Girl with Ice Cream, Chicago Midway Airport, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Girl with Ice Cream, Chicago Midway Airport, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Chicago, USA

Girl with Ice Cream, Chicago Midway Airport, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-41315F

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A girl in a striped dress and bow tie stands in front of Chicago Midway Airport, focused entirely on an ice cream cone while her parents presumably documented the occasion for posterity. In the 1950s, Midway was the busiest airport in the world, a fact she was not thinking about. The terminal behind her is low, flat, and optimistic in the way that postwar public buildings were before anyone decided airports needed to be cathedrals. Somebody planted flower beds along the entrance — marigolds and petunias in full summer bloom — because in that era a public building was expected to make an effort. A motorcycle is parked where a motorcycle has no business being, and a few men in shirtsleeves stand around it with the casual authority of people who have just arrived somewhere important. The girl's dress is Sunday-best, which means the family dressed for air travel the way people later dressed for a mortgage closing, and the ice cream was the reward for enduring it.

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Particulars

Creator: Unattributed
Date: 1950–1959
Place: Chicago, USA — Chicago Midway Airport, terminal entrance, 5700 S Cicero Ave
Subject: Young girl, Chicago Midway Airport terminal
Original format: jpg
Original held: Yes, by the archive
Rights: Open