All across the country and maybe the globe, souvenir building enthusiasts are culling their collections in anticipation of this year’s swap meet. You never know what treasure will appear in the Saturday Swap and Sale Meet.
The Souvenir Building Society will have a group of small buildings from the Bob Kneisel Collection for sale. Here are a few pictures.
Chicago River Cruise. Photos courtesy of Chicago Architecture Foundation
Frank Lloyd Wright Tour
Hurtley House
The plans are coming together for the 2017 Convention of the Souvenir Building Collectors Society to be held in Chicago, IL on August 25-26-27. Click here for Mark and Mike’s update letter.
EVENING: Annual MEET & GREET, aka Reception (at convention hotel) and Show & Tell.HELP THE ORGANIZERS PICK A THEME, forward your suggestions to 2017 SBCS Convention Committee by clicking here.
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Saturday: August 26:
EARlY AM: Chicago River Cruise – 50+ iconic Chicago buildings on view.
LATE AM: SBCS Business Meeting and Swap Meet (convention hotel). Some of the buildings from Bob Kneisel’s bequest to the Society will be available in the Swap Meet and others in the evening’s auction.
EVENING: Saturday Night Banquet (off-site venue) Raffle, Auction and Merriment!
In 1999 the SBCS convention was in Chicago. We paid $154.00 per night at the convention hotel. In 2017, eighteen years later, we have negotiated a rate at a suites hotel in the shadow of the Wrigley Building, for a mere $174 per night.
Our hotel in Chicago is the newly renovated Homewood Suites by Hilton Chicago Downtown, at 40 East Grand Ave. All rooms are 340 sq. ft. suites with separate living and sleeping areas, two 27-inch LCD flat-screen TVs, a galley kitchen, King Beds, free WIFI, and free hot full breakfast & complimentary evening social Monday through Thursday.
When we book the Convention Hotel we promise to take a fixed number of room nights. When we all stay at the Convention Hotel we maximize the time we have to visit and socialize. This is why it is so important to all stay at the same place. If we don’t meet the promised room nights, SBCS has to pay the difference. So, lets all commit to stay at the Convention Hotel and get the most out of every moment of the short span of time we get to spend with each other every year.
Like NYC, parking in downtown Chicago is not cheap. We are researching some alternatives.
Souvenir Building Collectors Society members can book their hotel rooms starting April 1.
Our hotel in Chicago is in the shadow of the Tribune Tower and the Wrigley Buildings, an easy walk to Michigan Ave. and the Navy Pier, just across the river from the Loop, Millennium Park (the Bean), the Chicago Art Institute, and all the other wonderful buildings and museums and galleries and stores.
Tell your friends, spread the news, Chicago 2017 is going to be an exciting time. We want to bring new faces to the convention this year. Reach out to any collectors you know or run into. Recruit them as members and first-time conventioneers at SBCS 2017 – Chicago!
WATCH FOR YOUR APRIL EDITION of The Journal of the Souvenir Building Collectors Society for further details.
Just a reminder that your key link to updates on SBCS 2017 Convention in Chicago is this SBCS website.
1933 Chicago Worlds Fair Keys (8.5 and 10 Inches in length). Labeled buildings pictured include: Travel and Transport, Hall of Science, Fort Dearborn, Lindberg Beacon, Sears, General Motors, Federal and States Building.
ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME: Architectural souvenirs from the 17th-19th century are being showcased, courtesy of the Piraneseum Collection, from January 21 – August 13, 2017 in the International Terminal Main Departures Hall of San Francisco International Airport. The following links take you to the SFO exhibition posting, and to an article in Travel and Tour World.
KLM Delftware Miniature Buildings: If you have any of the Delftware Houses in your collection, you will probably enjoy this February 2017 blog post on the KLM website.
Frank Lloyd Wright Retrospectives: There are a number of exhibits and articles regarding the 150th anniversary of FLW’s birth. The International Cryptozoology Museum is planning a mini-exhibit in June 2017. MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, in NYC is mounting an exhibit which will run from June 12 to October 1, 2017.
Models of Historic and Modern Mosques: In its Architecture Gallery, The Islamic Arts Museum, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia has an extensive model collection of mosques throughout the world
QUICK REMINDER: SBCS annual dues are due! Password to Members Only section changes on February 2, 2017. If you are not current on dues you will not receive the updated password.
The 2017 Souvenir Building Collectors Society convention team is working hard to finalize dates and venue. As we await the announcement, let’s start pulling together a list of Chicago area souvenir buildings. If there are Chicago area miniature buildings in your collection that you want to be sure are listed, you can use the form at the bottom of this post to give us a “heads up.” Check out the printable pdf that was produced for the 2016 Los Angeles Convention.
Fine Arts Building, 1893 World’s Columbian Fair, Chicago. Photo from Photo Album produced for the Fair.
In 1893 Chicago, IL hosted the World’s Columbian Fair. There are few surviving buildings from this Columbian Exposition. One is the pictured, Palace of Fine Arts, which is now Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. Click here to visit the Building Collector’s post with a picture of an early souvenir building of the museum. The same miniature is found in Monumental Miniatures, Souvenir Buildings From the Collection Of Ace Architects, Fig. 62, pg. 30. Do you have a miniature building of the Palace of Fine Arts or any of it’s reincarnations – Field Columbian Museum or Museum of Science and Industry?
One other surviving building from the 1893 World’s Columbian Fair is still in Chicago. It is the World’s Congress Building, which was built by the City of Chicago in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago. Following the exhibition it became the Art Institute of Chicago.
A few buildings from the exposition were dispersed to other locations, and there may be miniature examples out there, somewhere, in someone’s collection. They are: Norway Pavilion, a creation of a wooden stave church, that has had a peripatetic life and is apparently now being reassembled Orkdal, Norway; Maine State Building, now in Poland Springs, ME; and Dutch House, Brookline, Massachusetts.
SBCS 