With more than a year of being cooped up indoors, you would think that I would have been better at updating this website. I had a few articles in the Chicago Reader last year. The man who spearheaded the city’s response to the Spanish flu epidemic, Chicago Health Commissioner John Dill Robertson, was a unique Chicago character: a crackpot clinician, a masterful administrator, and ruthless political operator. Rudolph F. Michaelis is one of my favorite amateur Chicago photographers. His glass plates of Chicago were found in an attic in Berkeley, California.
I talked to Patrick and Christopher at Windy City Historians about what to see in Chicago if you could time travel to. the 1893 Columbian Exposition. It was really fun, and I hope to be back again.