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DESCRIPTION OF ITEM: "WINTER SPORTS IN THE DUNES" THIS POSTER SHOWS A COUPLE SNOWSHOEING WITH THEIR PET SHEPHERD...THE COMMUTER TRAIN WENT FROM CHICAGO TO SOUTH BEND INDIANA, GIVING CITY FOLK AN OPPORTUNITY TO VACATION AWAY FROM THE BIG CITY LIFE AND EXPERIENCE THE RURAL INDIANA SOUTH LAKE MICHIGAN SAND DUNES!

WE HAVE NUMEROUS SOUTH SHORE LINE TRAVEL POSTERS ONLINE AND THEY ARE ALL SUITABLE FOR FRAMING! SEE OUR OTHERS, ON THIS SITE!

ARTIST:

Otto Brennemann (1894-1951)

Ah, the romance of riding on the South Shore Line train from northwestern Indiana into Chicago. As the train clicks along, you feel the charming wicker seats beneath you, see the canvas roofs above you and enjoy the warmth of the heat from coal-fired furnaces.It must have been beautiful in the 1920s. Only trouble is, by the 1960s the old train was getting a little rough around the edges."As commuters, we laughed because the widows never closed in the winter and in the summer, they never opened," laughs Bloomington Police Chief Jim Kennedy who remembers riding the South Shore Line from Gary into Chicago in the 1960s. "We wondered whether the train personnel did that on purpose." Kennedy and his fellow travelers had a number of pet names for the rickety orange train cars."We called it the vomit comet and the orange scourge," chuckled Kennedy, who grew up in Gary and rode the train into work in Chicago in the 1960s.While Kennedy rode in the South Shore\'s newer coaches a few years ago, he admitted that he sort of missed the crusty old ones. "It was always an adventure. You knew you were supposed to get back to Gary, but sometimes you wondered," Kennedy said.Memories of the South Shore Line range from enchanting to inauspicious — but no one can forget it. Today, it retains its place in history by being the country\'s last electric inter-urban railway.Stephen McShane and Ronald Cohen heard their share of South Shore stories when they edited Moonlight in Duneland, "the illustrated story of the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad."The book, just published by Indiana University Press, is a tribute to the rail line, arranged around 38 full-color posters from the 1920s that were used to advertise the line. The book also includes five new posters that also serve as ads for the South Shore. In addition to the posters, Moonlight in Duneland, has drawings and other train advertising of the era. Essays highlight the role of South Shore Line poster art, commercial illustration, railway men, electric rail businessman Samuel Insull\'s role in the rail line and the 1970s campaign to save the South Shore when ridership declined.McShane, archivist and curator at the Calumet Regional Archives, and Cohen, professor of history at IU Northwest, have heard stories like Kennedy\'s from many people."It\'s part of the culture that seems to have touched an awful lot of people," McShane said. "The interest is far greater than I would have imagined. We were at a book signing at Poster Plus (in Chicago) last Friday evening and there were calls from all across the country coming in for this book."The book project started a few years ago when Bob Harris, a Region 2000 Marketing Committee member, visited McShane with about 25 original South Shore Line posters. "He asked if the archives was interested and naturally we were," McShane said.Cohen suggested that the posters be showcased in a book. So he and McShane started researching South Shore Line poster art. Eventually, they secured 12 more posters from the Chicago Historical Society and another one from the Indiana State Library."The state library didn\'t know what these things were," Cohen said. "They didn\'t know what they had."But others do. Marilyn Breiter, assistant marketing manager of IU Press, said she has been swamped with people interested in the posters in Moonlight."I was at a book expo in May and people from all over were looking at it," she said. "They had seen the posters growing up. They\'re known all over the country and really, there is transportation all over the world. It\'s particularly strong in England and Europe; these posters are known there."IU Press has printed 6,000 copies and will probably go into a second printing before Christmas, Breiter said.Ski Odgen DunesThe posters were commissioned in the 1920s for a marketing campaign that was initiated by Insull. By the beginning of the 20th century, Chicago had become a major printing center. And so it seemed natural to hire some of the best Chicago commercial illustrators of the day to create images for the South Shore Line.The artists turned out good, solid figurative work consistent with the advertising illustration style of the time.The artists included:

