The posts I originally wrote about the MTS on Me & My Shadow will stay here, because they are part of my Chicago experience. As more information about the MTS became available to me, and my interest in researching it grew, I felt that the subject was too large, too important, and too moving to play a side role in this blog.  I’m hoping that giving the baby blog its own home will attract more readers with stories about the MTS.

So, when you have a chance, visit the new baby and let me know what you think.

In the fall of 2011 I joined Marshall Rosenthal and Elaine Soloway at the Hon Kee Restaurant, one of Marshall's favorites.

I met Marshall Rosenthal about two years ago. While I immediately learned he was a great source for information on Chicago past and present, I didn’t get a chance to know him well enough. I never knew the details of his storied career in Chicago journalism until I read his obituary earlier this week. I knew him as a photographer, not a writer. He was an early supporter of this blog, and his interest and comments meant a great deal to me.

Marshall went to Roosevelt High School and I attended Von Steuben High School 17 years later, but that was enough to feel we were from the same neighborhood. The Albany Park hot dogs stands he remembered from his youth were still around in mine.

My first email to Marshall was a request to use one of his photos for a blogpost. He said yes, and then said yes a second time. A blog is no fun without photographs. Not being a photographer myself, I considered myself lucky Marshall had the photos I needed for a story about hot dog stands and offered them freely. I remember thinking at the time, whatever subject I wrote about in this blog about Chicago, Marshall would have the photo.

(c) Marshall Rosenthal

As a tribute to Marshall, I am reposting two of his photographs and a comment he left on a post about photographer Gary Stochl. I was thrilled to learn I had done the impossible: I introduced him to the work of a Chicago photographer he hadn’t heard of.

Frances, Thank you very for this wonderful post. I have found everything very useful. I’ve joined the “Forgotten Chicago” Flickr group and will go through my Flickr photos to contribute to it; I’ve reserved the Stochl book at the public library, and have been delighted by your links to the Loop photos.

(c) Marshall Rosenthal

As I mentioned, I didn’t know much about Marshall’s work before he retired, so I’ll defer to others to recall his many accomplishments in Chicago journalism.

“RIP  Marshall Rosenthal,” Chicago Reader

“Around Town: Remembering Marshall Rosenthal,” Chicagoist

Obituary, Chicago Sun-Times

Obituary, Chicago Tribune

Related: As of today, you can still view Marshall’s photostream on Flickr,

I should mention I didn’t actually look up all the things on my list; many were sent by much-appreciated readers who make writing this blog so worthwhile.

1. Gold Medal Cleaners was opened by Max and Sam Fishman at 3340 Bryn Mawr in 1927. Not only did they survive the Depression, this family business is still in operation in its fourth generation, now in Wilmette. Biltmore Cleaners, at 3216 Bryn Mawr is the business that has remained opened the longest on Bryn Mawr. I don’t know exactly what year it opened, but it was open in 1947. The second longest running business on Bryn Mawr that is still operating in its original location is Davis Imperial Cleaners, at 3325 Bryn Mawr.

Photo from the Davis Imperial Cleaners website

You tell me: what is about the dry cleaning business? Why are three dry cleaning businesses that started on Bryn Mawr in Hollywood Park  more than 50 years ago the last ones standing?

2. The owner of Cooper & Cooper, the famed hamburger joint on Lawrence Avenue in Albany Park, doubled his meat order every Yom Kippur. Usually he ordered 25 lbs of ground beef daily. On Yom Kippur, he asked for 50 lbs. This is no urban legend, but a fact; I got it from the butcher’s son.

3. Mrs. Wright was a teacher at Peterson School in the 1950s. She told her students that her husband invented the dial telephone.

4.  There was a time you could get fresh bagels and lox on Bryn Mawr. There was an indoor miniature golf range in a Bryn Mawr store front. There was a place called The Egg Store on Bryn Mawr, where they sold nothing but fresh eggs.

5. Bob, the barber who worked at Irv’s Barber Shop told one of his young customers that he learned how to cut hair in prison. The barber who cut hair at the shop kiddy corner from Irv’s, next to C.V.’s Snack Shop, was a Holocaust survivor who had a number tattooed on his forearm.

