A large, metal panel the color of molasses sits on a ledge — alongside pieces of the Wrigley Building and Navy Pier discarded during restorations — in a hallway leading to the office of Tim Samuelson, Chicago’s cultural historian.
It was once light tan, once part of the ceiling at the 708 Club on 47th Street, where Muddy Waters served up his brand of the blues in the ’50s. Decades of cigarette smoke have added a dark, syrupy layer.
“I wouldn’t wash that piece for anything,” says Samuelson, who rescued it several years ago while showing the club to a German journalist. “I liked the idea that this was part of this club and this environment and that it once vibrated to the sounds of the early electrified blues.”
That piece embodies — if a sheet of metal can possess such powers — Samuelson’s passion for preserving Chicago’s architectural and cultural history, its glamor and its grit. A Louis Sullivan-designed baluster, removed after a 1968 fire, from Carson Pirie Scott & Co. A chunk of Frank Lloyd Wright‘s long-gone Francis Apartments on 43rd Street. Eliot Ness’ handcuffs. A back-flush toilet. Veg-O-Matics and Pocket Fishermans.
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