10.30 - Food + History Lesson

My buddy's family owns a restaurant on the northeast side of Chicago (right along the lake)-- and I love his family and the delicious food they serve and even the charming, old-fashioned apartment building in which their restaurant is situated. I've known them for years and I've been going there for years, but I never really gave it much thought. To me, it's always just been a small, family-owned restaurant frequented by the old, interesting people who live in this quiet, pink apartment building.

But in my restlessness and desire to avoid work, I decided to look the place up . . . and I am a pitiful woman because my heart feels like its swelling and I'm trying my very best to hold back the moisture from my eyes. Maybe it's because I'm sensitive or because I have an old soul . . . but something about comparing the old and the new, the past and the present, really affects me.

This apartment building (built in 1927) is the only surviving part of what once were the grounds of a huge, upscale hotel built in 1916. From the 20s to the 40s, this place was the place-- where such celebrities as Bette Davis, Nat King Cole, Marilyn Monroe, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig used to stay. It was like its own city, complete with private access to the beach, seaplane service to downtown, a bunch of shops, its own radio station, tennis courts, gardens, and designated green coaches to take guests to Marshall Field's. But after the city extended Lake Shore Drive, cutting the hotel off from the beach, things steadily went downhill and the hotel was closed in 1967.

Although I obviously can't imagine myself in that time period, I feel a sort of detached nostalgia for what once was. My bootleg '97 Altima travels along the same street that those classic Cadillacs and Rolls-Royces once traveled along. I walk through hallways that the rich and famous once walked through. And, within the 19 floors above the restaurant, there still live people who once witnessed the glamour and beauty of this historic Chicago landmark.

*sigh* The next time I eat there . . . I may cry. But only after I have my fill of escargot and beef tenderloin.