Chicago was always, for me, a magical city. When I was very young in the 1940s, the magic took the simple form of shopping with an aunt on State Street, luncheon beside the fountain of Marshall Field's Narcissus Room, and a tour of that perpetually wondrous Xanadu, Field's toy department. On very special occasions, I might be permitted to select a gift for myself, a stagecoach with four galloping horses or a PT boat which fired wooden projectiles. Sometimes, in the afternoon, we entered the exotic fantasy of the Oriental Theatre, and there amid the curious chinoiserie of its auditorium I sat entranced while, on the stage, the Mills Brothers sang "Paper Doll." Of all the city's richly varied movie palaces, the Oriental held first place in my heart, though it had stiff competition from the Paradise out west on Crawford Avenue, where Lorado Taft's statue of Apollo in his chariot raced tirelessly across a star-filled sky.
Later, Chicago's magic was enhanced by visits with my father to Henrici's on Randolph Street; amidst its Kdwardian opulence of exuberantly carved wood,