6. The owner of the house at 5531 N. Spaulding sold the place to a family in 1976. She left all the furniture in the basement, telling the buyers she couldn’t go down there because it was haunted. They are also rumors in the neighborhood of a body buried in Hollywood Park. I never heard that when I was growing up but I know a few people who might like Hollywood Park to be their final resting place. Other supposedly haunted places in Hollywood Park: the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium and the Parental School. Might as well throw in the Skokie Channel by Kedzie and the cemeteries on Pulaski and declare the whole area a hot spot of paranormal activity.

Near the main entrance guardhouses at the former Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium.

7. Pheasant also haunted the grounds of the TB Sanitarium. Some folks remember people jumping the fence to hunt them. Now the grounds are overrun by deer, but no one is hunting.

8. There’s more than one of us remembering Hollywood Park and Von Steuben in their glory days. Check out these memories .

The key to the mystery of the cement block at Hollywood Park: the cement block at River Park.

9.  The mystery of the cement block at Hollywood Park is more or less solved as far as I’m concerned. There’s an identical one at River Park, though it’s been painted green. That cement block is identified as belonging to the Chicago Water Dept. Oh, well; so it’s not where the alleged body was buried.

10. Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal once owned a hot dog stand near Lawrence and Kedzie in Albany Park. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, see Casino. Robert DeNiro plays Rosenthal. When he was in the hot dog business, Rosenthal let the neighborhood boys hang out at the stand and they remember him as being a brilliant guy, “a genius with numbers.”

Among several places in Albany Park and Hollywood Park where bets might be placed were Terry’s Smoke Shop, the Leland Pool Room, Nick the Greek’s newsstand, and a location above a Bryn Mawr storefront, address to be confirmed. I’ve been told Albany Park in the ’40s and ’50s was a place where people bet on anything and everything, even what color gumball would come out of the machine next.

11. The country’s largest WWII Victory Garden was located on the grounds of the Parental School at Foster and St. Louis. 800 families farmed that potato patch. Another Victory Garden was located where the River Park pool is now. Someone drowned on the day they first opened the River Park pool.

12. The last thing I learned this year is that this blog has given me the great gift of connecting with so many interesting, warm and fun people from my old neighborhood, many of whom lived there decades before I did. Thanks to all for your comments and emails — keep ‘em coming.

Photo credit: Davis Imperials Cleaners photo from http://davisimperialcleaners.com/about/history 

Self-described vinyl junkie and Roosevelt High School alum Mike Wolstein sent in this absolute gem. Released by Chess Records in 1958, Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” topped the charts and was listed as #272 on the Rolling Stone list of the greatest songs of all time.

It took a while, but Mike tracked down which Chicago public school was memorialized in rock and roll history:

The cover of this 1958 Chuck Berry EP (extended play – a 7″ record having 4 songs) depicts a couple walking up the steps of a high school. When I first saw the cover, back in 1976, it looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It was definitely a Chicago school, due to the old English script above the doorway.

Well, about 15 years later I got in my car and drove all over the north side, trying to locate this school. After 100 miles and about 20 schools, I gave up. Then, I realized I’d missed one school — one I had actually attended!

I hopped back into the car and drove over to Von Steuben. Lo and behold, that picture was taken at the very spot where I’d sit every morning at 8AM waiting for the bell to ring! (I attended Junior High there when Hibbard became overcrowded).

Chess Records was located at 2120 South Michigan Avenue at the time of the recording. The company was of course owned by Leonard and Phil Chess, who were Jewish immigrants from Poland. The Chess brothers attended South Side public schools, so why did they put a photograph taken at Von Steuben High School on the cover? Does anyone know the story or recognize the couple in the photo?

Mike also sent in two photos taken in Albany Park during the Big Snow. Let’s hope we don’t see this again anytime soon.

The photo above shows Lawrence Avenue looking east from St. Louis.  The second photo was taken south on Bernard from Lawrence, and that is Roosevelt High School at the far end of the street.

