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CHM collections intern Catrien Egbert recaps her work cataloging the Museum’s massive Decorative and Industrial Arts collection and highlights some memorable finds.

If you’re like me, you’ve always wondered what treasures a museum’s collection might hold.

Last summer, I had the opportunity to find out as the collections team continued its endeavor to catalog the Decorative and Industrial Arts (DIA) collection on the Chicago History Museum’s fourth floor. In my head, the name evoked oil paintings, ornate mirrors, and porcelain vases. As work began, I realized this vision covered only a few of the approximately 100,000 artifacts in this 150-year-old collection, which itself is just a fraction of the nearly 23 million items in the Museum’s overall collection. I could not have predicted the artifacts we would discover.

As Egbert (above) calls out the dimensions of a spice shaker, her fellow intern Amy Sparks (below) verifies the data in our records. Photograph by CHM staff

The inventory process involves pulling objects from their storage space, then measuring and photographing them. It also requires recording an object’s location, visual description, and accession number, which is a unique code the Museum assigns to an artifact when it enters the collection. This feature is the key to research and one of the first things we look for during inventory. I quickly learned that a good treasure hunter has to have patience. On our first day of inventory, we came across a set of engraving tools owned by Olaf Thorsson, a Swedish immigrant who used them in the late 1800s. Though they were similar, each tool varied in length and description. On the fourth floor, we photographed, measured, and described each tool. Then in the collections office, we relabeled each one using archival paper and acrylic resin. In total, we did this for more than seventy tools.

Egbert carefully applies a new label to an engraving tool.

Because an accession number gives no clue about the object’s history or purpose, treasure hunters should be curious. Each artifact brought endless questions: Who originally owned this? Why was it donated? When is it from? What even is this? One of my favorite examples of this was a hooked tool we guessed could be an old-fashioned corkscrew. Imagine our surprise when research revealed it was a tooth extractor from the late 1880s!

This rudimentary dental tool consists of a curved metal hook attached to a wooden handle.

Research is an essential part of the inventory process, and it was gratifying to find answers to our questions about CHM’s records. After each visit to the fourth floor, we updated the information in The Museum System (TMS), our collections database, and conducted research to verify that our “discoveries” were correct. A treasure hunter should enjoy the best feeling in the world—satisfaction when an object’s records verify information recorded during inventory.

In total, we inventoried more than 400 artifacts. Among the gems discussed above, we found bookmarks from the 1933–34 world’s fair, roller skates from the 1980s, and food from the 1960s that was meant to be kept in fallout shelters in case of a nuclear disaster. Sometimes fantastic, sometimes perplexing, the stories behind artifacts make collections work an engaging way to understand the past. I can’t wait to hear what next year’s treasure hunters uncover!

• Explore the Museum’s collection
• Read more about cataloging the DIA inventory project

CHM cataloging and metadata librarian Gretchen Neidhardt explains how the Museum is undertaking the monumental task of digitizing the last of its paper card catalog for 6,000 small manuscript collections.

The Chicago History Museum is excited to utilize an IMLS Museums for America grant to fund the digitization of our final batch of manuscript collection descriptions. While most of our manuscript collections are already in our online catalog ARCHIE, about 6,000 small manuscript collections have yet to be digitized. In recent years, physical reorganization of these collections has prepared us for this final step: converting the collection descriptions from the on-site analog card catalog to online, keyword-searchable records available to anyone anywhere in the world.

A catalog card broken down by fields. All images by CHM staff

As items were acquired, each piece within a collection of papers would be detailed on a catalog card like the one above. The card would include notes on the date, main entry (creator), place, content description, physical description, donor details, and the parent collection. Entries—or, any possible way that a researcher would want to “enter” or access the collection—were added. This card’s entry is “Bowen, George S., 1829–1905,” and it was filed alphabetically in under “Bowen.” Replicas of this card were also filed under “Mawman,” “Altgeld,” and likely “Boer War” or “South African War, 1899–1902,” to give researchers multiple pathways to locate this letter reporting the death of John P. Altgeld. Our goal is to put this rich information online so that someone searching in ARCHIE, WorldCat, ArchiveGrid, or Explore Chicago Collections can find this object and the entire collection.

In order to do that, we photocopied the entire card catalog (which is in alphabetical order) and grouped the copies by collection. We then entered each card’s data—title, description, geographic location, date, donor information, etc.­—into a spreadsheet coded to match MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging) fields, a system that lets different programs “read” the information and return it in a usable format. The spreadsheet is put into our cataloging software, which then creates a record that is usable to researchers.

