
settled at the mouth of the Chicago River in 1772. He
recognized the locations significance as a vital connection
for transportation and trade. He married a Potawatomi
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Indian girl. The first recorded birth was his daughter in
1796.
In 1809, federal troops built the first settlement Fort
Dearborn, a military post to house soldiers and their
families. It was destroyed in 1812. Today you can find
bronze markings in the pavement on Michigan Avenue
and Wacker Drive. In 1833, the town of Chicago was
officially incorporated into the state of Illinois with a
population of only 350 people. In 1837, William Ogden
was the first mayor of Chicago.
Chicago grew in all aspects of life. Population, housing,
railroads, manufacturing, and trade. Religion,
communication, education, and business. But on October
8th, 1871, disaster struck the city. After a very hot dry
summer, the Great Chicago Fire killed over 300 people,
destroyed 17,450 structures, and buildings, and
devastated over 73 miles of land, including the downtown
area on the north side of Chicago. More than 90,000
people were left homeless.
Legend has it that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a
lantern in the barn. But the fire was fueled by drought,
strong winds, and the fact that the buildings and the
streets were made of wood. The only buildings left
standing were the Water Tower, St. Ignatius College Prep,
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Holy Family Catholic Church, and St. Pete’s Catholic
Church.
But Chicago was able to rebuild even better than it was
before. In 1893, Chicago won the bid to host the World’s
Columbian Exposition which is sometimes called the
World’s Fair to show the world that Chicago had become
the greatest city. It opened on October 9th, 1893 to
commemorate the anniversary of the Chicago fire. Over
27 million people attended the Expo. That was one half of
the population of the United States at that time, so it gives
you some perspective on how many people attended the
fair and how many people were in the country at that time.
Here are some of the fairs famous firsts. Cracker Jacks, I
remember as a kid we would get the Cracker Jack boxes,
and then we would pour everything out just, so we could
get the prize at the bottom. Sometimes we’d eat the Crack
Jack, and sometimes we didn’t. Juicy Fruit Gum, Cream of
Wheat cereal, Aunt Jemima’s syrup, diet soda, Pabst Blue
Ribbon Beer. I don’t even know if Pabst Blue Ribbon is still
around, but maybe it is. Shredded wheat, the concept of
the carnival with the Ferris wheel which was designed by
George Ferris, the introduction of the hamburger to the
United States. So there you go. The hamburger was
introduced in 1893. Hershey’s chocolate with caramel, and
then the brownie. The brownie was introduced by the
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Palmer House chef to be put in the box lunches at the
World’s Fair.
How did Chicago get its nickname the Windy City? Many
people have different ideas about that. Charles Dana who
was an editor of The New York Sun coined the nickname,
because of the hype that the fair brought to Chicago.
Others suggest that the nickname evolved, because of the
windbag politicians. Everybody’s bragging about Chicago.
Other say the nickname has to do with the weather.
Whatever the reason, we still use Windy City to describe
Chicago.
Here’s a question for you. Why does the Chicago River
run backwards? I don’t know if you understand the
concept, but it is really amazing what they did. Before
1900, the Chicago River flowered into Lake Michigan. By
building a series of three canals, engineers were able to
reverse the rivers flow. This helped improve the sewage
system and reduce the amount of water born epidemics of
disease such as typhoid and cholera. It also opened the
way for transportation by Sips. For our annual St Patrick’s
Day Parade, the Chicago River turns green. People in
boats pour an orange die into the water which turns the
river green. Why does this happen? It is a trade secret.
Tourists come from out all over the world to see the river
turn green. Those leprechauns are very busy.
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The Union Stockyards are operated in Chicago for more
than a century. It is bizarre to think that millions of farm
animals were transported to Chicago to be killed and
processed. Imagine a slaughterhouse in the middle of the
city. Today that area is called the Back of the Yards which
is on the south side of Chicago. But it happened to be
true. According to the writer Carl Sandburg, Chicago was
known as the hog butcher center for the world. Princes
and motihari’s and tourists came from all over the world to
visit the stockyards. With the invention of the refrigerator
car, meat could be shipped by rail and by water.
These historical events shaped our city and inspired men
and women to invent, build, and create our wonderful city.
Now Doug will take us on a ride through our city on the
mass transportation system.
Doug Anzlovar
Good afternoon again everybody. I’m going to talk today
about our mass transit in the City of Chicago, and until you
really stop and think about it, Chicago really does have a
pretty well laid out transportation structure. I’m going to
give a website here, and I will also reiterate the website at
the end of my portion of the talk today. The website is
where you can go. It’s a one stop shop of where you can
go to get any information about the various components of
the transportation system, and that website is
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www.rtachicago.com. The RTA in that web address refers
to Regional Transportation Authority.