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Mike Wolstein for sharing his discovery of the photo of Von Steuben High School on the Chuck Berry record cover. His contribution to this blog proves, once again, that if you dig deep enough into the history of Albany Park and North Park, eventually you’ll learn everything about Chicago.

Sources: schmoop.com; wikipedia;  ”Sweet Little Sixteen” cover is shown on ebay.

The first time I visited the Deborah Boys Club in Albany Park, it was the late 1960s and I was in seventh grade. I didn’t think much of the building. It’s not that it had seen better days, but I was more interested in watching what was going on inside: several boys from my class at Peterson School were playing a game of basketball.

Looking into the history of the Deborah Boys Club, or Deborah as we called the community center, I came across a stunning early photograph. For more than 40 years I’ve been passing this building, now home to the Albany Park Community Center.  How did I not see, not admire, those sharp, clean lines and angles jutting outwards from the corner of Kimball and Ainslie?

I wanted an expert’s opinion. Is this the real thing? Is it as pretty as I think it is? For answers, I turned to Lee Bey, who writes about Chicago architecture on his WBEZ blog and talks about it on Fox News Chicago. Lee agreed:

“It’s a beaut! It’s a modernist building clearly influenced by the Bauhaus, particularly the work of Walter Gropius. The material and form remind me a lot of the Masters’ Houses, designed by Gropius at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany.”

I found the photograph on the website of Epstein, the firm, then known as A. Epstein and Sons, that in 1949 designed and built the Deborah Boys Club. The same firm that designed and built many, many, many of the world’s notable buildings. And the Deborah Boys Club in  Albany Park. There’s a story here, but I don’t know it.

The Old Deborah

Funded and operated by the Deborah’s Women Club together with the Young Men’s Jewish Council (later renamed the Jewish Council for Youth Services), the Deborah Boys Club first opened its doors in 1930 at 2441 W. Division with the goal of keeping boys off the streets and out of trouble by offering recreational and educational activities. Although the founders were Jewish social service agencies, the club was nondenominational.

Ron Shapiro grew up in an apartment above his father’s Division Street grocery store during the 1940s, a block away from the Deborah Boys Club. He knew it well.

I spent so many hours there that the manager gave me a set of keys to the gym in case he wasn’t there when a bunch of us from the neighborhood would show up early. I had the keys to the locker that held all of the equipment. I started going to Deborah when I was about 8 or 9 and continued until they moved north.

The New Deborah

In the 1940s Jewish families were migrating north from the West and Near West Side neighborhoods. Businesses and institutions followed in their wake. The new Deborah Boys Club at 3401 Ainslie included space for arts and crafts, radio and electricity, photography, wood shop, photography, a gymnasium, showers, lockers, library, kitchen, dramatics and glee club. At first the club was open to boys from 8 to 18; girls were admitted in 1954. By 1956, the club was serving 1,600 kids annually.

Carol Solomon Proesel, who attended Peterson Elementary School and graduated from Von Steuben High School in the late ’60s, says Deborah was a very integral part of her social life. She recalls after-school programs, babysitting classes,  music, arts and crafts, girls volleyball, dances with live bands: “Dances were a big thing. Inside during the winter, outside when it was warm.”

Kids came to Deborah from a fairly large area, stretching from Albany Park north to Peterson Park. In addition to its own programming, Deborah hosted meetings for community groups and had ties to local schools. Many SACs (social athletic clubs) found a home at Deborah for their meetings, dances and sports teams. In an earlier post, I published a 1958 photograph of the Regular Fellas club taken in the gym at Deborah.  An article titled “Sports Extensions” in the 1967 edition of the Peterson Elementary School newsletter reports on the tournaments held at Deborah.

Peterson Elementary School, 1967 newsletter

The Jewish Council of Youth Services closed Deborah Boys Club in 1975 for the same reason they left Division Street twenty-odd years earlier: the neighborhood changed.

Photo credits: The photograph of the Deborah Boys Club is from the website of Epstein, the 90-year-old Chicago engineering and architectural firm that built the Deborah Boys Club.

Sources: GROUND BROKEN AT NEW DEBORAH BOYS CLUB SITE. (1949, June 5).Chicago Daily Tribune (1923-1963),NW7.  Retrieved July 17, 2011, from ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 – 1987). (Document ID: 489266662).