Now this one item, highlighted in the image above, is surrounded by the context of the rest of the collection, which includes forty-five other letters and items. Official Library of Congress subjects have been added, which are links to any other collections we have containing that topic. Donor information has been noted in our administrative files, and this collection is ready for online access.

Over the next eighteen months, all of our remaining catalog cards will be processed in this manner. Some highlights include:

Materials on fur traders and frontiersmen and women in seventeenth-century Chicago. Much of it is in French, such as this letter from 1693, and details business and personal relationships with the indigenous people of the area.

The embossed seal on the translation indicates that this letter was acquired in 1920 from the estate of Charles F. Gunther.

Documents about everyday Chicagoans, including a disassembled scrapbook made for the retirement of a veteran postal worker in Humboldt Park in 1924.

Rudolph Albrecht celebrated his retirement in Wicker Park.

Aggregated information about notable Chicagoans, such as Junius C. Austin, the influential African American pastor of Pilgrim Baptist Church from 1926 to 1968.

A letter to Dr. and Mrs. Austin from President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

As more collections get added to ARCHIE, the better the Museum can fulfill its mission to share Chicago’s stories.

• Want to help process our catalog cards? Apply today to be an intern!
• Visit the Museum’s Research Center

To kick off Monday Night Nitrates, our new weekly photograph series, M. Alison Eisendrath, CHM’s Andrew W. Mellon Director of Collections, describes the effort to assess, preserve, and digitize our collection of approximately 35,000 nitrate negatives.

In 1889, the Eastman Kodak Company introduced the first commercially available cellulose nitrate film as an alternative to the more fragile and cumbersome glass plate negatives in common use at the time. Offering deep blacks, bright whites, and rich tonal detail in addition to ease of use, nitrate film became the medium of choice for amateur and professional photographers during the first half of the twentieth century.

Taken at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, this photograph is an early example of the use of nitrate negatives. CHM, ICHi-170220; photograph by C. P. Rumford

Nitrate film had its downsides, however. It turned out to be extremely unstable and highly flammable—even capable of spontaneously combusting when stored in large quantities. Thus, nitrate negatives have posed some unique challenges for museums seeking to preserve them.

Close-ups of some nitrate negatives in our collection. Photograph by CHM staff

This past year, the Chicago History Museum secured a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to digitize and preserve our collection of approximately 35,000 nitrate negatives. This priority initiative is the culmination of a five-year journey of assessment, research, and planning that began—oddly enough—with a roofing project.

For many years, for the safety of our staff and collection, CHM’s nitrate negatives were kept in a cold storage vault atop our Clark Street building, until roof repairs meant that the vault’s cooling system would need to be dismantled. As the collections staff transferred the nitrate negatives into temporary storage, they faced the challenge of how to manage this material going forward:

• What was the ideal environment for storing the nitrate negatives, and could those conditions be achieved at our facility? Could the negatives be stored safely over time and within a realistic budget?
• What was the current condition of the negatives and were the images still viable?
• How historically significant were the negatives anyway? Did they merit the expenditure of time and money required to ensure their long-term preservation?
• And, if they were indeed significant, how could we create access to this largely untapped resource while also preserving them for the future?

A section of nitrate negatives in temporary storage. Photograph by CHM staff

To answer these questions, CHM submitted a proposal to the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation in 2012 and was awarded a planning grant to undertake a comprehensive nitrate negative condition survey and content assessment and to hire as an outside preservation consultant Henry Wilhelm, one of the nation’s foremost experts on cold storage of photographic materials. After a two-year evaluation, CHM staff determined that the vast majority of our nitrate negatives were still in reasonably good condition and that many of them also had strong research value and use potential.

The Donnelley-funded assessment yielded a positive report on the nitrates.

In his 209-page report, Wilhelm laid out an implementable storage plan to effectively arrest the negatives’ chemical degradation and eliminate the risk of fire. He also strongly urged CHM to digitize the negatives not only to create access to the materials, but also to reduce the need for handling of the originals.

Information gleaned from the Donnelley project proved invaluable in securing IMLS funding to implement Wilhelm’s recommendations. Also necessary was the development of innovative new digitization, description, and discoverability solutions to support digitization on such a large scale—strategies that will be described in greater detail in subsequent blog posts. After many years of active planning and activity, the project team is thrilled to begin sharing the results of our labors!