We have a couple of different levels of transportation. The
first one that I’ll talk about is the CTA which is the acronym
for the Chicago Transit Authority. This refers to CTA buses
for now. We have 140 bus routes throughout the City of
Chicago that connect all points north, south, east, and
west. Each bus now is equipped with talking bus route
information. So it’s very helpful to the visually impaired. It
announces what stop is coming up as well as other
announcements. Before, prior to the talking
announcements, you either didn’t know where you were
going, or you had to listen for the driver to yell back the
information. So it’s hard to believe, but I remember those
days actually. They weren’t so long ago.
I believe now all of the buses have been replaced with
wheelchair access throughout the city. Most all of the
buses, if not all, have the wheelchair access frontloading.
The buses that I’ve been on actually will kneel at the curb.
So the driver releases some sort of air pressure, and the
actual side of the bus lowers, and then the ramp comes
out making it wheelchair accessible. Even as someone
who’s visually impaired, sometimes the bus driver will put
the ramp down for me. Although I certainly don’t need the
ramp. But the drivers tend to be fairly accommodating.
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To pay for a ride, we’ve just recently within the last year
switched over to what is called a Ventra Card, and
basically, you can think of it in terms of a debit credit card
situation. You can preload the card either at a transit
station of through the internet. It’s linked to your credit
card if you want it to be linked to a credit card, so that it
will replenish itself, and it’s the standard card now that’s
used throughout the transportation system with the
exception of our Metra rail service which I’ll talk about in a
little bit.
The fare structure to ride a CTA bus is $2.00 for full fare
and a dollar reduced fare. Monthly passes are available as
well as visitor passes. So if you are a tourist to Chicago,
and you want to come in for the weekend or a couple of
days or a week, they have one, three, and seven day
visitor passes available, and that visitors pass will get you
unlimited rides for either that one, three, or seven day
period.
Within the Chicago Transit Authority, the CTA is an
Electric Rail System or El. And the El spelled, E, L or for
short sometimes, you would see it written as just a capital
L stands for Elevated Train or Elevated Rail Service. In the
loop of Chicago, and the loop got its name, because of the
way the train lines circle the Loop. There are several train
lines within the downtown Loop area of the city that are all
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in a track, and it literally makes a circle around the Loop,
so that’s how the Loop got its name.
There are actually eight rail lines. They are easy to
remember, because they’re all colors. They’re reflective of
colors. So we have the blue line, red line, pink, purple,
brown line, the green, yellow, and orange line, so eight
train lines all color coded. Again, automated
announcements announce each stop, and it’s really
helpful.
I remember some years ago when they had conductors on
the train, and you never really could understand what the
conductor was saying over the loudspeaker as to what
stop you were at. So when I moved to the city about 16,
17 years ago, and I was just starting to learn the
transportation system, it was so incredibly difficult for me
on the El trains. No matter which line I was on, it was
incredibly difficult for me to listen to, and understand what
the conductor was saying as far as the stops. I kind of
sounded like one of those old Charlie Brown cartoons
when the teacher is talking in the cartoon, and it’s all
muffled and garbley. That’s kind of what I remember it
being like.
So now we have the automated announcements. The
trains are wheelchair accessible, however not all of the
platforms have elevators. So some of the older stations
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platforms out in the neighborhoods may not have elevator
access to the tracks. However if you’re researching the El
lines, the transit lines, there will be a disabled placard
insignia near the station stop, so that you would have a
sense of – and it would say, “Accessible,” so you’d have a
sense of which stations are accessible and which are not.
What tends to happen if there’s a wheelchair or a scooter
that needs to load onto one of the trains, they will have a
gap filler, and it’s basically a metal ramp that they put
down on the platform up into the car, and a train attendant
actually has to physically do that. There’s no automation in
that sense. But that’s typically how wheelchairs and
scooters await the trains and embark the trains.
Also, what’s helpful if you are visually impaired is you can
request at the staff station, each of the stations are staffed
along the El stations, and if you need assistance, if you’re
not familiar with where you’re going, you can let the train
attendant or the staff person know that you’re traveling to
X stop, and if you need to transfer a train or have
assistance from the platform down to the street level, you
can arrange that. They will radio ahead to the stop and let
them know that you’ll be arriving and which train you’ll be
on. So, for example, when I was new to the city learning
the ropes, there was a transfer point that maybe had three
if not four different train lines coming into that same
station, so I asked for assistance until I figured out the lay
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of the land to make sure that I was getting on and off the
right trains.
