If I haven’t yet convinced you Hollywood Park was the best thing that could happen to a Chicago kid during the 1950s and ’60s, this photograph should do the trick. We had, right in our neighborhood, the Hollywood Kiddieland amusement park.
While Lincoln Village Theater may have been Oscar Brotman’s greatest gift to Hollywood Park, it was far from his greatest gift to Chicago. Lincoln Village Theater was just one in a multifaceted chain of Brotman-Sherman movie theaters. They had art houses (Carnegie, Cinema); drive-ins (Oasis); historic icons (Portage, Tivoli, Aragon); modern conveniences (Hillside), and, in […]
In July 1968 Oscar Brotman made a triumphant return to Hollywood Park with the opening of the 1,440-seat Lincoln Village Theater, located in the Lincoln Village Shopping Center about two blocks upriver from Brotman’s shuttered and soon-to-be-demolished Tower Cabana Club.
His name was Oscar A. Brotman (1916-1994), and not just once but twice he brought his vision of glitz and glamour to the Hollywood Park neighborhood. Nothing remains of the Tower Cabana Club and Lincoln Village Theatre, but in their glory days Brotman’s venues were the swankiest spots around. Setting the stage for fun in the sun […]
If you been reading my blog, you’ve heard me recall the good old days of the business district along Bryn Mawr Avenue in Hollywood Park. This weekend that street will show it’s still alive and kickin’ with the first ever North Park Art Walk. Along Bryn Mawr and Kedzie, in a warehouse, in vacant storefronts […]
Today I’m announcing the winners of Historic Bars of Chicago and Carless in Chicago, two Lake Claremont Press books, but first I want to thank you all for participating and explain how the drawing works. I assigned numbers to each name and wrote the numbers on scraps of paper. The crumbled pieces of paper were […]
I’m so excited about discovering Lake Claremont Press and its extensive list of books about Chicago, I’m giving away two books so you can discover this great resource for yourself. Leave a comment on today’s post to enter a drawing for Historic Bars of Chicago and Carless in Chicago.
Are you like me, one of those Chicagoans who never tires of reading about the city? Recently I discovered there’s a publishing house for people like us.
This survey of course proves nothing. The sampling was way too small, the subject way too complex. I can’t tell you why Hollywood Park failed to achieve the ranks of legendary Chicago neighborhoods, or why it sometimes seems to be on the verge of being swallowed up by North Park.
There was no shortage of memorable landmarks in the Hollywood Park of my childhood. When I asked 10 former Hollywood Park residents to name the neighborhood landmarks, everyone listed at least three and nearly everyone listed the same ones.
