EDGEWATER—On June 6, Edgewater celebrated the 21st anniversary of its infamous neighborhood-wide garage sale with its biggest year yet.
The Far North Side community has a deep, rich history, with highlights like the former Edgewater Beach Hotel, a booming "motor row" and streets lined with original landmark homes in the Lakewood/Balmoral corridor.
For history buffs willing to peruse the 200 neighborhood vendors on a muggy Saturday afternoon, the reward for their efforts can include pieces of that history in the form of a stack full of vintage postcards, old city maps and unstamped CTA tickets to transfer in the city's Loop.
Spread across messy tables and chairs last Saturday were piles of various Chicago transit-related relics, boxes full of postcards, city maps, atlases and train schedules—all carefully preserved.
The Edgewater Beach Apartments have withstood the test of time and are symbolic in the north side neighborhood. [DNAinfo/Linze Rice]
Finds resurrected at the sale included a postcard with a picture of the Edgewater Beach Hotel's "Yacht Club" dining room, an exclusive cocktail lounge that opened in 1934 after prohibition was repealed (the hotel is also an alleged hangout of Al Capone).
In the postcard, waiters dressed like sailors as they served drinks in the boat-themed room, which also had moving walls to give the feel of a ship out on the waters of Lake Michigan—where hotel guests enjoyed a then-private Foster Beach.
A postcard shows the interior of the Edgewater Beach Hotel's Yacht Club cocktail lounge. [DNAinfo/Linze Rice]
On another postcard is an illustration of the "Marshfield Ave. Station of the Metropolitan Elevated R.R."
Built in 1895, the station was where lines to Garfield, Humboldt and Douglas Parks convened before it was torn down in 1954—the same year Lake Shore Drive was extended past Foster Avenue to Hollywood Avenue, marking the Edgewater Beach Hotel's downfall—to make way for the Eisenhower Expressway.
In faded pencil, the back of the postcard reads in part, "Hello George, you want to come up and take a ride on the elevated road? It is fine...now you and Ray come up and we will show this and see what you think of it."
The back of a postcard with the Marshfield Ave. elevated train stop encourages the reader to come visit and give the train a try. [DNAinfo/Linze Rice]
The postcards' vendor said he had been collecting them for decades in order to "remember the way Chicago has changed over the years," he said. He said he felt by collecting bits and pieces of the city as it evolved, with some articles dating back to the early 1900s and before, he could keep the spirit of Chicago alive forever.
In 1883, Mark Twain wrote in "Life On The Mississippi" that he understood the feeling:
"It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago—she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time."
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