Group to Move at End of Year. (1949, August 21). Chicago Daily Tribune (1923-1963),NW9.  Retrieved July 17, 2011, from ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 – 1987). (Document ID: 489647572).

Deborah Boys Club timeline.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Lee Bey for his insights; check out his blog for his great photos and stories of Chicago architecture. Thanks also to Ron Shapiro, author of the memoir, Making Happy, and to Carol Solomon Proesel for sharing their memories.

From Montrose to Peterson, Kedzie to Pulaski and far beyond, generations of kids knew Ned Singer’s Sports.

It was where Von Steuben, Roosevelt, even Mather and Sullivan high school students bought the required school gym uniforms, where guys bought Converse All-Stars and jock straps, where SAC members bought their club jackets, and where several Chicago schools and community recreational centers bought sports equipment.

For more than 20 years at River Park, a Little League team wore Ned Singer’s Sports on their uniforms. Ned Singer’s Sports also sponsored softball and basketball teams–close to a dozen teams–on the North Side and on the West Side. Sponsoring youth sports meant the store donated team uniforms and jackets.

Howard Glantz, a Von Steuben alum (class of ’55), played on softball and basketball teams sponsored by Ned Singer’s Sports. He recalls going to the store to buy a jock strap for the first time. He knew Mrs. Singer worked at the store and he didn’t want to go in when she was there. Every day after school he’d peek in the store window and see her. At the end of the week, he couldn’t put it off any longer. Mrs. Singer was working that day and asked Howie what he was looking for. He told her, an athletic supporter.

“What size?”  Mrs. Singer asked.

Howie didn’t know what size. He panicked, thinking he’d have to take off his pants and get measured.

Then Mrs. Singer quickly said, “Your waist size.”

* * * 

Like many of his Albany Park neighbors, Ned Singer came from Chicago’s West Side. His Eastern European Jewish parents were so poor they were evicted from another apartment every third month. Singer attended Manley High School, played on the basketball team.

After the war, he worked at Marshall Field’s on State in the gun repair department. (Who knew?) One day a loaded shotgun accidentally went off. Buckshot lodged in the ceiling. Singer looked for a safer job.

Bea and Ned Singer in the 1960s

He became a sales clerk at a sporting goods store at 3344 W. Lawrence called Vange’s, then bought out the business in 1952. Singer’s wife, Bernice Pomerantz Singer, worked the store office when she wasn’t taking care of their five sons. Like other local business owners, they lived in the neighborhood.

Over the years they moved the business, first to 3334 Lawrence, then 3247 Lawrence. They opened a second store in Skokie, where many Albany Park Jews had migrated. They ran the pro shop at the East Bank Club for the first five years of the club’s existence.

Ned and Bea retired in the late 1980s and moved to Florida. He suffered a stroke, then developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. When his son Jeff called from Chicago in early 1996, asking did he want attend the first ever Von Steuben-Roosevelt alumni game, Ned said no. He was tired, had just gone through chemo.

Bea told Jeff, leave your father alone, his immune system is compromised, he’ll die if he travels on a plane. As the weeks passed, Jeff asked again and again, until finally Ned told him, back off.

On Friday, February 23, the day before the game, Ned called Jeff to say he’d be on a plane to Chicago.

Jeff met his father at O’Hare on Saturday afternoon and drove straight to Von Steuben. They parked on Kimball Avenue near the school entrance and several guys came out to help Ned up the building steps.

Robby Polovin, Bob Briskman, and Ned Singer

The gym was packed to the rafters, 600 people squeezed into stands that hold 500. Ned and Jeff entered the gym and slowly circled the perimeter of the floor. As people recognized Ned, they stood and cheered.

Ned is shaking hands with Lonnie Dienstag Goldberg, to her left is Howard Weisman and Bonnie Baron Weisman.

Men walked up to Ned and introduced themselves as the kids who once played on teams he sponsored, the kids who bought their first pair of school gym shorts at the store on Lawrence. At half-time Marshall Waldo introduced Ned over the P.A.  and the place went crazy.