With the new railcars that they’ve added within the last
year or two, they use LED lighting, so now if you’re low
vision, you have a little better shot at seeing the signage
from the outside of the car on the platform, because it’s
very bright. So the yellow line has a bright yellow
background. The red line has a bright red background, so
as someone with low vision, I find that the LED lighting is
especially helpful. It’s not foolproof though, because
sometimes the trains don’t have the lighting turned on. Or
if it’s a very bright day with the sun, it may still be difficult
to see that signage as well. But they have tried to make
some thoughtful improvements as they’ve been replacing
the rail cars throughout the city on the train lines.
Again, the fare you can use your Ventra card. The same
card that you would use on a CTA bus also works for the
subway and the elevated train, the electric rail. And the
fare structure, it’s $2.25 for full fare and $1.10 for reduced
fare. Again, your monthly pass would be unlimited rides for
the El as well as the CTA city buses, and the visitors pass
is the same. They have one, three, and seven day passes
again. So your Ventra card, monthly pass, and visitor’s
passes are all interchangeable for the CTA bus and the
CTA elevated subway lines.
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The next structure within the larger infrastructure of public
transit throughout the city of Chicago and suburbs is the
Pace bus system. The Pace bus system actually is the
bus system that services the suburbs of Chicago. CTA
serves the city and the city limits, and the Pace bus
system services the outlying suburbs that boarder the city
around its boarders.
So Pace is virtually the same as far as talking bus route
information, wheelchair access. The Ventra card actually
will work on the Pace system. So for example, you could
theoretically go from the CTA El to a Pace bus and still be
able to use your same card. The fare structure, however is
slightly different. On the Pace buses it’s $1.75 for the full
fare, and it’s 85 cents for a reduced fare.
So I’ll take just a second. Reduced fare individuals who
have disabilities or seniors have to apply for a reduced
fare permit, so there’s a title bit of a process for that.
There’s an application. There’s doctors notice, and if
you’re applying for the reduced fare, you don’t necessarily
have to go in person to do that. However, if you’re
applying for the paratransit, so the reduced fare and
paratransit, you would have to schedule an appointment.
They come to pick you up, typically in a city cab, and then
they will pay to transport you out to one of their satellite
locations. You would go through an interview process and
application process to, again, be certified to ride the
paratransit.
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The Metra railroad system is another part of the overall
infrastructure. This is more a commuter trains. Someone
who’s new to the city, I try to tell them the difference
between the Metra and the El is that the Metra has more
seating, more comfortable seating, and Metra actually
connects the city and suburbs. So these are longer
distance trains. They are not an Amtrak like train, and
they’re not within the city although there are several stops
that each of the Metra trains make throughout the city as
they go to the outlying suburbs. The Ventra card currently
does not work on Metra. Metra has its own fare structure
and payment method. So there are twelve Metra routes
that connect the city and suburbs. They have audible
announcements for each of the station stops. All of the
trains have wheelchair access.
The fee structure for the Metra goes by zones, so for
example, the zone you start in is $3.25 for full fare and
$1.50 for the reduced fare. And then each additional zone
that you cross into or cross through increases the fare, the
base fare which is $3.25 or $1.50 will increase it by either
25 cents or 50 cents. And again, it depends by zone and
distance, so that’s how the fare structure is worked.
Metra for several years now has been discouraging people
from paying cash for a ticket on the train. They want
everybody to get their tickets either downtown at one of
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the hub stations at the ticket window or at one of the ticket
windows along each of the routes. It’s important to note
that not every station stop along the route has a ticket
agent or a ticket window. So for those stations that do
have ticket windows if you get on the train at one of those
stations, and you did not purchase your ticket at the ticket
window, they will assess a $3.00 surcharge for the
convenience of paying cash to buy your ticket on the train.
And again, that’s for platforms that do have a staffed train
attendant. They are actually I believe raising that amount
form $3.00 to $5.00 or $6.00 very soon. So they’re really
trying to discourage cash payment, and I think the bottom
line is they want to try to get the conductors away from
having to make change and deal with cash on the trains.
They also are going to be moving by next February to
possibly a more automated service for smartphone users.
So for example, if you travel on the airlines or even Amtrak
now, you can get an ticket that will come to your
smartphone, and then there’s a barcode reader that will
read your airline ticket or the code that’s on your Amtrak
ticket, and the Metra is actually going to be moving to a
very similar system. They are I believe, getting something
in beta now that they’re testing to see how it’s going to
work. Ideally, you would have your monthly pass or your
ticket on your smartphone, and the conductor would
simply scan your phone, scan the barcode that way. So
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just some things that are coming soon. Again, I think by
next February they hope to have that in place.
