(Sort of) In Our Neighborhood VIII

The Lakeview Post Office is the closest post office to us which was a surprise when we first moved here as it is not that close. There are two other surprises inside. The first is that while the name on the outside of the building is the Lakeview Post Office it is the now called the Steve Goodman Post Office.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a post office that was named after a person before and the fact that this one is named after a pretty obscure singer/songwriter was surprising. The most well known song Steve Goodman wrote is “The City of New Orleans” which was a hit for Arlo Guthrie. But the song I most associated him with even before I moved to Chicago is “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” because the radio host of the show we listened to every Sunday morning in Northampton always played it on the Sunday closest to opening day of the baseball season. It turns out Steve Goodman also wrote “Go Cubs Go” the official Chicago Cubs victory song. And Wrigley Field, the home of the Cubs, is also in Lakeview so it makes sense in a way but I still wondered how the post office got his name. It turns out that on August 3. 2010 President Obama signed the bill honoring Steve Goodman, introduced by Illinois Representative Mike Quigley, into law. As you walk into the post office you can stop in front of a display case with Steve Goodman memorabilia.

Then you turn a corner and get another surprise.

This wonderful WPA mural, “Chicago: Epoch of a Great City” by Harry Sternberg was completed in 1937.

It’s hard to get a picture of the whole mural which is a timeline of the building of Chicago with Fort Dearborn, the Great Fire, and a 1937 skyline in the middle. The right side depicts Chicago’s agricultural side and the left its industrial side.

There are framed panels with information about the Federal Art Project and the Works Progress Administration, the mural, and the artist on the opposite wall. Between this information and the information about Steve Goodman, you could spend hours in this post office although the layout would make that difficult especially now.

As I was writing this I remembered that I did actually used to spend a lot of time reading in the Nyack post office when I was growing up but reading of quite a different nature. At that time I was fascinated by the FBI’s Most Wanted posters and was never ready to leave – the same feeling I have now whenever I go to the Steve Goodman Post Office.