Green River is currently (October 2010) sold at Treasure Island.
Forum: General Discussion

When I lived at 5400 North in a tall building I could read the KENTILE sign with binoculars. 4500 South? Wow.
Forum: General Discussion

Ah the HiLo: I knew it well in the 'Fifties. My husband was a student and we had no money. The HiLo's claim to fame was its many ten-cent items---cartloads of them, up and down the aisles. Some were wonderful---wish I could buy them now. There was Apple Bay Applesauce, slightly pink in color and very appley-tasting, best canned applesauce I've ever found, and also a big can of mashed sweet potatoe
Forum: General Discussion

"Isbell's, 940 N Rush St, 950 W Diversey Parkway, and 1435 E Hyde Park Blvd. Take your choice of either of these fine restaurants. You will not be disappointed I am sure. the one on Rush St is,l I believe, the best for atmosphere. However, in all of them you will be served with the choicest of quality foods. Everything is neat and clean. They specialize in chicken, ribs, and charcoal broiled
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

The German community must have been huge. If you look at the names on the gravestones in St Boniface Cemetery, Clark between Lawrence and Ainslie, they seem all to be German. And if you stop in at St Michael's Church on Eugenie in Old Town---the doors are often open---you can pick up a brochure detailing the history of the church, which was built with money contributed by German immigrants (who al
Forum: General Discussion

I stand corrected about the EL/subway being called whatever. But I remember getting on the train at 63rd & University and going downtown, and pushing my little baby (who is now 56) in his carriage on 63rd Street as the EL train roared overhead.
Forum: General Discussion

This past week (last week of April 2010) there has been a vintage postcard for sale on eBay that shows the San Souci amusement park at 63rd at Cottage Grove!
Forum: General Discussion

Try looking at vintage postcards of Chicago---google "postcards chicago".
Forum: General Discussion

I took another look at this building. The curleycue detail between the windows is really exquisite and looks to me as if it is made of marble rather than terra-cotta. You may be able to see the building as it originally looked if you google "Bush temple" or try going to ebay>postcards chicago. Not infrequently there is a postcard view of this building (and browsing old Chicago buildin
Forum: General Discussion

Dinkel's Bakery is alive and well and even has a website.
Forum: General Discussion

They sell Green River at Treasure Island.
Forum: General Discussion

I think it was out on Western but am going on very old memory. We lived in Hyde Park in the 1950's and used to drive there. Just now I googled Dixie Cream Donuts and the company turns out to be alive and well and headquartered in Tulska OK. They are selling franchises. Please, somebody, open one in my neighborhood.
Forum: General Discussion

Notice on the north side of Chicago Avenue around Rush there is a long red brick 1880's-looking building, now housing sandwich shops and the thrift shop of Northwestern Memorial Hospital. I read the other day that this was the Hotel St Benedict's Flats, 40-52 East Chicago, built 1882-3, luxury flats made to look like a row of four townhouses when people still associated apartments with tenements.
Forum: General Discussion

Long after Peacock's left State Street its brass door with the peacock stayed behind---it was there in the early 1990's. Does anyone know where it is now?
Forum: General Discussion

To seod: All I've been able to find out so far is that there was a Rienzi Hotel and it was next door to the Diversey Arms Hotel at Diversey and Clark, now a Day's Inn. If you google Rienzi Hotel you will get the same material I read. In the 1920's a lot of big music names more or less started out there in the hotel's Rendezvous Cafe---Glenn Miller played with Ben Pollack's orchestra, Mugsy Spanier
Forum: General Discussion

In the "Odds and Ends" department of Forgotten Chicago there is a photograph of the now-vanished Marigold Bowling Alley at Broadway and Grace. This would have taken its name from the Marigold Gardens which, when anti-German sentiment rose at the time of World War I, was the name given in 1915 to the Bismarck Gardens, SW corner Grace & Halsted. That beer garden had been built in 1895
Forum: General Discussion

To chgobusiness: Thanks for the reference to ChicagoPostcardMuseum; did not know of it and will go there now. Meanwhile, here's one for you: go to eBay and search "postcards chicago"---they always have a couple of hundred dating from ca 1900-more recently, and you can BUY them.
Forum: Forgotten Chicago Sightings