So monthly passes are available for Metra. Again, the
price depends on the zones you’re traveling through. They
do have reduced fares for passengers with disabilities or
seniors, and they also have weekend passes for visitors
as website as I mentioned earlier is www.rtachicago.com,
and again that website will take you, and you can access
any pieces of the transportation whether it’s CTA bus,
CTA El, subway, Pace bus, or the Metra rail service. You
can access all that information from one website.
I will move into talking a little bit about O’Hare and Midway
International Airports. They are the two largest airports
here in the Chicago area, and we’ll go ahead and start
with O’Hare first. O’Hare came into existence in 1945.
Prior to the name O’Hare it was called Orchard Field, and
it was the location of a Douglas aircraft assembly plant
that was on the northwest side of the city. This is the site
that was developed into the existing O’Hare airport. Back
then when it was Orchard Field. It had four concrete
runways. And then in 1949 the Chicago City Council
renamed Orchard Field as Chicago O’Hare International
Airport. This was done to honor the naval aviator
Lieutenant Commander Edward H. “Butch” O’Hare, and he
earned a Metal of Honor. He was a Metal of Honor
recipient from Chicago who died in World War II.
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O’Hare International Airport officially opened to
commercial air traffic in 1955, and today the airport
complex covers a span of 7200 acres, and it is actually
located within the city limits of Chicago even though it’s on
the far northwest side. It still is considered part of the City
of Chicago. The airport now consists of seven runways. It
is the home to two hubs, American Airlines and United.
And just a little more trivia here. There are 188 gates at
O’Hare International Airport. There 122 food and beverage
locations, and 84 news and gift shop or newsstands,
throughout the airport.
To access the airport, of course, they have paid parking
lots. They have shuttle services to get somebody to the far
remoter lots. And you can also access O’Hare from the
blue line CTA El Subway train. So you can go from the
downtown area of Chicago up to O’Hare by way of blue
line. They also have a number of CTA bus routes that end
up there as well. You cannot access O’Hare, however
directly from the Metra rail system. So it would be the CTA
blue line to get you more toward into the city.
O’Hare provides the same kind of services that many
other airports across the country offer as far as assistance
to passengers with disabilities. They do offer curbside
baggage check in. I’ve always found it to be hit or miss
though depending on the airline and depending on the
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time of day. Sometimes that curbside check in is open,
and sometimes it’s not. But all of those amenities including
wireless, internet access, charging stations. They’re
starting to put more charging stations in since we’re a
smartphone society and tablet and laptop society. I know
United, for example, has an actual lounge for their
premiere passengers, and they also have a lounge area
for their passengers with disabilities as well. Each of the
airlines you can request assistance. If you’re on an
outbound or inbound flight they do have passenger
services to assist people with disabilities to and from the
gates whether it be an arm assist or a wheelchair assist of
sorts.
So moving on to Midway Airport, Midway then is a much
smaller airport than O’Hare. It had first flights from Midway
started in 1927, and then in 1949 the airport was renamed
as Midway in honor of the Battle of Midway in the Pacific
during World War II. So both of our airports in Chicago,
their names are steeped in history being World War II. So
the airport complex at Midway is 840 acres, and again, the
entire complex is situated within the City of Chicago limits.
Midway has five runways, 43 gates, and their food and
beverage is significantly less than O’Hare. 28 food and
beverage locations throughout the airport, and 22 news
and gift stands scattered throughout. To connect to
Midway by way of public transportation, it would be the
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orange line, the CTA, subway, elevated line. Again the
orange line connects to Midway on the south side of the
city. And again, at Midway you can request assistance for
passengers with disabilities, and they also are trying to
stay with the current times in offering Wi-Fi and charging
stations and so forth throughout the airport.
That concludes our talk about the public transportation in
and around the city, and I’m going to go on and briefly
mention other places to visit and sites to see. Steppenwolf
Theatre Company is in Chicago, and I have recently maybe about a year and a half now I’ve been going to see
a lot of plans at Steppenwolf, and when I taught for the
Chicago Public school system we would often take our
high school students to see plays at Steppenwolf, and it’s
kind of a neighborhood feel theater company. And
recently, just over a year, I’ve been going, because during
the course of the run of a play, they will offer a touch tour
experience for persons who are visually impaired or totally
blind on a Sunday afternoon. So it’s kind of a neat thing
that I enjoy doing. I enjoy supporting it, and I go a lot of the
time even if I’m not totally interested in the paly, I still go,
because I really want to support the efforts of Steppenwolf
and what they’re doing to try to reach out to the blind and
visually impaired communities.
