Volunteers needed for Annual House Walk

The Rogers Park/West Ridge Historical Society will host its Annual House Walk on Sunday, May 2, 2010 from 12 Noon to 5:00 p.m. This year’s tour will highlight Indian Boundary Park and nearby homes, including the notable Park Castles and Park Gables apartment buildings and their spectacular Art Deco swimming pools.

A new RPWRHS exhibit in the park’s cultural center, A Park is Your Front Yard: Indian Boundary Park and the Gubbins, McDonnell & Blietz Co-ops, 1915-1929 will also be open to tour participants.

Volunteers are needed for half or full shifts on the day of the tour. A half-day shift is from 11:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. or 2:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m. A full day shift is from 11:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Volunteers will serve as greeters or docents at tour sites and will have a brief training session prior to the tour.

Those interested in volunteering should contact mbrewer@rcn.com to sign up. For more information about the Tour and Exhibit, visit http://www.rpwrhs.org/.

Please forward this to the members of your committees who may not be included on this message, and thank you for supporting our Annual Tour.

Maribeth Brewer
Indian Boundary Park Advisory Council

Adelphi Theater Art Deco Ushers

I moved to the Rogers Park neighborhood in the late 1970's, to attend Loyola U. I lived on Estes Avenue, and I think the Adelphi was on the southwest corner of Clark and Estes. The Adelphi’s entrance on Clark Street had a very unusual sidewalk in front it. It wasn't anything like a typical Chicago "Streets and San" sidewalk, because it contained two very large inlays, that were art-deco style images of ushers. There was one on each side, and they looked as if they were bowing to you. Each usher extended one arm to welcome you to the show, and tucked the other behind his back.I found them remarkable for two reasons. First, they belonged to only the Adelphi, in that were created right there on that spot, and would never be used anywhere else. Second, they only made sense because the building was a theatre. If someone converted it into a grocery store, for example, customers would wonder what kind of oddball has two theatre ushers outside his grocery store. Read more here.

The Adelphi Theater on Cinematreasures.org

The Adelphi, built in 1917 for the Ascher Brothers circuit, was designed by local architect J.E.O. Pridmore. The theater stood on Clark Street at Estes Avenue in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood. In the 1930s, the Adelphi received an Art Deco remodeling. The theater was modernized during the 1940s and again in the 1950s. It began to show second-run features starting in the late 1960s, and closed briefly in the early 1980s, after several years screening Spanish movies.In the mid 1980s, the Adelphi reopened as the North Shore Theater, but was again known as the Adelphi when it began to show East Indian films and became the premiere venue for Bollywood features in the Chicagoland area, despite its down-on-the-heels appearance both inside and out.The Adelphi closed in January 2002. Sadly, the still-viable theater was demolished in January 2006. Read more here.