Is it the Marshall Field’s holiday windows or lunch at the Walnut Room? Or the school field trip where you saw the Chagall and Picasso for the first time? What are your favorite memories of Chicago’s Loop? Share your perspectives and add your stories, memories, photos, and more to our collective history of the Loop.
Comments
Marshall Field's windows
I just love my memories of seeing the windows. It's not the same now.
Inland Steel Building
I believe that Geoffrey's statement that all of the steel was provided by Inland and it's subsidiaries is incorrect. Even in the original version of this tour, it is stated that the stainless steel used for the exterior of the building was provided by Inland's competitor, US Steel because Inland did not produce stainless steel.
Are the movie scenes of the freight tunnel a Hollywood set?
Chicago's Loop: A new walking tour says that Chicago's freight tunnels appeared in the movie Union Station. In hope of seeing some vintage views of Chicago and the tunnels, I streamed the movie on Netflix. To my disappointment, it appears that the entire movie was shot somewhere other than Chicago.
According to IMDB, the scenes at Union Station are actually Los Angeles' Union Station. The L scenes are New York's Third Avenue El and Los Angeles' Pacific Electric Railway. This web site claims the stockyard scenes were shot at LA's stockyard.
I believe even the freight tunnels are a Hollywood set. In the movie the walls are straight, with the side walls vertical up to about four feet, then sloping at a 45 degree angle, and the roof flat and parallel to the ground.
In reality the freight tunnels were oval-shaped as shown in the images here and here. More research should be done to determine whether the movie footage which appears in the documentary are from the real Chicago freight tunnels or merely a Hollywood set.
Freight Tunnels
Wow! You appear to be correct! The clue is definitely the shape of the tunnels. The real tunnels are oval in cross-section. Maybe the movie company found it was cheaper to build a set with straight walls. Thanks for this sharp-eyed observation.
GB
Confirmation that the Union Station tunnel scenes were fake
I ran into Bruce Moffat, the foremost authority on the Chicago freight tunnels and author of the books Forty Feet Below and The Chicago Tunnel Story, and he confirmed that the Chicago freight tunnel scenes from Union Station were “faked, and poor fakes at that.” He said that The Blues Brothers movie had more realistic, but still a fake version of the freight tunnels.
Marshall Field's
The part 4 Walking Tour includes a large section on Marshall Fields. The picture of Anton Fritsch with Uncle Mistletoe is my Grandfather. He was with Fields from the early 1930s until 1957. His position as an artist was the Head of the Interior and Exterior Window Display. He and his colleagues were responsible for the high level of artistry that the Fields family reqauired for the this icon of Chicago. Anton Fritsch was attendied the University of Leipzig Art Institute in Germany. He was an Austrian who immigrated to the United States in 1922.
He was a friend of Walk Disney who asked him to move to California with him. Grandma Fritsch said "no" she wasn't ging to travel any further than Chicago.
The particular picutre of him with some of the staff's creations has been used by Macy's on the 7th Floor Walnut Room hallway. Also in other books about the heyday of Firelds on State Street as well as the Christmas parades featured this picture. Thanks for including him again. We are proud that our family added such wonderful memories for so many people.
Just another side note. Dorothy LaMore the actress accociated with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in their "On the Road to " films used to operate an elevator at Fields.
Thanks again.
hugo liao
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