How the touch tour experience works you actually go
down about two hours before the performance, and you
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spend some time with the cast. The cast will come out
onstage. They will talk to you a little bit about their
character. They will give you a sample of what their
character sounds like if they’re speaking with a dialect or a
tone other than their actual voice. They will describe a little
bit about their costumes that they’re wearing and a little bit
about the plot. They don’t give away any secrets to the
plot, but they’ll tell you anything significant for you to listen
for and to watch for as the performance moves forward.
Then you will also learn about the layout of the stage, so
they will have one of the crew give an in depth explanation
from left to right of the set, and the articles that are up on
the set, the props. And then after all of that you have an
opportunity to actually go up onstage and interact with the
set. So you can kind of explore. You can touch the props.
You can walk off the distance say from the couch to the
front door on the stage or whatever props are up there or
furniture, and you can feel the texture of the walls. It is just
very unique in my mind how real these sets for plays are,
and there’s a lot of effort in construction and carpentry that
goes into that. So how do they make a brick wall look
weathered for example? It’s neat to be able to touch that
and feel that, so it’s a very cool experience.
During the performance, you will have access to audio
description throughout the play. Someone who is very
familiar with the script and the stage directions will actually
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narrate in your ear by way of a transmitter which is
basically a small transistor radio, and you have a set of
ear buds, and you will hear just like if you went to the
movies and had a descriptive narration of the movie,
you’re getting a description narration of the play. So it
really is a very cool experience, and I know there are other
theaters throughout Chicago.
I believe the Shakespeare Theater also offers touch tours
and descriptive audio at different times through the year.
And I know there are other theaters that are looking into
this possibility. So again, just something cool, if you
happen to be in town, or know that you’re coming to town
on vacation or visiting, it’s something very neat to check
out. So that is I think pretty much what I wanted to share
about the theater experience, so I’m going to go ahead
and turn the microphone back over to Judy to take us into
museums and skyscrapers.
Judy Green
Thank you Doug. That was very excellent information. I
spend a lot of time taking the public transportation system
all over the city, and I think they’ve really come a long way
in making advances for disabilities and visually impaired.
Onward, I have a website for you too, and it will also be
included in our resource packet that will be in the
resources that will be online with the seminar. The website
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is www.citypass.com. This website basically talks about
how you can get passes for all the different museums. A
day pass for one museum, or a packet where you can
purchase admission into a few different museums
depending on how long you stay.
With that let’s visit some of the popular sites in Chicago.
Lake Michigan provides beautiful backdrop for the
museum campus. The museum campuses basically was
built about ten years ago, and it basically has all the major
museums all in access to each other. Not connected
building wise, but you could almost walk from one to the
other, or they do have shuttles that take you from one
museum to the other to make it more advantageous for
you.
You can visit the Museum of Science and Industry, the
Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, the Adler
Planetarium, and Soldier Field. Those are all located in the
campus area. So come and visit the Museum of Science
and Industry and experience what it feels like to be in a
tornado or in an avalanche. This is a new interactive site
that you can see at the museum. You can actually walk in,
and it will simulate what it feels like to be in a tornado and
in an avalanche. I haven’t done it yet, but I don’t think I
want to be part of a tornado right now since this is a
season where tornados can be very prevalent.
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You can walk through an eardrum, and experience how
sound travels through the ear. You can walk through a
human heart, and watch the blood flow through the
ventricles and aorta. You can experience the U-505. This
is an outdoor exhibit which is connected to the museum.
The U-505 is the only German World War II submarine in
the United States. And it’s amazing how small it actually
is. You would think of a submarine as being very, very
large, but this is a replica of the actual submarine. I was
amazed how small it was, because when you see them on
the movies, they look big and gigantic. It’s just very, very
small compared to what you may think it would look like.
You could descend into the coal mines and experience
how coal is made or journey back in time and experience
America in the 1900’s. They have a little area where they
have the cobblestone streets and the old apothecary shop
and the old candy shop, the old barber shop with the red
and white candy cane post in front. Things that you’ve
seen and heard about in pictures and in movies. You can
experience that at the Museum of Science and Industry.
And there is much more for families and children.
At the Shedd Aquarium, you can view many exhibits of
fish, plant life, and sea urchins such as the Waters of the
World, the Caribbean Reef, the Amazon Rising, and the
Oceanarium exhibit and show. The Oceanarium is
relatively new, and basically, they tell you about the
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dolphins and how the dolphins were born, and they usually
have mamas and babies and they also have performances
with the different dolphins doing tricks and catching balls.
It’s really a fun place for children to go.
The Field Museum is one of the largest in the world. Here
you can come and see Sue which is the most complete
and best preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil yet
discovered. Sue is really giant. I mean when you walk
through the front door of the museum, there’s Sue
standing several feet high, and it’s basically, very, very
interesting how they discovered Sue and the archeologists
were able to put the pieces together and erect Sue. And
there’s a history behind how they discovered Sue, and it is
on audio. And many of the exhibits at the museum are
interactive and audio.
