You think you know Grant Park, and then. . . .
I was leaving the park the other day when I noticed this amazing sign, positioned atop the Art Nouveau-style entrance to the Metra train station at Van Buren. Has it been there forever? Perhaps my readers can say. . . .
The Octophant, proclaimed here as “real and alive,” was ostensibly an “exhibition of the impossible” at the Century of Progress, a World’s Fair held in Chicago in 1933.
The sad melange of the animal form, coupled with the 3-D exuberance of the sign, produced a powerful effect on me. I felt as though to descend into the Metra would be a venture into the surreal, a venture best undertaken by those far more stalwart and steady than I.
Click image to enlarge.
Click here for links to info on the COP.
Celia says
P.S. Perhaps the Octophant was exhibited in the Ripley’s Believe It or Not “Odditorium.” Check it out: http://www.cityclicker.net/chicfair/ripley.html
Chas Spain says
I shouldn’t like to go down the stairs either with that in mind!
Celia says
Apparently the 1933 Fair was rife with off-beat “scientific” displays, though I’ve learned the Octophant is the product of a modern living imagination: one Phineas X Jones, a Chicagoan who earns his living dreaming up such things!
Chas Spain says
How wonderful – what an imagination