More than a century after Upton Sinclair described a stretch of the Chicago River as “a great open sewer,” Bubbly Creek is still plagued by waste – and the restoration process has been mired in its own political muck.
chicago history
Jun 10, 2019 |
Jun 6, 2019 |
We visit a career-spanning show of work by Marvin E. Newman, a still-working photographer who captured Chicago and its people in the 1940s and ‘50s.
Jun 6, 2019 |
The auction would recover money owed secured creditors filmmaker George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, whose Capital V Holdings loaned $12 million to Johnson Publishing.
May 24, 2019 |
Chicago’s beaches – all 26 of them – are now open for the 2019 season. Here are 10 things you may not know about the city’s sandy side.
May 22, 2019 |
How did a Lincoln Park statue wind up standing in cities all over the world? Geoffrey Baer goes south of the border for the answer.
May 20, 2019 |
Chicago’s new mayor, the first black woman and openly gay person to hold the office, takes aim at aldermanic prerogative and outlines her four guiding principles: community safety, public education, stability and integrity.
May 15, 2019 |
A viewer’s photo of her mother at a glamorous restaurant in 1940s Chicago left her wondering where the photo was taken. And we finally address an elephant in the room at Marshall Field’s.
May 14, 2019 |
How did fights over high hats and hoopskirts shape Chicago’s downtown as a shopping destination? We talk with the author of a new book about women and consumer culture at the turn of the century.
May 6, 2019 |
Chicago’s connections to the meat processing industry are well known, but the beef industry didn’t just spur the city’s development. In a new book, historian Joshua Specht says the beef industry helped shape modern America itself.
May 2, 2019 |
Maps are more convenient than ever for finding the shortest route to your dinner reservation, but what do they tell us about the history of our city and state?
May 1, 2019 |
A youth basketball league from the 1940s and ‘50s is a reminder of Japanese American internment during World War II. Geoffrey Baer has that story and more in this edition of Ask Geoffrey.
Apr 30, 2019 |
The iconic Heartland Cafe, which for more than 40 years sat at the corner of Glenwood and Lunt avenues in Rogers Park, is being torn down. We look back at its history as a community hub.
Apr 24, 2019 |
Geoffrey Baer deposits some knowledge about buildings left behind by the banking panics of the Great Depression.
Apr 15, 2019 |
After 77 years, the founding company of Ebony and Jet magazines will soon cease to exist. We talk with two former writers and editors about the history and legacy of Johnson Publishing.
Apr 10, 2019 |
A semi-pro baseball team once bested the big leagues on the Northwest Side. Geoffrey Baer takes a swing at local baseball history and its “outlaw clubs.”
Apr 3, 2019 |
More than 2,800 streets make up Chicago’s famous grid, and city planners and developers drew the streets’ names from all sorts of people and places – including some of our own politicians.
