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A look back at Lincoln Village Shopping Center

A look back at Lincoln Village Shopping Center

If you only know from what Lincoln Village Shopping Center looks like today, then E. G. Shinner’s 1950 vision of a pleasant shopping environment makes no sense at all.

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A few things

A few things

In a previous post I recalled Chicago Daily News (and Sun-Times) columnist Sydney J. Harris and my fondness his weekly columns titled “Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things.” I’d like to close out 2011 with a post in a similar vein, without elaborating on the fact that now we all learn things “While Looking Up Other Things” on the Internet.

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This was Deborah

This was Deborah

For more than 40 years I’ve been passing this building. How did I not see, not admire, those sharp, clean lines and angles jutting outwards from the corner of Kimball and Ainslie?

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The Bungalow

The Bungalow

Guest blogger Charlene (Powitz) Gelber recalls Central Park Avenue in Hollywood Park. It was really like the country, because we had the TB sanitarium on one side and the Boys Parental School across the street. There were no houses across from us and it was beautiful.

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When Ray Kroc Came to Hollywood Park

When Ray Kroc Came to Hollywood Park

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know milestones of this magnitude are few and far between in the history of Hollywood Park.

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Nighthawks in Old Albany Park

Nighthawks in Old Albany Park

It’s not New York, it’s not a diner, it’s not an image of urban loneliness, but Allan Zirlin’s photograph of Segal’s Shoes at the corner Lawrence and Sawyer reminds me of Edward Hopper’s painting, Nighthawks. Zirlin shot this photograph out a car window sometime in the 1950s.

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Meet some Regular Fellas

Meet some Regular Fellas

Social athletic clubs like the Regular Fellas had all but disappeared by the time I started my freshman year at Von Steuben High School in the fall of 1970. Many of us, especially if you were the oldest child in the family like I was, had no idea these clubs had once made up a vast and vibrant social network.

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Two for two

Two for two

I love how this photo captures the way seventh-grade teacher Mr. Wahle always was at the center of our attention.

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Back to School

Back to School

In my memory, the walls were painted a pale institutional green and the lockers were milk chocolate brown. To a first grader, the hallways of Peterson Elementary School were like a cave, dark and endless with voices and footsteps echoing in the distance.

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Grounds for Play

Grounds for Play

In the sixties and seventies, if little kids didn’t get hurt running around the gravel and asphalt playground at Peterson Elementary School, they had a good chance of banging up theirs knees or noses on the metal play equipment.

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