Chicago Daily News Fresh Air Fund Sanitarium. (1920-1939)

Designed in 1913 and constructed in 1920, the "Theatre on the Lake" was originally built as the Chicago Daily News Fresh Air Fund Sanitarium. It was preceded by two successive open-air "floating hospitals" in Lincoln Park that was built between the 1870s and the 1900s on piers on Lake Michigan. 

The breezes through these wooden shelters were believed to cure babies suffering from tuberculosis and other diseases. In 1914, the Chicago Daily News offered to fund a more permanent sanitarium building.

The Chicago Daily News "Fresh Air" Sanitarium.

Constructed in 1920 on a landfill area, the impressive Prairie style structure was one of several Lincoln Park buildings designed by Dwight H. Perkins of the firm Perkins, Fellows, and Hamilton. Perkins, an important Chicago social reformer and Prairie School architect designed several Lincoln Park buildings including Café Brauer, the Lion House in the Lincoln Park Zoo, and the North Pond Café.

Empty hammocks hanging from the ceiling and baby carriages parked against a wall inside the Chicago Daily News Sanitarium. 

Women reaching toward a child lying in a hammock inside the Chicago Daily News Sanitarium.

The Chicago Daily News Sanitarium building was constructed in brick with a steel arched pavilion with 250 basket baby cribs, nurseries, and rooms for older children. 

Nine female nurses holding babies, standing and sitting on a wall in front of the Chicago Daily News Sanitarium.

Free health services, milk and lunches were provided to more than 30,000 children each summer until 1939, when the sanitarium closed.

Children playing a circle game on a slope of grass with the Chicago Daily News Sanitarium in the background across Lake Shore Drive.

Major reconstruction of Lake Shore Drive led to the demolition of the building's front entrance. During World War II, the structure became an official recreation center for the United Service Organization (USO). 

The Chicago Park District converted the building to Theatre on the Lake in 1953, located at Fullerton Avenue and Lake Shore Drive, that offers breathtaking views of Lake Michigan.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Flavel Moseley Social Adjustment School at 24th Street and Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

A year after Montefiore was opened, the Flavel L. Moseley School was designated as a second "social adjustment school." Moseley was built in 1856 at a cost of $25,445 ($734,000 today) and was the oldest school building in the Chicago public system. 

Flavel Moseley School was named after the first president of the Chicago school board and founder of the high school library system. The 10 room building had an initial enrollment of 600 elementary pupils in classes which started in February 1857. When an addition was built in 1857, the Moseley school became the south division high school. 

According to Edward Stullken, Isabella Dolton (the assistant superintendent of schools), promoted the establishment of additional social adjustment schools, "but the politicians got control of the system in 1933 and controlled the budget. They also bounced her out, demoting her to the principal of Farragut High School." However, she (and other "forces") was successful in getting the Board to establish a special school in the heart of Chicago's "black belt" (the original site of the Moseley was 2348 South Michigan Avenue.

In fact, with the establishment of Moseley as a second social adjustment school, a rough dividing line was initially drawn: Montefiore receiving transfer students from those schools North and West of the Chicago River and Moseley receiving transfer students from schools South and East of the river at Cermak Avenue. Personal interview with Lawrence J. Casey. (Casey retired from the Chicago Public School System in 1976, having spent 45 years in the system, 40 of those years at Montefiore.) However, even in its first year of operation as a special school, the Moseley transferred students to (and received from) Montefiore; as it would continue to do, until the Fall of 1980. 

Moseley School. The photo was taken on 24th Street and the Wabash Avenue side of the school. 1922

Class in session at the Moseley School, 24th and Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. 1900

The school building was demolished in 1959.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Track-side tenements on the south side of Chicago. (1944)

Track-side tenements on the south side of Chicago. (1944)

You can see Comiskey Park in the background.