Otto Brennemann, a German-born World War I hero with a background in auto design.
Ivan Beard, an artist with a downtown Chicago studio.
Oscar Rabe Hanson, an award-winning Chicago artist with a studio in Chicago\'s Fine Arts Building.
Leslie Ragan, an Iowa native who was a fighter pilot in World War I and after the war, kept a studio in Chicago.The posters were displayed in the train stations, on Chicago "L" platforms and in schools and libraries in the South Shore Line area. The posters were just one part of a massive South Shore Line advertising campaign that included a Public Speaking Bureau, free film library, miniature South Shore Line working model train and an eight-page monthly magazine.The posters "were seen as a great marketing tool," McShane said. "They were done by commercial artists that were some of Chicago\'s most talented people."Some of the posters were designed to draw Northwest Indiana residents into Chicago for shopping or business or a visit to a museum. Most depicted natural scenes that advertised 2,000-acre Indiana Dunes. Hearty Hoosiers ski the dunes in knickers and mufflers. In modest \'20s wool bathing suits, they frolic on the beaches of Lake Michigan.Notre Dame football games were also advertised and so were another Region attraction — northern Indiana\'s steel mills. A 1926 poster suggesting travelers visit the "Workshop of America" looks Lenin-esque, showing muscular man with their hammers raised high to pound out hot steel. Another boasts of "The Steel Mills of Gary" and shows a mill glowing against a sunset.Come see our steel mills? Were these illustrations supposed to encourage tourists to vacation among the smokestacks?No, not exactly. Rather, these posters were probably meant to entice Chicago businessmen to travel to "The Region," McShane said."A businessman in Chicago might glance at one before jumping on the train and think of Northwest Indiana to invest or locate a particular manufacturing operation," McShane said.Building the line Train service in the area wasn\'t doing well in the early \'20s. And so utilities magnate Insull, an English immigrant, took quite a gamble when he purchased the ailing Lake Shore Line in 1925 and renamed it the South Shore Line.But Insull saw success ahead. Between 1907 and 1925, the population of northwestern Indiana had more than doubled and industrial development continued at a steady pace.So Insull set about reorganizing and refurbishing the South Shore. By 1925, Insull had greatly expanded passenger service and order new Pullman cars. The parlor cars included an observation solarium, small buffet kitchen and toilets. For the men there was a smoking room, for the women — a retiring room.Parlor cars also had chairs upholstered in mohair velvet, built-in writing desks and plush carpet. Dining cars offered fine lines, china and silverware. A la carte dining cars featured a half mild-fed spring chicken for 90 cents. By 1927, there were 72 daily trains, including 40 limited trains operating over the entire distance between Chicago and South Bend.Ridership and freight carriage rose steadily until the Depression, when plummeting ridership forced the South Shore to cut services, including the dining cars. Ridership on the South Shore has waxed and waned over the decades. "It\'s almost gone under on numerous occasions," said Kennedy, who worked as an attorney for a firm that represented South Shore in the late 1960s. "Often, they were trying to petition for the discontinuation of passenger services."But always, the South Shore hung on.The passenger portion of the train line was almost closed in the 1970s, but a group of dedicated northwestern Indiana folks lobbied and kept it alive. As part of their campaign, they used old South Shore posters."All of the other electric inter-urbans have fallen by the wayside," McShane said. "Local people really worked to save the train in the \'70s."And with Moonlight in Duneland, the 1920s posters are once again coming to life.This time, the train line is also using new posters, created in a similar style, including some by Mitchell A. Markovitz, who created some of the original illustrations. A lifelong artist and lover of trains, Markovitz spent his career as a trainman, artist and teacher. In the 1980s he was a full time artist working in New York. In 1990, the South Shore needed trainmen again and Markovitz decided to return to Indiana.Now, as trainman, engineer and art coordinator of the South Shore Line, he operates the trains he loves.And he always associates the landscape with the illustrators who captured them on posters."From my engineer\'s window every morning I see Oscar Rabe Hanson\'s geese fly across Ragan\'s sky, through Ivan Beard\'s dunes, past Otto Brennemann\'s Workshop of America," he writes in Moonlight in Duneland.

Otto was one of the New Deal WPA mural painters in Illinois, possibly in the Elmhurst University, at 135 Prospect St.

A couple of his posters were in the Indiana State Library exhibit He may be the same Otto Brennemann that was indicted for sedition during World War II, but did not stand trial.

Brennemann was a cartoon artist and developed a series of cartoons critical of President Roosevelt’s foreign policy prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor which led to his indictment.

The cartoons were titled “History Repeats”, “The Answer to the Betrayal,” and “ America on the March.”

Being anti administration was offense enough, and the courts were so corrupt (see Trial of Chicago 7, re 1968 riots) but realizing the prosecutor had no real evidence to prove sedition, Judge Laws declared a mistrial on December 7, 1944.