When he was growing up in Albany Park, Jeff felt being Ned Singer’s son was something special. At the alumni game, the feeling was more than special; it was  indescribable. From his expression in these photographs, Ned must have felt the same way.

 Organized by then Von Steuben Athletic Director and alum Richard Wiener, the historic game drew former players from both schools. None of the players were under 40. Maybe none were under 45. Don Wilens (who played for Von in ’53 and ’54) coached the Von Steuben Panthers and Manny Weincord coached the Roosevelt Rough Riders. Marshall Waldo, Von class of 1962, did the player intros over the P.A. Roosevelt won by one point.

Several months after the game, Ned passed away in Florida. His family established the Ned and Bernice Singer Memorial Athletic Scholarship, which continues to be awarded annually to a Von Steuben student.

* * * 

As a girl growing up in that community pre-Title IX, I never participated in organized sports. The first time I walked into Ned Singer’s Sports on Lawrence was in the fall of 1970, the start of my freshman year at Von Steuben. All I bought was a gym uniform, but it was a rite of passage of sorts and the memory, so closely tied to the trauma of  freshman P.E., remains with me. We were meeting so many girls from different schools for the first time and the embarrassment of those one-piece sleeveless gym suits with bloomer bottoms, not to mention the shapeless swimsuits and curtainless shower stalls, brought us  a bit closer together as a class.

So, it’s been some 40 years I’ve known Ned Singer’s name, but never knew his story. Turns out the story was as memorable as the name.

Acknowledgements:  Thanks to Jeff Singer for sharing his parents’ story and photographs. Thanks to Rich Wiener for providing details about the alumni game and the Von Steuben Alumni Association, and thanks to Howie Glantz for sharing his wonderful stories.

Jerry Shapiro greeting his former employer. Jerry worked at Ned Singer's Sports in the late 1960s-early '70s. Prior to that he worked at Deborah Boys Club as a recreation coordinator.

Allen Pritikin reminiscing with Ned Singer

By guest blogger Charlene Gelber

“So, Morrie, where did you say you lived before moving here to Florida?” inquired Gert, the new lady friend from New Jersey.

“I lived on the North Side of Chicago in a bungalow,” Morrie proudly proclaimed.

“A bungalow? No, you couldn’t have lived in a bungalow in Chicago,” insisted Gert.

“Yes, Gertie. It was a bungalow. My wife Clara and I moved into our home in 1954 and raised our two kids, until we sold it in ’72 to move here to Sunrise, Florida.”

“What, you raised your children in a bungalow? Morrie, you’re kidding me.”

“No, no, Gert. It really was a bungalow. I even planted a tiny spruce tree in the front and I sure would like to see how big it got.”

“Morrie, please, enough. I think you’re pulling my leg. Whatever you do, don’t embarrass yourself and tell my friends you lived in a bungalow.”

“But Gert, it was a beautiful home, our family’s home. I’m going to call my daughter and she’ll tell you.”

Morrie phones me and says, “Charlene, it’s Dad. Here, I want you to talk to my friend Gert.” (And hello to you too, Dad.)

“Hello, Charlene, this is Gert. I know we’ve never talked before, but your father insists you all lived and grew up in a bungalow in Chicago. Is that true?”

“Oh, sure, Gert, 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.”

“Oh, my! Well, here’s your father.”

“Bye, talk to you later.” (And bye to you, too, Dad.)

“So, now do you believe me, Gert?”

“My God, Morrie! What’s the matter with you? You tell me you lived in a bungalow and now your daughter says it was by a TB sanitarium and a school for bad boys. I don’t know what to do with you!”

Morrie couldn’t understand what Gert was so upset about and Gert was confused about Morrie’s story. He never mentioned it again.

 * * * 

The next year, Morrie brought Gert to Chicago to visit our family. His first order of business was to have me drive them around the city to give Gert a chance to see where he lived and worked before his retirement. We drove to our old bungalow at 5631 N. Central Park Avenue and parked in front.

“Well, Gert, here’s my bungalow,” Morrie anxiously offered, fearing more criticism on his life.