• Explore the Museum’s nitrate film collection

CHM curator Petra Slinkard takes you through one of our recent gallery rotations, a practice that helps us preserve artifacts and refresh exhibitions.

The Chicago History Museum’s permanent exhibition Chicago: Crossroads of America is a 15,000-square-foot installation in the heart of the Museum dedicated to our city’s rich and complex past. It opened in September 2006 and contains a variety of objects and images that represent the range of Chicago’s history, from the days of fur trappers to the Cubs’ 2016 World Series win.

This summer, CHM staff made three major updates to refresh the Crossroads exhibition. Our first post about gallery rotations focused on the section about the 1933–34 world’s fair and this second post details the updates in the section on the 1893 world’s fair. For the section on the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, we rearranged the reading rail to expand on the work of activist and author Ida B. Wells and incorporate additional images of the fair.

Part of the new content on Ida B. Wells in Chicago: Crossroads of America. Photographs by CHM staff

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, known as Ida B. Wells, was an African American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, feminist, and an early civil rights leader. She traveled to Chicago in 1893 to protest the blatant exclusion of her peers from the fair. A short film featuring excerpts from five newspaper reports, as well as excerpts from Wells’s 1893 pamphlet “The Reason Why The Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition” and Frederick Douglass’s speech at the contentious “Colored American Day,” which took place on August 25, 1893, is now embedded within the rail. The speeches are powerful and describe the frustration felt by many African Americans for their exclusion and for the fair planners’ negligence.

In addition to the new content on Wells and Douglass, we also incorporated more images that show a fuller extent of the fairgrounds’ magnificence. The main exposition buildings were decidedly neoclassical, lathered with plaster of paris, and painted a chalky white, which earned the fair the nickname of “White City.” To help our guests learn what it might have been like to be a visitor, we included two flip books featuring photographs of the exposition and additional text pertaining to the experience.

Top: The Horticultural Building under construction, Chicago, February 1892. Photograph by C. D. Arnold. CHM, ICHi-059982 Bottom: The completed Horticultural Building, Chicago, 1893. Photograph by William Henry Jackson. CHM, ICHi-017127

We hope you’ll visit soon to see these new additions and learn more about a momentous event in Chicago history that elevated the city in the eyes of the world.

Additional Resources

• Read a copy of Wells’s pamphlet
• Learn more about the historical marker in Jackson Park that honors Frederick Douglass
• Peruse the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum’s website

CHM archives intern Hannah Radeke worked with senior archivist Dana Lamparello this past summer to cull duplicative images from the photography collection of Edward H. Weiss, a world-renowned, Chicago-based artist and ad man.

Edward Huhner Weiss (1901–84) was a man of many interests. Best known for his large-scale portraits of notable figures both within Chicago and beyond, he also founded an advertising agency, taught college courses, and collected art and historical manuscripts. Working with the Weiss Collection at the Chicago History Museum—which includes over 1,000 photographs of his paintings and artist studio—I found a wealth of photographs featuring Weiss posing with his portraits and their subjects.

Weiss in his studio with some of his artwork, Chicago, c. 1975

An artist since 1940, Weiss was heavily influenced by the work of his father Abraham Weiss, who photographed movie stars for Balaban & Katz movie posters. Edward Weiss’s pieces focused on important figures such as politicians, artists, celebrities, and symphony conductors. In these portraits, he always tried to incorporate a reference to his subject’s personal history or interest, whether it was a mobile in the eye of sculptor Alexander Calder or the face of diplomat Adlai Stevenson on a globe. In his famous portrait of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, he accentuated the mogul’s eyes and featured his trademark pipe.

Hefner (left) poses with Weiss and his portrait. The hand that holds the pipe is shown as an extension of the main canvas, c. 1960

It was important to Weiss to connect with the subjects of his portraits. In fact, his artist partnerships also carried over to his advertising agency, Edward H. Weiss & Co., where he developed a relationship with the Jim Beam bourbon whiskey brand, one of his clients. During the 1963 holiday season, he designed three unique decanters with his own portraits of Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, bridging his art and business ventures and becoming the only living artist to have had his work featured on the bottles.

Weiss’s extensive body of work is a testament to the way he lived: continuously working and imbuing his life with his passions. In his obituary by Kenan Heise of the Chicago Tribune, Heise highlighted Weiss’s belief that “creativity is not merely the capacity to come up with a brilliant new idea now and then, but mainly the ability to work on a steady day-to-day basis as the Renaissance artists did.” Weiss lived up to this definition, extending his creativity to solutions for business and marketing though his advertising agency.

