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4 | March 21, 2019 | The highland park landmark news
hplandmark.com
Mayor, City Council unveil time capsule from 1969
Hilary Anderson
Freelance Reporter
Highland Park residents
love their city and its
history.
They packed the City
Hall Chambers March 11,
the day the city was chartered
by the State of Illinois.
There was standing
room only.
They came to celebrate
not only its anniversary but
to see what items were inside
the 1969 time capsule,
the year Highland Park observed
its centennial.
Mayor Nancy Rotering
did the honors of opening
the contents of the time
capsule for the public to
see.
Some of the items included
were those from
1971 because it took
that long to seal the time
capsule and place it in a
Chase Bank vault where
it stayed until a couple
weeks ago.
“The items inside the
capsule showed the importance
of things that
may at the time have
seemed common, but provided
us a terrific snapshot
in the past,” said Rotering
as she began taking
out items one by one.
There was a long list.
“A 1971 local telephone
book,” Rotering said.
“Once it included all of
Highland Park’s residents.
How many of you use one
of these any more?”
There was a 1971 Highland
Park High School
yearbook along with a
photo of a very young Jeff
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Perry, one of the founders
of Steppenwolf Theater,
who was playing the role
of Tony in West Side Story.
A fact sheet about the
Highland Park Historical
Society was among the
items as was a Northwestern
Train schedule. That
was not to overlook an
ad for Chandler’s assignment
notebook, used by
most high school students
then.
Rotering pulled out a
copy of Highland Park’s
Centennial Commemorative
book, another book,
Pioneer to Commuter,
which detailed much of
the city’s history, an advertising
circular that
showed many of the shops
in existence then and the
city’s financial report.
There was more information
about what Highland
Park was like in
1969.
“A two-pound can of
coffee was $1.49, a Buick
Skylark cost in the $2,000
range, high schools students
were allowed to go
off-campus to McDonalds
for lunch, macrame’ classes
were available and the
Brandeis Book Sale was
an important destination,”
Rotering said.
There was a map of the
City of Highland Park
but it did not include Fort
Sheridan at the time.
“There was some disagreement
then over
whether Highland Park
or Highwood would take
Fort Sheridan,” Rotering
said.
The Highland Park
News was the community
newspaper, which provided
more information
about what the city was
like in 1969.
Please see capsule, 12
The crowd packed into City Hall March 11 prior to the reveal of a time capsule from
1969. Photos by Nicole Carrow/22nd Century Media
Katie Wiswold finds her grandfather’s name, Mario Mordini, in the 1971 phonebook
from the time capsule.
Many of the issues highlighted in the capsule (in this instance, the Clavey Road sewage
treatment facility) elicited laughs and groans of nostalgia from the crowd.