“Morrie, you’re doing it again. Stop kidding me. This is a lovely home. It’s not a bungalow. Why have you been teasing me all this time?”

Exasperated and worn-out, Morrie responded, “Gert, this is a bungalow. That’s what you call this type of house in Chicago.”

After seconds of silence, Gert apologetically replied, “Oh, Morrie, I’m so very sorry. You see, to me a bungalow is a shack-like house you rent for a few weeks on the Jersey shore. No one would live there full time, let alone raise a family. I couldn’t imagine anyone living like that and you kept telling me you did. I really had my doubts about you.”

What a relief. Morrie could finally tell her of his life in the bungalow; of his pride of ownership, how he transformed the dormer upstairs into my brother’s room. He praised his workshop down in the basement; an opening into the wall. How he painted the garage a turquoise blue, because the color was on sale. The tuck pointing job he completed on his vacation time. The front steps re-cemented for his children’s friends to gather. The yard filled with flowering bushes surrounding an ornate sewer cover. What satisfaction he received attending to the upkeep of his house.

The TB sanitarium became a beautiful park and the Parental School became the Chicago Teacher’s College and later Northeastern University. The spruce tree was still standing, having grown taller than the house. Morrie spoke lovingly about his bungalow and Gert finally got it.

The bungalow still stands, a testament to the uniqueness of Chicago and of a special man, Morrie Powitz.

(c) 2011 Charlene Gelber

My thanks to Charlene (Powitz) Gelber  for sharing her story about our old neighborhood. Although we met recently, Charlene lived three blocks south of my family’s home on Central Park Avenue. My parents always used to say to the same thing about our street: “We bought this house because it’s like the country here.”

Hollywood Park McDonald's, June 1968. (c) Morrie Farbman

Back when I did a survey of Hollywood Park neighborhood landmarks, someone mentioned our McDonald’s probably was one of the earliest.

Exactly how early? I asked.

Maybe the second, replied my source.

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. For nearly a year I’ve been asking former Hollywood Park residents old enough to remember, what year did the McDonald’s open? (People from Hollywood Park of course understand which is the McDonald’s. For those of you from other parts, it’s located on Peterson and Jersey.) Here’s the best answer I got:

“Regarding McDonald’s, I’m guessing it was opened in ’58 0r ’59. I remember we were there at the Park every day on our bikes and would ask them every day when they were opening.”

After learning the 100th restaurant opened in 1959, however, I gave up all hope. If we were Ray Kroc’s 61st or 89th or even the 100th McDonald’s, that story wasn’t worth a french fry.

Then I talked to Howard Gelber. He was one of the first teenagers, maybe the first teenager, to get a part-time job at the Hollywood Park McDonald’s. And, yes, he confirmed we were #2. Well, maybe #3–but, definitely, not more than #3.

As Gelber recalls, he started working at the Hollywood Park McDonald’s in 1956 or ’57 and there was a McDonald’s on Montrose that opened just before or after the Hollywood Park McDonald’s. Kroc’s first McDonald’s restaurant opened on April 15, 1955, on Lee Street in Des Plaines.

That means our McDonald’s isn’t just a Hollywood Park landmark; it’s one or two McDonald’s away from being a national monument. And get this: Ray Kroc himself would pick up Gelber at Von Steuben High School and drive him to work.

The Hollywood Park McDonald’s was Kroc’s showplace to sell the concept to franchisees, and he wanted a bright and personable young man taking orders. The full-time employees didn’t fit the bill, so whenever Kroc had an appointment to show the restaurant to a prospect, he drove over to Von, picked up Gelber and drove him back to McDonald’s to work the window.

Millions and millions and millions

My first visit to the Hollywood Park McDonald’s probably was in 1964, ’65 at the latest. It was a special treat, once or twice a summer. We ate in the car and all I talked about was the sign. That sign introduced me to the numerical concept of millions, and more than anything, I wanted to witness the exact moment when the number of burgers sold rose another million.

 About the photo

Morrie Farbman clearly remembers the date he took the photograph of the McDonald’s sign shown above because it was right after the assassination of RFK and the flag was flying at half-mast. I’m surprised to see the original sign lasted so long. The only change  is “Coast to Coast” replaced 15 cents.