DETAILS:
The South Shore Line (reporting mark NICD) is an electrically powered interurban commuter rail line operated by the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD) between Millennium Station in downtown Chicago and the South Bend International Airport in South Bend, Indiana, United States. The name refers to both the physical line and the service operated over that route. The line was built in 1901–1908 by predecessors of the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad, which continues to operate freight service. Passenger operation was assumed by the NICTD in 1989, who also purchased the track in 1990. The South Shore Line is one of the last surviving interurban trains in the United States. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 1,406,900, or about 4,600 per weekday as of the first quarter of 2024.

Departing South Bend Airport, the South Shore Line heads south alongside Bendix Drive, then west along Westmoor Street, before connecting with the tracks that ran to its former terminus. Between that point and Hudson Lake, Indiana, the South Shore Line runs parallel to Norfolk Southern's Chicago Line, also used by Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited and Capitol Limited, on the north side of the tracks. Just before Hudson Lake, the line crosses from St. Joseph County into LaPorte County and enters the Central Time Zone.

From Hudson Lake, the South Shore continues straight west to Michigan City. In Michigan City, the track runs down the middle of 11th street from Michigan Boulevard to Tennessee Street, where it crosses over to Tenth Street, and has an at-grade diamond with Amtrak's Michigan Services. The track then runs down Tenth Street to Sheridan Avenue on the west side of Michigan City. Leaving Michigan City, the track travels through Indiana Dunes State Park, crosses over the Chicago Line and runs parallel to it, this time on the south side, past Long Lake. At Gary, Indiana, the route heads west to service the Gary Airport, at times running parallel to the Indiana Toll Road, as far as Hammond, Indiana. Just west of the Hammond station, the route crosses into Illinois and Chicago city limits, at which point the track curves northwest, through the Hegewisch neighborhood and, after crossing the Bishop Ford Freeway and the Calumet River, converges with the Metra Electric line south of Kensington/115th Street station. The South Shore Line then runs over the Metra Electric from Kensington/115th Street the rest of the way to Millennium Station.

The South Shore Line was constructed between 1901 and 1908 by the Chicago and Indiana Air Line Railway (reorganized as the Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railway [CLS&SB] in 1904). Revenue service between Michigan City and South Bend began on July 1, 1908. The CLS&SB leased the Kensington and Eastern Railroad on April 4, 1909, giving it access to Chicago. That year the full line to Kensington on the Illinois Central was completed, and beginning on June 2, 1912, the electric cars were coupled to IC steam locomotives and run to downtown Chicago.

The Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend entered bankruptcy in 1925 and was bought by Samuel Insull's Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad (CSS&SB). The line continued to handle both freight and passengers. Under Insull, the CSS&SB embarked on a major rehabilitation program. This included new ballast and ties, 100-pound (45 kg) rail in place of 70-pound (32 kg) rail, brush clearance, and an overhaul of the line's block signals.^[6] In 1949, the company acquired three Little Joe electric locomotives for freight service. These locomotives had originally been constructed for the Soviet Union, but changing attitudes due to the Cold War prevented them from being delivered. Although the exact same type as the Milwaukee Joes, the South Shore bought them before the Milwaukee did. These locomotives continued in freight service on the CSS&SB until 1983. No. 803, is preserved in operating condition at the Illinois Railway Museum.

The power system was changed from 6600 volts AC to 1500 volts DC on July 28, 1926, allowing trains to operate directly to the Illinois Central Railroad's Randolph Street Terminal (now Millennium Station) without an engine change. Trains began running to Randolph Street on August 29. That same year, the original line between East Chicago and Indiana Harbor was abandoned.

The Chicago South Shore and South Bend turned a profit during World War II due to the industrial nature of Northern Indiana. However, highway competition and suburban growth led to ridership declines. By the 1950s all interurban lines were seeing a decline in rail travel as automobile use increased. On September 16, 1956, a street running section in East Chicago was removed with the building of a new alignment alongside the Indiana Toll Road. A truncation to west of downtown South Bend removed street trackage in that city from July 1, 1970.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway acquired the CSS&SB on January 3, 1967 and continued the operation of passenger services. The Chicago South Shore and South Bend was one of six railroads with long-distance passenger services to decline joining Amtrak in 1971 and in 1976, they asked the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to abandon passenger service. The ICC gave the state of Indiana a chance to reply and subsequently, the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD) was formed in 1977 to subsidize service.

PLEASE SEE PHOTO FOR DETAILS AND CONDITION OF THIS NEW POSTER

SIZE OF POSTER PRINT - 12 X 18 INCHES

DATE OF ORIGINAL PRINT, POSTER OR ADVERT - 1925

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