You can get a glimpse of Egyptian life, and for example,
see the mummies and how the different pharos were
preserved, and you can go underground to get a bug eye
view of what it looks like from an insects perspective. Isn’t
that cute? A, “bug eye,” view. So those are some of the
more popular exhibits. You can go and get an audio
descriptive recording on an MP3 player that will take you
through the exhibits. Some of the exhibits cost extra, so it
would be an extra fee along with your admission into the
museum.
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Let’s stroll down north on Michigan Avenue until you get to
two large lions perched in front of a stone building. You
know you’re in front of the Art Institute of Chicago. These
lions are decorated periodically. They have special
decorations for holidays, so they have headdresses for the
holidays. And when our Chicago teams are playing in
Super Bowl or World Series Championship, they’re
decorated in the colors of the sports teams.
The Art Institute of Chicago has made a special effort to
accommodate people with disabilities, especially the
visually impaired. They are also wheelchair accessible.
The museums audio guide provides a self-guided tour of
the galleries. So again, the galleries and some special
exhibits, you can get an Mp3 player with headphones, with
different descriptions of the artwork and the sculptures,
and it will actually walk you through the different rooms in
an exhibit. So if you wanted to focus on the Renaissance
Period, then you could go into the museum and get an
Mp3 player, and it will take you through that exhibit giving
you a description and a little bit of history about each one.
Visitors who are blind or low vision may arrange for free
guided tours through the museum. All you need to do is
give them advance notice, and they will be happy to
accommodate. On the lower level, there is a touch gallery
with special sculptures and busts with braille descriptions.
And then I found a new addition to the Art Institute and
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that is called Tactiles Tips. They are now available for
visitors who are visually impaired. They are free of charge,
and again, if you’d let them know in advance, they will
have things ready for you. Those kits consist of a series of
masterpieces from the Art Institute collection represented
on handheld tiles designed to be touched.
The Tactiles reproduce the compositions and textures of
the artwork making them legible through the fingertips. To
me it almost seems like a puzzle piece where you put the
pieces in the correct slots, and then you will have a tactile
representation of a specific piece of artwork. Each tactile
fits into a slot in a specifically designed carrying case
which includes a color photograph, a large type print
description, and a braille description of each work. This
sounds fascinating. I’ll have to visit sometime. I’ll have to
check it out.
Let’s move on to the Adler Planetarium. Here you can visit
our solar system and share an interactive experience with
the sun and the seven planets. Many of their exhibits are
auditory, so it’s beneficial for everyone. You can see
digitally enhanced shows in these theaters. Sometimes
they have specific shows based on the seasons, so it will
give you a description of the planets and where they are in
the solar system. It is a light and sound presentation. You
can discover how ancient cultures viewed life through
astronomy and hear stories and accounts of what it was
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like to travel in space. Very interesting. There’s much
more.
At the Chicago Historical Museum, you can use your five
senses to experience Chicago and the vast history. The
Chicago Historical Museum was redone about ten years
ago to update a lot of its artifacts and to reorganize things
and make things more accessible for many types of
people. Families can ride a high wheel bicycle, hear the
Great Chicago Fire, catch a fly ball at Comiskey Park, and
I’ll explain Comiskey Park in a little bit. Smell the cities
past. I imagine they are referring to the Stockyards, and
be a Chicago style hotdog. So there you have your five
senses.
Chicago is known for its hot dogs and deep dish pizza, so
you have many hot dog stands, and you have many pizza
places in the city. Lou Malnati’s and Gino’s East and Uno’s
are popular names of pizza places in the City of Chicago.
But we can tell you’re not from Chicago if you order a hot
dog with ketchup on it, because that’s a telltale sign. No
ketchup on your hotdogs. I tell the kids that, because most
kids like it with hotdogs.
We sure love our sports teams in Chicago. The Chicago
White Sox is an American league baseball team who plays
at the Cell formerly known as Comiskey Park. When I was
a kid my dad used to take us to Comiskey Park, the old
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ball field, and we used to sit in the third base bleachers
and watch the game and eat the hot dogs. When I was a
kid, people like Minnie Minoso and Luis Aparicio and
Nellie Fox were playing baseball. Of course, they’re well
gone by now, but it still provides good memories for us as
children. Comiskey Park was the site of the first All-Star
Game in 1933. Do you know who hit the first homerun in
an All-Star Game? I think about 1933.
Of course, it was Babe Ruth. The White Sox won the
World Series in 2005.