Farbman attended Hibbard and Von Steuben, but graduated from Niles North. He recalls spending nearly every summer day from 1962 to 1969 at Hollywood Park.

Those were the days. Hanging at the park playing line ball, baseball and basketball, then lunch at McDonald’s.

He started taking photographs in 1964, mostly street photography. He worked part-time for Phil Malodinoff, a well-known Jewish photographer who had a studio on Devon. He had the Mather High School yearbook job, and Farbman recalls using a 4×5 camera to photograph the exterior of the school, first with the lens cap on and then getting it right the second time. Farbman’s first full-time commercial photography job was with Buffalo Photo near Clark and Superior. After getting married and having children, he became a Skokie garbage man by day and wedding/bar mitzvah photographer by night.

Over time Farbman worked his way up the ranks to firefighter, paramedic, lieutenant, fire investigator and fire chief, but along the way he lost his passion for photography. Then in 1993, the bug bit again and he’s been taking fine art still life and landscape photographs and  now plans to get back into his first interest, street photography. Check his recent work as well as some classic early ’70s images–including a young Eric Clapton in photo #6–on his website. You can contact Morrie via his website if you’re interested in purchasing prints, or you can view his work at Galleria Classico, in Cave Creek, just north of Phoenix/Scottsdale.

Credits: Photo courtesy of Morrie Farbman.  Thanks to Morrie Farbman and Howard Gelber for sharing their stories.

Sources:  McDonald’s website; Wikipedia entry on McDonald’s.

I planned on interviewing Allan Zirlin about his memories of growing up in nearby Albany Park in the 1940s. It turned out he had a bigger story to tell: he’s been photographing downtown Chicago street scenes since the 1950s, when he was a student at the Art Institute. He sent me a few photographs to share on my blog, and, as noted in my previous post, you can see many more on his website and also on his Facebook page.

(c) Allan Zirlin

A parade of stars once swept through the doors of 610 N. Fairbanks Court in Streeterville. Lines formed around the block to see the likes of Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Milton Berle, Sophie Tucker, Jimmy Durante, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Bob Hope performing at the Chez Paree supper club.

Maike (Mike) Fritzel and Joe Jacobson opened the nightspot in 1932. In 1949 they sold the business to a group that included Jay Schatz. The property, now called the Schatz Building, is still in the family.

In the 1920s, Fritzel owned Friar’s Inn, a speakeasy on Wabash, and later owned Fritzel’s at 201 N. State.  He also bought the Tradewinds Restaurant at 865 N. Rush and had an interest in Don the Beachcomber. 

Allan Zirlin (right), with a date and his parents, caught the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis act at Chez Paree in the early 1950s

The Schatz Building was designed by architects Benjamin Marshall and Charles Eli Fox in 1917 and originally housed a bakery for the Horn & Hardart Automat Company. Marshall and Fox designed several Chicago landmarks, including the Drake Hotel and the Blackstone Hotel.

I first noticed the building, unusual in that area for its strong emphasis on horizontal lines, in the early 1980s. Over the years the facade changed slightly and then dramatically, always retaining a connection to the arts–a sculpture, a mural.

That was the exterior. I had no idea of its cultural significance on the inside. In the 1940s, the Bauhaus School’s Laszlo Moholy-Nagy opened the School of Design, later called the Institute of Design, and still later a part of the Illinois Institute of Technology, on the building’s second floor.

(c) Allan Zirlin

Above is Zirlin’s shot of Randolph Street from the Randolph/Wabash L station. The movie named on the Oriental marquee is Desk Set with Tracy and Hepburn, dating this to 1957 or ’58.

(c) Allan Zirlin

These stories may lead me around the city, but I’ll always end up back home in Hollywood Park. Here’s (below) a look back at Hollywood Kiddieland after dark.

(C) Allan Zirlin

(C) Allan Zirlin

Credits: All photos, except second from top, courtesy of Allan Zirlin. Photo of 610 Fairbanks as it appears today is from Google Maps.