Weiss in his studio, Chicago, c. 1975

Additional Resources

• Explore the Edward H. Weiss collection of visual materials
• Visit our Research Center

CHM archives and manuscripts intern Matthew Norgard worked with archivist Julie Wroblewski this past summer to process the papers of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights (CCDBR). In this blog post, he details what he learned about the CCDBR and activism in the city more broadly.

Grassroots organizing is once again in the national spotlight, and the collection of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights at the Chicago History Museum is a valuable resource for those interested in the history of organizing and activism. As I exploring this newly processed collection, it became quite clear that people have been struggling for decades to protect the rights of all Americans in the face of hate.

The CCDBR collected evidence of hate groups’ activities in and around Chicago. This flyer from 1975 is for the National Socialist Party of America’s march protesting black families moving into white communities. All images by CHM staff

The collection provides decades’ worth of documentation thanks to the work of its two executive directors, Richard Criley and Rachel Rosen DeGolia. The CCDBR was formed in 1960 from the Illinois branch of the Civil Rights Congress and several other smaller organizations that focused on opposing the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The CCDBR soon partnered with the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (NCARL) to promote the abolishment of HUAC.

An editorial by the CCDBR protesting the Chicago HUAC hearings, c. 1947.

The CCDBR also worked to protect immigrant rights after it absorbed the duties of the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, which had helped to defend against and raise awareness about the McCarran-Walter and Smith Acts that stripped away the rights of immigrants and naturalized citizens. The two acts targeted members of groups labeled as subversive by the government, in particular the Communist Party USA. Individuals targeted saw the erosion of their rights and some faced deportation.

A flyer from a Fourth of July picnic celebrating American’s from all nations.

At the local level, the CCDBR fought against the repressive practices of the Chicago Police Department’s Red Squad division and, along with the Alliance to End Repression (AER), was instrumental in the successful lawsuit against the Red Squad. Due to the CCDBR’s defense of the civil rights of marginalized groups, it quickly drew the ire of the federal government and several hate groups, but continued to fight in the face of this extreme opposition. Following the dissolution of the HUAC, the CCDBR continued its partnership with NCARL and worked with the American Civil Liberties Union to raise awareness about efforts to revise the US Federal Criminal Code.

One of several files detailing the actions the FBI undertook against Richard Criley and the CCDBR.

The CCDBR collection features important documentation of the organization’s activities, as well as several of its forerunner organizations, such as correspondence, pamphlets, bulletins, court records, petitions, newsletters, and board meeting minutes from the Civil Rights Congress, CCDBR, NCARL, AER, and the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born. Moreover, collection documents the activities of those who saw the CCDBR as a threat, such as files showing the FBI’s actions against Richard Criley and hate literature that was sent to the CCDBR.

Additional Resources

• Learn more about the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights
• Explore the CCDBR collection at CHM
• Visit our Research Center

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the White Sox winning the 1917 World Series, CHM historian Peter T. Alter looks back at the team and its activities within the context of that year.

Saturday, October 6, 1917, dawned chilly and wet in Chicago. A thirteen-year-old White Sox fan, James T. Farrell, left his home in Washington Park at 5:00 a.m. to take the L and a trolley to stand in line at Comiskey Park for Game 1 World Series tickets.

Baseball fans wait in line outside Comiskey Park, 1917. CHM, Chicago Daily News, SDN-061254

Young Farrell, a South Side native, was not the only Sox rooter to brave the raw weather as he stood in a line several blocks long. Other fans couldn’t even get seats inside the park, so they perched on buildings overlooking the ballyard.

Military personnel and fans watch the World Series from the Seventh Regiment Armory and another building outside Comiskey Park, 1917. CHM, Chicago Daily News, SDN-010037

From the right-center field bleachers, the boy saw his South Side nine beat the visiting New York Giants 2–1 in the opening contest. Farrell, who would find fame in the 1930s for writing his Studs Lonigan trilogy, reminisced about watching this game in his book My Baseball Diary (1957).

White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte wears a patriotic uniform with an American flag and star-spangled team logo, Comiskey Park, 1917. CHM, Chicago Daily News, SDN-057908B

The 1917 White Sox had a stacked club with some all-time greats, including Shoeless Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte along with future Hall of Famers Ray Schalk and Eddie Collins. World War I deeply altered America’s pastime that year, as the United States had entered the Great War in April 1917. The White Sox and other ball clubs showed their support by conducting military exercises on the field, among many other activities.

