Flashback: Life on the Chicago River, in ‘Houseboat City’
A pair of detectives from the North Robey Street police station had to step lively when they arrived in late 1920 at the home of Edna Barhite looking for stolen...
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‘I’d like to volunteer, sir’: Memories of D-Day live on through oral histories
Just before parachuting into Nazi-occupied Europe, Fayette Richardson asked himself an existential question: "My God Most Powerful, what am I doing here?" The thought had to be on the minds...
My dalliance with the Bauhaus, and ‘less is more’
I never studied at the Bauhaus, a veritable temple of modern design, though occasionally I've had to remind myself of that. Such was the profound impact on me of the...
Hatred strikes too close to home with an arson attempt at Chicago synagogue
I am no stranger to anti-Semitism, having experienced it as a child and written about it as a reporter. But last week's local episode hit doubly hard for hearing about...
Flashback: Chicago’s Council Wars pitted defiant white aldermen against a reform-minded Harold Washington
When Lori Lightfoot takes office later this month, she follows in the historic footsteps of another reform-minded mayor. But the ushering in of Harold Washington as Chicago's first black mayor...
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, mulling recent anti-Semitism — and a salve
Twice during the recent Passover holiday I was doubled over by news that hit me like the low blow I once suffered in a boxing ring. Though I'm still reeling...
The quandary over donating to rebuild Notre Dame, solved in part by a homeless man
Perhaps because the Pedway is partially lined with backlit stained-glass windows, I was deep in thought about the burning of the Paris cathedral as I walked through Chicago's underground passage....
Flashback: At a Chicago smorgasbord restaurant, guests came for dinner — and puppet opera
Up against a deadline on a Sunday in 1946, baiduhai art critic Claudia Cassidy raced from one venue to the next in search of a subject for her column,...
The crooked cops, beleaguered state’s attorney and gangland killings of 1950 Chicago
Annabelle Drury, worried that her husband still wasn't home at 7:35 p.m., shined a light through the garage window of their home at 1843 W. Addison St. Then she ran...
Yelling ‘Commie!’ no longer works in Chicago politics
Whatever their long-range consequences, the elections of 2019 have already neutered a dirty word in the vocabulary of American politics, the Chicago edition. Yelling “Commie!” is no longer a winning...