Ron Grossman – Page 18

Then, as now, people just wanted a return to normalcy. Looking back at new year’s expectations a century ago

January 2, 2022 at 5:00 a.m.

New Year's Day often prompts newspaper editors to switch from recording the past to predicting the future. The baiduhai's issue of Jan. 1, 1922, was a mix of both,...

American expatriate, poet and critic Ezra Pound.

How a Chicago editor set T.S. Eliot on the path to a Nobel Prize

December 29, 2021 at 5:00 a.m.

In the autumn of 1914, Harriet Monroe prepared a manuscript for the typesetters of Poetry, a magazine she edited in what had been the front room of a mansion at...

Crowds would gather at Garfield, Washington and Humboldt Parks, and along the Chicago River, to see the horses run in cutter races. Editor's note: This historical print shows damage.

Decades before jazz was heard in Bronzeville, sleigh bells rang as horses raced its snow-covered boulevard

December 26, 2021 at 1:30 p.m.

At the turn of the 20th century, Grand Boulevard was renowned for drag-racing trotters and pacers through the snow of a Chicago winter. A Tribune account of one such horse...

Aerial view shows the US Pacific Fleet consumed by the flames in its home base at Pearl Harbor after 360 Japanese warplanes made a massive surprise attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

Shock then resolve after the attack on Pearl Harbor: ‘We’ll whip ’em, but it’ll take a few months.’

November 25, 2024 at 11:08 a.m.

Charles Collins thought he'd do a little Christmas shopping on Dec. 7, 1941. It was a Sunday, and he'd already filed the next installment of "A Line 'O' Type Or...

Bessie Coleman was one of the first Black female aviators. A manicurist in Chicago before taking flying lessons in France shortly before her 20th birthday, she thrilled crowds around the nation with her daring barnstorming exhibitions. She said her goal was to inspire Black people with the desire to fly.

That road O’Hare is on? It’s named for Bessie Coleman, who 100 years ago became the first Black woman pilot in America

November 24, 2021 at 11:37 a.m.

Bessie Coleman came back from France a century ago, having realized her dream. A manicurist in a Chicago barbershop, she returned from that trip as the first African American woman...

An aerial view of Republic Steel, circa 1969.

The history of the Southeast Side is instructive as students, others fight against General Iron

May 19, 2025 at 11:28 a.m.

"Chicago steel output higher than Britain," a 1952 Tribune headline proclaimed. It was also larger than that of France or Germany's Ruhr district.

Teacher Martina Kerlova huddles with students as they learn letters, consonants and writing during Czech language classes at the Masaryk Czech School in Cicero on Oct. 23, 2021.

Czech language passed from generation to generation at a Cicero school built 100 years ago

November 5, 2021 at 9:49 a.m.

The Masaryk School is architecturally undistinguished, a faceless cube set among Cicero's bungalows, but every brick was laid with loving care by immigrants determined to pass the Czech language on...

A protest sign reading "Stop cutting down trees. Move OPC." is towed by an airplane near the site for the official groundbreaking of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's Jackson Park on Sept. 28, 2021.

Column: Obama Center symbolizes a great moment for Chicago — but at a cost of urban green space

October 22, 2021 at 9:10 a.m.

Just before a groundbreaking ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center on Sept. 28, an airplane flew over the site towing a banner that said: "Stop Cutting Down Trees." When I...

Jewish leaders Felix M. Warburg, of New York, from left, Louis Marshall, of New York, Julius Rosenwald, of Chicago, and David A. Brown, of Detroit, confer during a meeting at the Standard Club on Oct. 9, 1926, in Chicago. Editors note: this historic print shows some damage.

Remembering the Standard Club, which lived large, then passed quietly

October 14, 2021 at 10:57 a.m.

While Chicago was on COVID-19 lockdown, the Standard Club folded without the sendoff due a bastion of high society. There was neither a black-tie banquet nor a final masked ball...

John Aranza gathered artifacts during the demolition of Comiskey Park.

You can take a ballpark out of a neighborhood, but it lives in the hearts of fans

October 8, 2021 at 4:45 p.m.

Directly across 35th Street from the White Sox's current ballpark, a home plate is embedded in an enormous parking lot, and lines on the adjoining pavement represent batter's boxes and...

All Stories