The Chicago Bears referred to as, “Da Bears,” play at
Soldier Field. This venue serves as a memorial to honor
those veterans and people who died in the wars. The
Bears won the Super Bowl in 1985. It seems like
yesterday, but we still are waiting for the next one. The
Chicago Bulls is our national league basketball team. In
the 1990’s, a famous player named Michael Jordan
brought them to two three peat championships. So three
peat, so first they won three titles in a row. Then they
skipped a year, and then they won three more titles, three
more championships in a row. So that’s how we got the
name, “three peat.” The fans will never forget that.
Our Chicago hockey team, the Chicago Blackhawks,
brought us to Stanley Cup in 2010 and 2012. So now they
are in the hunt to bring us another one this year. Right
now they’re down one game, so it’s one to zero, and
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they’re playing the Ducks, so come on Hawks. And then
we have our beloved Chicago Cubs, our national league
baseball team who plays at Wrigley Field which is known
as The Friendly Confines. Wrigley Field is the second
oldest baseball stadium in the United States. Fenway Park
is the oldest, and Wrigley Field is second. They still use
the original manual scoreboard to keep score. The Cubs
haven’t won a World Series since 1908. According to the
movie, Back to the Future, “The Cubs will win in 2015.”
Can it be? We’ve been waiting a long time for this. I hope
it’s in my lifetime. Fans favorite motto is, “Wait until next
year.” So we hope this will be the year.
The Observation Platform of the Willis Tower, formerly
known as the Sears Tower, and the John Hancock
Observatory are favorite skyscrapers to visit. You can
have dinner on the 95th floor of the John Hancock Center
or shop down the Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue.
You can attend the Blues Festival or the Gospel Festival
concerts at Grant Park. You can attend the fantastic Taste
of Chicago on the Lakefront. Walk along Lake Michigan,
ride the giant Ferris wheel, or take a dinner cruise on Navy
Pier.
Navy Pier is a wonderful outdoor venue with shops and
restaurants and many ships that take you out on luncheon
cruises and dinner cruises. Some during nonpeak season,
you can walk up and schedule a cruise, or you can book
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your cruises in advance if you are out of town, and you
want to make sure that will be available for you to do.
Perhaps, you may want to retreat to the Elizabethan
Period and attend a Shakespearean Play at Navy Pier.
Doug had alluded to the Shakespearean plays, and how
accessible they are for visually impaired.
Explore The Bean at Millennium Park. Millennium Park is
another outside park right on the Lakefront, and The Bean
is a huge stainless steel structure which is mirrored. It’s
just so unusual. It has water coming out of it with a
fountain, and it’s a picnic area where you can actually
bring your picnic lunch and have lunch along the Lakefront
at Millennium Park or Grant Park. There are restaurants
surrounding the area in walking distance from The Bean
and Grant Park and Millennium Park. Or you can sit at the
ledge of Buckingham Fountain and watch it change colors.
Buckingham Fountain is 135 feet high fountain, and it is
one of the largest in the world. The fountain represents
Lake Michigan, and the four horses that stand beside it
represent the four states that boarder the lake. They are
Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois.
Many film producers have taken advantage of Chicago’s
panorama. Almost every weekend, they close down
streets at night, or they go under the streets of the city,
and they film portions of films. Especially, race scenes and
racecars, or shootings or something on that order. Here
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are some of the movies that were filmed in Chicago. The
Blues Brothers in 1980, and the song that Doug played is
from the Blues Brothers. The Blues Brothers was a
musical comedy featured with a lot of R& B singers and
soul artists such as James Brown, Aretha Franklin, and
Ray Charles. The Untouchables, another movie, 1987.
Home Alone, 1990. Man of Steel, the Superman movie,
and The Dark Knight in 2013 which of course is a Batman
Movie.
President Barak Obama and his First Family once resided
on the south side of Chicago, and now of course, he
resides in the White House. But rumor has it that he may
be moving back to the city. He still maintains his residence
here on the south side of the Chicago. Obama just
announced that the President’s Library will be built in our
fair city. Other famous people from Chicago include Oprah
Winfrey, Bill Murray who’s a comedian, Hillary Clinton,
Jennifer Hudson who’s the singer who won The American
Idol, and she’s a Grammy winner and Academy Award
winner. Harrison Ford, Robin Williams, Patricia Arquette,
and Walt Disney.
Our city Chicago is a city rich in history and culture. So
come experience these site and embrace the Windy City.
So that includes my presentation for today.
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Doug Anzlovar
Thanks Judy. Good afternoon everyone again. It’s Doug,
and there were a couple of questions that came into the
text chat. We’re running out of time here, but I do want to
allow enough time if anybody in the audience has a couple
of questions for us. So let me address the questions in the
text chat first.
