Lee Bey: The Urban Observer

 

 (images courtesy of the Chicago Central Area Committee)

My day job is executive director of the 50-year-old Chicago Central Area Committee, a group of prominent business folk devoted to improving downtown.

I've held this post since August, 2007. One of the perks of the gig: rummaging through the files. Today's find is a 1959 brochure, published by the CCAC, extolling the virtues of downtown.

Our guide is James E. Rutherford, the Midwest VP for Prudential Insurance Co. (this is a cool photo, btw)  who tells how glad he and his wife are about moving to our fair city. "We know now that the best move we ever made was our move to Chicago," he said.

The book is a bit of a guided tour of downtown and some suburbs. The photos show a downtown that bustles like Manhattan in those 1950s movies. No racial or ethnic minorities are depicted, with the exception of the elegantly-dressed server at the Hotel Pearson whom I assume to be a fellow Brother. And the book shows no women unless they are accompanied in the photo by a man.

Now on with the show... 

Look at this guy lighting up in broad daylight outside of the Inland Steel Building. He's landed the big account and now celebrates with a smoke.

 

 

I didn't recognize this building at all and wound up having to do some research that's still incomplete. This is (was?) the America Fore Building, apparently built at  360 W. Jackson in 1957 and designed by Loebl Schlossman & Bennett. Still can't place this building. I am wondering if the address I found is wrong...or did this building get demolished to build the Sears Tower.

*The building is still there, but has been altered. Thanks to reader Michael Hill who recognized the building and provided a contemporary view via Google Earth.

 

 

Here is a group of businessmen--and a set of tailfins--outside of the Lakeshore Club.

 

 

Chicago's nightlife included swinging at the jazz-friendly London House at Wacker and Michigan and, apparently, sitting alone and getting drunk at the Wrigley Building Restaurant.

 

 

Something you won't see today: The photo below on the left lists the surface parking at Grant Park as a top amenity! This eyesore was later covered up by Daley Bicentennial Park. The photo on the right shows a couple breezing through the Calumet Skyway, later the Chicago Skyway.

The book concludes with a rousing call to the business community to relocate downtown. "There is a giant-sized future unfolding here. And there's plenty of room in that future for more businesses and businessmen. Chicago is going places. And you're invited to go along."