A drill sergeant leads White Sox players wearing US army uniforms in an exercise, Comiskey Park, 1917. CHM, Chicago Daily News, SDN-061131

Three White Sox players recruit for the US army by the L stop at Madison and Wells Streets in Chicago’s Loop, 1917. CHM, Chicago Daily News, DN-0068270

The Sox eventually won the 1917 Fall Classic four games to two. They clinched the title at New York’s Polo Grounds on October 15 and returned to Chicago on October 17. During the long train trip, Sox players celebrated late into the night and early morning. When the train pulled into the LaSalle Street railroad station, cheering crowds and bands fêted the newly crowned champs.

White Sox pitcher Joe Benz’s “World’s Champions” tie clasp, 1917, now on display in Chicago: Crossroads of America. CHM, 1988.470.11a-b

The South Siders brought home their second championship and the only title they won as residents of Comiskey Park, the Baseball Palace of the World. It would take the White Sox eighty-eight years to win another World Series title—a significant wait, but still shorter than that of the North Side Cubs.

Additional Resources

• Peruse our White Sox images
• Read the transcript of Alter’s interview with NPR in 2005

CHM senior curator Olivia Mahoney writes about a Chicago innovation that helped the city recover from the 1871 fire in a surprisingly beautiful way.

This year marks the 146th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire that blazed through the city from October 8 to 10, 1871. One of the worst urban fires in American history killed approximately three hundred people, left thousands more homeless, and utterly destroyed the city’s central business district. Previously, the common building materials of stone, iron, and brick were thought to be fireproof, but they were no match for the fire’s intense heat. Yet, as the old saying goes, something good can come out of tragedy, and in this case, the good turned out to be Chicago’s innovative use of terra-cotta to fireproof buildings.

The backside of a sample tile (upper), c. 1904–29, made by one of Chicago’s leading companies shows the porous nature of terra-cotta. The front side (lower) has a cream-colored glaze. Photograph by CHM staff

Terra-cotta, or “baked earth” in Latin, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic with a porous texture. It had been used as a building material for centuries elsewhere in the world, but not in the United States until the 1870s. Several Chicagoans have been credited with the idea of using terra-cotta as fireproofing: George H. Johnson, manager of Architectural Iron Works; Johnson’s associate, the architect John M. Van Osdel; and architect Sanford E. Loring in association his colleague Peter B. Wight. We may never know who actually came up with the idea but there is no doubt that Chicago terra-cotta revolutionized the building trade and made modern skyscrapers possible. Indeed, the skyscraper’s interior iron frame had been developed in New York during the 1850s, but its use remained limited due to its inability to withstand high heat. All of that, however, changed with Chicago terra-cotta, which was made from an abundant source of local clay.

This terra-cotta block is from the upper frieze of the Troescher Building designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan and produced by the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company in1884. CHM, ICHi-092994

Three companies dominated the industry: the Chicago Terra Cotta Company, established in 1868 and led by Loring; True, Brunkhorst & Company, established by three former employees of Chicago Terra Cotta in 1877 and later known as the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company; and the American Terra Cotta & Ceramic Company founded by William Day Gates in 1881. These companies made both terra-cotta tiles for fireproofing interior frames and exterior terra-cotta blocks for façades, while smaller companies, such as the Wight Fireproofing Company and the Illinois Terra Cotta Lumber Company specialized in producing interior tiles.

An undated photograph of the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company’s fitting department as they label terra-cotta architectural blocks by hand. CHM, ICHi-62923

Thus, terra-cotta allowed architects to design buildings that were taller, safer, and more beautiful, given the material’s malleable qualities that allowed for elaborate ornamentation. During the 1880s, Chicago’s building and terra-cotta industries flourished. A city ordinance passed in 1886 requiring all buildings over ninety feet high to be fireproof furthered the industry’s fortunes. Chicago leading architects and firms, such as William Le Baron Jenney, Burnham & Root, and Adler & Sullivan, used terra-cotta extensively, giving Chicago a distinct look and feel with earthy red and cream-colored buildings. Indeed, terra-cotta became so closely associated with Chicago that the city’s first flag of 1893 featured its colors.

Dutch immigrant architect Alfred Jensen Roewad used terra-cotta colors in designing Chicago’s first flag for the 1893 world’s fair. The cream colored “Y” represents the three branches of the Chicago River and how they divided the city into the North, South and West Sides, represented by the earthy red backdrop. The flag remained in use until the city adopted a two-star version of the current flag in 1917.