As I found this thread I just one hour ago was viewing the section of Forgotten Chicago that lists disused firehouses (with photographs). Amazing how many of them are now used for other purposes such as residence and business. Old Public Baths also.
Forum: General Discussion

Yes, I used to sit contemplating it from the Chicago 66 bus stop across the street. What got my attention was the quality of the graceful detail---but the roofline is so peculiar and ugly (because it's been sawed off, who knows why). You can google "Bush Temple Chicago" for more information.
Forum: General Discussion

The chain stores I remember from Hyde Park in the 1950's were: 1) Kroger's, a few doors south of 63rd St near University; 2) A&P, 55th Street just east of St Thomas' Church; 3) HiLo, 63rd St; 4) another one (National? Grand Union? Don't remember) on 55th between Woodlawn and University. Subsequently, in the 1960's, 55th was split to accommodate new apartment houses and most of the commerce di
Forum: General Discussion

You may have noticed an old building with nice detail and an odd roofline on the northwest corner of Clark & Chicago, where the Panang Restaurant is now on the corner. An old postcard > googling inform me that this was the HQ of a piano company, Bush & Gerts, built 1905 and known as the Bush Temple and Museum. That peculiar sawed-off thing on the roof used to be a clock tower.
Forum: General Discussion

One discovery leads to another. I collect old Chicago postcards and ephemera and in this way learned that the Hotel Plaza seems to have stood where the Chicago Latin School is now, North & Clark. The hotel's brochure directed me to Marigold Gardens, Broadway & Grace, so I googled it and found on a website called Jazz Age Chicago a list of beer gardens that mostly opened around 1895 and con
Forum: General Discussion

At State and Randolph, roughly where Borders Books now stands, was (I hope I remember this name right) the Triangle Restaurant where seasonal foods were prepared in the window to attract drooling customers. In the summertime, strawberry shortcake. In cold weather, big baked Idaho potatoes and baked ham with sweet potatoes. I remember this from 1945-1946 and again in 1953. I don't know when they le
Forum: General Discussion

For a long time in recent years E 63rd Street looked as if it had been bombed out, and now it has new townhouses. It's hard to realize that in the 1950's it was a very very busy and bustling commercial street with a spur of the Red Line EL running over it. You could get on the Red Line at University Avenue and go downtown. I remember so many stores pm 63rd, just crammed in close. For about 30 year
Forum: General Discussion

How many department stores there were on State Street in the 1950's! Marshall Fields at one end, Goldblatt's at the other, and in between Weibolts, Mandel Brothers, Carson Pirie Scott, Sears, and Montgomery Wards---and shortly before that there had also been The Boston Store and The Fair Store, before my time. Did I forget any? They had Notions departments, and a lot of household goods, and dress
Forum: General Discussion

I remember the smell of burning leaves combined with the smell of somebody making a big pot of chili sauce---same season.
Forum: General Discussion

I remember that in the 1950's EVERY neighborhood had bakeries. In Hyde Park we had Askow's Bakeries with all kinds of coffee cakes, apple slices, and I think kolachkys were a nickel or a dime. Now? Today? I live downtown and can tell you there is not a single real bakery between Roosevelt and North Avenue. I'm not counting little luncheonettes that will sell you a cupcake for six dollars. The only
Forum: General Discussion

Speaking of the Midway, does anyone remember the prefabs at the University of Chicago in the 1950's? These were Army surplus housing used for married students as many veterans returned from World War II to finish their education---and brought wives. The prefabs were little gray plywood hovels with a two-burner hotplate to cook on. They were heated by a space heater; there was an oil tank outside b
Forum: General Discussion

For those not old enough to remember, Toffenetti's Triangle Restaurant was where Borders Books now is at Randolph & Washington, facing on Randolph. They had certain dishes that they prepared in the window, according to season---I remember strawberry shortcake in the springtime and big huge baked Idaho potatoes in the winter. Wait a minute, I have an old guidebook to Chicago and will look it up
Forum: General Discussion

Does anybody remember Dixie Cream Donuts, South Side, fifty years ago? Absolutely the world's best. We used to eat them before we got home with them.
Forum: General Discussion