Sources: That Toddlin’ Town, Charles A. Sengstock, Jr.; Chez Paree entry in Wikipedia; The Schatz Building website; obituary of Jay Schatz.

Check out Allan Zirlin’s photo albums on Facebook and on his website.

(c) Allan Zirlin

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.

Zirlin’s been a Chicago street photographer since the early 1950s, but before that he was a native son of Albany Park. He graduated from Hibbard Elementary School in 1948, Von Steuben High School in January 1952.

Alan Zirlin in 1942, standing in front of his home on Bernard, by the footbridge at North Branch of the Chicago River

He lived at several addresses in Albany Park; back then it was common for families to move around within a neighborhood. His family lived with Allan’s grandparents on the 4900 block of Ridgeway; 4927 N. St. Louis, and 4952 N. Bernard by the river. (Update: In the mid-1950s, Bernice and Ned Singer (Ned Singer’s Sports) and their sons, Joel, Jeffrey, Neal, Rick and Bob, moved to the Zirlin’s family’s former home at 4952 N. Bernard. )

One of his memories I found amazing was that from his third-floor porch they could see the chutes dropping at Riverview and the Lindberg Beacon atop the Palmolive Building (later the Playboy Building).

Recollections of Albany Park

“Bonfire was our spot, with the Junior Achievement group upstairs above it. Each booth at Bonfire had those jukebox players. Kids hung out there after the movies. We also went to Terminal Inn and Wing Lee for Chinese food,  Kushner’s deli on the north side of Lawrence, east of Kedzie, and S&L on the corner of  Kedzie and Lawrence. Also we went for challah, bagels and bialys, and kaiser rolls to Kuznitsky’s Bakery–they were part of our family.

Every graduation class from Von had a lunch at Purity Restaurant, which was a Kosher deli on Lawrence near Kimball. We made speeches and teased each other.”

I asked Zirlin if he remembers any other businesses from Lawrence Avenue in its heyday. He remembers: Woolworth’s;  Hurwitz Men’s Wear shop; Tots ‘n Teens;  Community bakery (another branch was on Bryn Mawr); and the Karmelkorn shop next to the Terminal. Central Cigar store on Kimball and Lawrence;  Steiner’s Tavern; Skokie Valley ice cream shop on Kimball north of Lawrence. Lester’s toy store on Lawrence, where Zirlin got comic books and toys, of course; Rudich’s soda fountain; A&P on Kedzie; Heinemann’s bakery; Knopov bakery; Kaplan bakery; Albany Park Masonic Temple north of the Ravenswood L (Brown Line) station; Sonny’s Pool Hall on Lawrence; Singer’s Drugs; and Rol-a-Way bowling alley on Pulaski north of Lawrence, where everyone from Von and Roosevelt went.

You can’t help noticing there were a lot of Jewish bakeries in Albany Park. Here’s an excerpt from an essay Zirlin wrote for the Skokie Public Library recalling the Jewish bakeries of Albany Park:

“Shortly after WWII ended, a baker named Kaufman came to Chicago and opened a small bakery on Kedzie Avenue just north of Lawrence. Bagels have never been the same since. Mr. Kaufman created a new kind of bagel, one without the bullet-proof skin, one that you could bite into with ease yet still had that satisfying al dente feel. He created the now-famous double-bagel, one bagel made from the dough normally used for two. And it had a twist, literally, not just a flat uninteresting appearance.” –quoted from Bagels, by Allan Zirlin

Kaufman’s bakery, now at 4905 Dempster in Skokie, still turns out my favorite bagels, though I miss the Kedzie Avenue experience on Sunday mornings.

Allan Zirlin in 1955, in front of the family Chevy. It was from the third floor of this apartment building that Allan could see Riverview and downtown Chicago

Thanks to Allan Zirlin, I’ll be able to do for Lawrence Avenue in Albany Park what I’ve done for Bryn Mawr in Hollywood Park. And, as I mentioned, Zirlin’s been taking photographs of Chicago street scenes since the 1950s. On Monday, I’ll share some of my favorites photographs of his. But you can check his work out now on his website.

Credits: Thanks, Allan, for permission to publish your photographs, and for bringing old Albany Park back to life for me.