After three years of planning, fundraising and some friendly arm twisting to secure corporate sponsors, construction is about to begin on the Museum of Broadcast Communications.
The city`s first museum devoted to the electronic media will occupy a prominent, first-floor location in the River City apartment, retail and office project at Polk and Wells Streets in Burnham Park on the Near South Side.
The museum will house exhibits, an auditorium, a research center and working radio and television studios. Its $300,000 first phase will open
–cross your fingers–in May.
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”This will be an exciting place for those interested in the history of broadcasting and advertising, especially in the Midwest,” said Bruce DuMont, president of the organization and a political correspondent for WTTW-TV
(Channel 11), Chicago.
”Entertainment, documentaries, news specials and a heavy emphasis on children`s programming and commercial television form the foundation on which our collection is built,” DuMont said.
”At the moment, our library has more than 200 programs, usually of 30, 60 or 90 minutes apiece,” he said. ”We expect the collection to double in size by the time we open. Our projected growth rate is approximately 2,000 additions to our library per year.”
The longer programs, DuMont said ”include Soundstage, Lyric Opera and Hubbard Street Theater performances donated by Channel 11.
”We also have a tape of the (1960) Kennedy-Nixon debate from (WBBM-TV)
Channel 2. The late Burr Tillstrom contributed the 50 best hours of `Kukla, Fran and Ollie,` while Kraft donated the 50 greatest hours of its television theater and music hall programs.
”Sports also will be an important element of what we`ll preserve,”
DuMont said. For example, the museum has a tape of the Cubs` 1984 division clincher, ”as well as the ball going between Leon Durham`s legs” in the final game of the `84 league playoffs in San Diego.
In addition to securing a commitment from major Chicago TV stations to provide historic and contemporary American programming, the museum started on Jan. 4 ”an ongoing history of Chicago as depicted by the 10 p.m. news,”
DuMont said.
”We`re recording, on a rotating basis, the nightly newscasts of Channels 2, 5, 7 and 9 to establish a video history of Chicago.”
DuMont comes from a legendary broadcast family. His uncle, Allen B. DuMont, was the founder and president of the DuMont Television Network. The network aired from 1947 to 1956, and WGN-TV (Channel 9) was its Chicago affiliate.
The Museum of Broadcast Communications has raised $1 million, DuMont said. Charles Feldstein Co., Chicago, is the group`s fundraising counsel.
Chartered as a nonprofit institution in October, 1983, the museum occupies a 650-square-foot temporary office in River City.
It borrowed some vacant commercial space on the first floor of the development in October for a gala fundraiser, an event whose guest list set atwitter every gossip columnist in town. The next month, the museum signed a lease for that 14,025-square-foot space.
It may not be a big institution yet, but it has some first-class ambitions.
Plans for the first phase drawn gratis by Ray Bayley, vice president of the Chicago space planning firm of Hague-Richards Associates Ltd., call for a 99-seat Kraft Television Theater–named in perpetuity for the museum`s largest corporate sponsor, Kraft Inc., which donated $400,000.
(The second-largest corporate donor was the MacArthur Foundation, which awarded a $200,000 grant to be distributed over four years.
(Other patrons include the Frost Foundation of Denver, Chicago Community Trust and Quaker Oats Co.; in-kind contributors include Eastman Kodak Co., donating videotape and other archival material, and Zenith Electronics Corp., providing consumer electronics equipment.)
There also will be an A.C. Nielsen Research Center, named for the museum`s chairman, Arthur C. Nielsen, media pollster, founder of A.C. Nielsen Co. and a personal contributor of more than $100,000.
DuMont called it ”a place where museum members will be able to select a specific tape” and play it ”in individual study suites, each equipped with a TV monitor, videocassette player, audio receiver, audio tape player and a headset.”
Adjacent to the study area will be a library containing historic audio and video tapes.
To satisfy fans of old-time radio, WGN-AM in January donated and shipped the Pierre Andres studio from its former quarters at 2501 W. Bradley Pl., Chicago. The radio station left the studio last year, when it moved Downtown to Tribune Tower.
Not only is the Andres studio a valued historical curio, it also will be operational, DuMont said. Chuck Schaden will broadcast his ”Those Were the Days” radio nostalgia shows from the studio on WNIB-FM Saturday afternoons. The rest of the week, the facility will be available for remote broadcasts by other radio stations.
So much for the museum`s first phase. If financing is in hand, a second phase would open a year after the first. It would feature a working television studio and four ”Decade Rooms.”
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Each decade room would duplicate a living room or family parlor of the 1940s, `50s, `60s and `70s with a radio set or TV pre-programmed with vintage entertainment.
DuMont said the museum chose the South Loop for its home because Daniel N. Epstein, general partner of River City, ”approached us and made us an offer we felt was most generous–a chance to take prime, high-visibility, commercial space . . . in what we consider to be one of Chicago`s most exciting emerging neighborhoods.”
What`s more, DuMont said, proximity to major expressways ”gives us the best expressway access of any cultural institution in the city.”
River City occupies 20 acres of former Chessie System railyards bounded by Harrison and Wells Street, Roosevelt Road and the South Branch of the Chicago River. Its 17-story, $60 million first phase contains 240,000 square feet of offices and retailing, 446 rental apartments and a 62-slip marina.
The broadcast museum solves something of an identity crisis for River City, said Sam Delisi, commercial leasing agent at the project for U.S. Equities Realty Inc.
”Residents walking into the building didn`t really want to see offices at their front door, while commercial users didn`t want the building to appear too residential,” Delisi said.
The museum, he said, is a good compromise, adding a touch of class to the property as well as giving a boost to its commercial leasing efforts, now at 50 percent.
”We`re now seeing media-related people, such as radio syndication companies, media buyers and small advertising agencies that specialize in broadcasting, interested in taking space here,” Delisi said.
These are in addition to medical professionals drawn to the area because of its proximity to the University of Illinois and the West Side medical district and commodities traders and securities brokers spilling over from the nearby financial district, Delisi said.