Wednesday, March 9, 2011

There sits Buddha, face unfathomable, hooded eyes of blue ice, nose stubborn and strong. Lines like deep parentheses bracket his thin lips; beneath them is a small chin, and beneath that is a big chin. Five-and-a-half feet high, close to 200 lbs. wide, he is swathed in a cautious dark suit from which peeps an embroidered breast-pocket handkerchief with a monogram: R.J.D.

Buddha speaks--and his pronouncements are aphorisms. "Leadership," he says, "has to be formulated on the basis of what's good for Chicago. If something is in the public interest, then it is in the party's interest. Good government is good politics."

Buddha moves--but only to rub his fingers back and forth across the edge of his desk. That desk, clean of papers, may be the most important place in Chicago. For it is the desk of Mayor Richard Joseph Daley, 60. In Chicago, Daley is boss. Few others understand so well what the city is all about: its labyrinths of power, the pulsators of its machinery, the structure of its institutions, the yearnings of its people. Chicago's motto, I WILL, is Daley's personal and political charter. Buddha though he is, he gets things done. Says a leading businessman: "Nothing ever happens in Chicago without landing on Daley's desk for decision." Daley, with characteristic caution, agrees. "We participate in one way or another." he says, "in the important things that happen."

Labels: 1960s, 1963, politics, Richard J. Daley

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Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Coverage of Chicago in Life Magazine

Google Books has every issue of Life Magazine from November 1936 to December 1972 scanned and available for online viewing (though you can't download articles or print them). A search for Chicago turns up dozens of vintage Chicago photos and news stories.

Some of the highlights include: The Chicago blizzard of January 1967 (24 inches of snow in 29 hours), a 1954 piece on the construction of the Prudential Life Insurance Building, a 1969 feature on the John Hancock Center ("making passé the notion that one has to visit New York to see skyscrapers"), and coverage of Chicago's 1968 Democratic Convention.

Labels: 1960s, 1968, 1968 Democratic Convention, Life Magazine, politics

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Monday, March 7, 2011

55,000 Vintage Chicago Photos

This online collection from the Library of Congress features more than 55,000 photographs taken by Chicago Daily News photographers between 1902 and 1933. The one above was taken in 1910 in Chicago's Lincoln Park.

Labels: 1910, Lincoln Park

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Friday, March 4, 2011

Chicago's State Street in the 1960s

Looking north on State Street, sometime in the 1960s. Check out the planters on the streetlights! Posted on Flickr by Zeus Of HollYWOoD.

Labels: 1960s, State Street

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Thursday, March 3, 2011

Vintage Chicago CTA Map

A 1948 Chicago CTA map, posted to Flickr by Eric Fischer. Click here to see the full size version.

Labels: 1940s, 1948, CTA, maps

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Wednesday, March 2, 2011

The Field Museum in 1922

A stunning shot of the interior of Chicago's Field Museum in 1922. (78 years before the arrival of Sue!)

Posted on Flickr by The Field Museum Library.

Labels: 1920s, 1922, Field Museum, museums

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Chicago The Beautiful

A 1948 MGM travelogue of Chicago by James FitzPatrick: "Where American enterprise and progressive people have combined to build in less than a century the second largest metropolis in North America."

Labels: 1940s, 1948, James FitzPatrick, travelogue

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1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, museums, politics, postcards, sports, State Street, Chicago Theatre, John Vachon, Art Institute, Michigan Avenue, Union Station, Wrigley Field, Brookfield Zoo