Another hat tip to Uptown Chicago History blog for finding this amazing photo for sale on eBay showing the NW corner of Wilson and Clarendon back in 1956. At that time, it was home to an amazingly beautiful building that housed "Honolulu Harry's" and promised "Hawaii in Chicago."This building is long gone, as well as the building to the west of it. Check out the current-day view below:
There was a Polynesian fad in the late '40s and early to mid '50s.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that all these photos make the neighborhood look so much better than now?
ha! I was thinking the same thing Will
ReplyDeletethis link has way more information on this club. Really cool stuff
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tikiroom.com/tikicentral/bb/viewtopic.php?topic=28944&forum=2&19
A view of the Clarendon facade of this building was posted here sometime last year. Just beautiful!!!
ReplyDeleteAnyone who loves these old Uptown photos should really buy the HD versions from eBay. It is well worth the money, most are less than $10 and you can have them burned onto a CD-ROM as well.
ReplyDeleteVery nice.
ReplyDeleteAmazing what has been torn down in this city. Wilson in Uptown definitely got its but kicked.
It's kinda like the song says "tear down paradise to put up a parking lot". While the "new" building isn't a parking lot, compared to the one they tore down, it might as well be.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Adam. I hadn't listened to Joni in a while.
ReplyDeleteMy dad tells me stories about Uptown in the late fifties. I was not cognizant till the early 1960s about the "hood" and how it had it's spots so to speak. My old building is gone, but a lot of my friend's homes still exist to this day on Ashland, Dover, Paulina and Hermitage. Technically, not Uptown,but close enough. I still remember that we were always told not to go east of Clark, because that is where the bad people lived. The more things change.....
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