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Read the press release here.

Limited-Run Sale of Vintage Poster to Help Save the Logan Square 'Eagle'

By Darryl Holliday | September 22, 2014 8:53am
 The Logan Square icon needs help and proceeds from a rare neighborhood poster will go toward fixing it.
The Logan Square icon needs help and proceeds from a rare neighborhood poster will go toward fixing it.
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DNAinfo/Darryl Holliday

LOGAN SQUARE — A Chicago business is stepping in to help rehab the neighborhood’s ailing "crown jewel" monument. It’s offer: a special offer on a vintage poster from the neighborhood’s past.

Poster Plus will print 100 copies of the limited-edition 1923 poster “Logan Square by the Elevated Lines” by Oscar Rabe Hanson. The original image shows the then 5-year-old Illinois Centennial Monument at the intersection of Kedzie Avenue, Milaukee Avenue and Logan Boulevard lit by globular streetlights against a backdrop of trees at night.

The poster is available through Poster Plus for $250 but a limited-run is available through Logan Square Preservation for $135 with all proceeds going to rehab the monument:

An estimate for routine maintenance on the monument could cost around $80,000, according to Andrew Schneider, president of the neighborhood preservation group, but $10,000 of that could be funded through sales of the vintage poster.

“It’d be a nice chunk that we could pay in as a neighborhood,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to get a hold of a really cool vintage poster for basically half the price with proceeds going right into monument.”

According to Schneider and Ald. Rey Colon (35th), the monument graffiti, theft and routine decay has left the 1918 structure in bad shape.

“It’s damage to our historical core,” Colon said, referencing the nearly 100-year-old commemoration to Illinois’ statehood, which is topped with an eagle in reference to the state flag and engraved with Native Americans, Illinois farmers and industrial laborers to represent rapid change during the state's first 100 years.

Plans to restore the Eagle include restoring the surrounding light fixtures to their 1920s globular shape, as they appear in the poster.

After reading about the monument’s repair needs on Sept. 17,  the owners of Poster Plus decided to step in.

“They saw the story and they were really distressed to hear that the monument needs so much work,” Schneider said. “It’s tremendously generous of them.”

The 20x37 limited run are available through Logan Square Preservation for $135 each with pick up as early as this week. Rehab of the monument is expected to begin next month.

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