The first one was are the South Shore Lines still running
from Gary to Chicago? The answer is yes. The South
Shore train lines are still running actually. And the next
question. Good question. We have a foodie in the
audience. Are the White Castle restaurants still there? And
I can attest to there is still a White Castle restaurant on the
north side of the city toward the north boarder of the city,
because I was there back in October. So yes, there is still
one in that location. I’m not sure about other locations in
the city.
And then just a comment. Judy talked about The Bean
downtown, and there was a little bit of controversy over
The Bean when it first was conceived and brought to
Chicago. The artist actually named the artwork Cloud
Gate, because of its reflectiveness, the shininess, the
mirrorness of the structure reflects the cloud and the sky
and things of that nature. But it didn’t take long for the
residents and the Chicago media to call it The Bean,
because it kind of does look like an oddly shaped kidney
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bean. So forever and always going forward, I think Cloud
Gate has been forgotten, and we do think of it as The
Bean lovingly. With that, I will go ahead and turn over the
presentation to all of the audience, and if anybody has a
question for Judy or I we will certainly try to answer those.
Marty Hutchings
This is Marty Hutchings. I’m going to be coming through
the city in a couple of weeks to pick up my mom at the
Amtrak Station at Union Station. I’ll be making the trek two
blocks between Ogilvie and Union Station. Is there any
construction or strange events that are going to impede
my progress between those two stations that I should be
aware of?
Doug Anzlovar
Marty that is a great question. I actually have not been
down there for a number of months. However, I will be
heading down there tonight. So darn, I wish we were
chatting a little later, but I don’t know of anything. There’s
an old joke in Chicago that, “There’s two seasons winter
and construction season.” So I know that for several
months they were working on one of the streets that
parallels Canal Street to the east, so I don’t’ know of
anything – long and short of it Marty.
I noticed in the text to chat there was a question about
architectural tours. I know that there are several
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architectural tours. I think there are also some river based
architectural tours where you can board a boat and go
down the Chicago River there and learn about
architecture. I don’t really have any details about them. I
don’t know Judy if the Park District or the Tourism Bureau
probably would be a good place to hunt. I imagine if you
would Google Chicago Architectural Tours you would
probably get a lot of information that way as well. Other
questions from the audience?
Judy Green
I just wanted to say that there is a website. I think its www
dot architectural tours Chicago, and that basically talks
about the different tours. There are tours that you can get
that are in specific neighborhoods like Greektown,
Chinatown. There’s also tours of the shoreline where you
can go behind the planetarium, and there are boats
available right there. And also, I believe the Field Museum
behind there, and you can also take those tours that take
you not far into Lake Michigan but on Lake Michigan, so
that you can observe the city skyline which is really
beautiful.
Male
I used to do the Wendella Tour every year when I lived
down there. It was pretty fun.
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Doug Anzlovar
I think another cool thing that just came to mind. They
have water taxi service, so I’ve never accessed the water
taxi service, but for a fare it will take you from one point
along the Chicago River down to the next. I actually think
that a lot of commuters during the good weather months
will use this service as well. So that might be something to
check out. It might just be kind of a fun little boat ride. I
need to wrap us up for today, but Ignacio if you type into
the text chat I’ll try to answer your question. So I’ll kind of
keep an eye out for your question in the text chat.
With that said, I’m going to go ahead and bring the
seminar to a close today. I do want to thank everyone for
participating today, and we do value your feedback, so
we’d love to hear from you. You can send us feedback in
an email to feedback@Hadley.edu. Your feedback often
helps us to improve our seminars at Hadley, and we also
get a lot of great topic ideas from audience participants
who have listened to our seminars, so again a lot of our
great topics we offer come from you all the audience.
Again, thank you for participating. I’m going to turn the
microphone back over to Judy for some final thoughts for
today.
Judy Green
I noticed that John was asking about underground and
underground tours. I don’t know of any. I know
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underground is Wacker Drive. That’s been under
construction for a while on and off. I don’t know if any
tours, but I know that’s where a lot of the movies are
filmed on Wacker Drive. Sometimes the homeless are
down there, and the cabs take shortcuts to go –
underground like in Lower Wacker is what they call it. So
that might be something that you can check on the
website to see if underground tours are available.
Doug Anzlovar
Judy thank you for presenting today. We appreciate you
being here and taking the time out of your day to share a
little bit about Chicago. So again, thank you so much for
participating today. Have a great day everyone. And this
seminar like all of our seminars will be archived on our
webpage. You can go to the past seminars page, and we
will actually host and share a resource list that we’ll post
with the live recording. So thanks again everyone and
have a great afternoon.
[End of Audio– 01:07:19]
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