Chicago architects continued to use terra-cotta well into the twentieth century, creating such spectacular examples as the Railway Exchange Building, the Wrigley Building, the Carbide & Carbon Building, and the Chicago Theatre, which still stand today in glorious tribute to an important innovation that rose from the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire.

CHM curator Petra Slinkard writes about an artifact that celebrated the Cubs’ 2016 World Series win before they actually won.

Juan Ceballos of Joliet, Illinois, about forty miles southwest of Chicago, is a die hard Chicago Cubs fan. In fact, he was so confident the Cubs would win the 2016 World Series, he was inspired to make a sign to commemorate their win even before they did so. “I was certain that the Cubs would win the World Series,” remarked Ceballos. He and his seventeen-year-old niece Alexis started their project after the Cubs beat the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the National League Championship Series on October 22, 2016.

Ceballos wanted to create something that would properly honor his team and stand out among the ubiquitous “W” flags hung throughout the city. Not to say there is anything wrong with the “W” sign—Ceballos commented that he had a one as early as 2007, before it was immensely popular—but he wanted something “different.” So like many creative and driven individuals, he took out a paper napkin and sketched out his idea.

Napkin with sketch for sign. Photograph by CHM staff

“Thank You God / 2016 World’s Series Champions.” Once Ceballos was satisfied with his design, he asked Alexis to create the banner using a bed sheet. She explained to me that she had a few failed attempts stating, “Everything that could go wrong did. The markers bled on the floor.” So, she turned to paint.

The signature of Ceballos’s niece on the banner. Photograph by CHM staff

During the World Series, Ceballos carried his banner to all of the Cubs games in and around Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood. He remarked that it was a hit with fans and after the win, people were clamoring to pose with him. Ceballos also pointed out that the paint of the Cubs logos began to run due to the beer and champagne sprayed at the sign. After the Cubs won, Ceballos asked Alexis to sign her artwork.

Ceballos with the banner after the Cubs won. Image courtesy of Juan Ceballos

A close-up showing where the paint was running. Photograph by CHM staff

The Chicago History Museum is honored to add the Ceballos’ Cubs banner to our collection. Not only does this object represent a pivotal point in Chicago sports history, but it also reflects the loyalty of Cubs fans all around the globe.

The banner in the Museum lobby at the time of its donation with (from left) Mr. Ceballos’s two nieces, CHM curator Petra Slinkard, his mother. Image courtesy of Juan Ceballos

• Peruse the Chicago Cubs images in our collection

On October 1, the Chicago Transit Authority celebrates its 70th anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, we have compiled some highlights about the CTA’s rich history from the Chicago History Museum’s collection.

A CTA train heads west on the Lake Street elevated line, June 30, 1967. CHM, Hedrich-Blessing Collection, HB-30550

Long gone are the electric-powered trolley buses that shuttled passengers around the city, such as this one at the southwest corner of 47th Street and Woodlawn Avenue in Kenwood. CHM, ICHi-065923

So, too, are the CTA tokens that were once used to pay the fare. CHM, 1999.76.10

At the February 1951 opening of the Milwaukee-Dearborn-Congress Subway—now known as the Blue Line—attendees were given guest souvenir permits. CHM, TINdup2797

Safety first! Severt Hanson was a CTA operator for six decades. He was accident free in 1952 and for many more years as well. CHM, 1999.76.7

The CTA’s first air-conditioned train cars debuted in 1964. CHM, ICHi-035830

Maintenance workers used this lamp to remind operators to slow down when repairs were being made. CHM, 1980.22

Buttons such as this one were distributed on September 28, 1969, to commemorate the first day of rail service from Cermak–Chinatown to 95th Street. The Dan Ryan Branch of the CTA is now known as the Red Line South. CHM, 1997.51.24

When The Field Museum hosted the Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition in 1977, the CTA installed special bus stop signs such as this one to guide visitors. CHM, 1980.61

CTA fashion has also changed through the decades. Pictured above is the motorman Severt Hanson’s uniform, c. 1960, and a uniform, c. 1980. CHM, 1997.85 and 1999.76.1 (top), 1998.157a,d (bottom)

Thanks to modern engineering and technology, the CTA is now able to provide transportation for more riders. Undated photograph, CHM, ICHi-023701

Special thanks to senior collection manager Britta Keller Arendt, collection technician Jess Cunny, and costume collection manager Jessica Pushor for compiling these artifacts.