Behold the Space Aged Beauty Salon!

I partly grew up in West Rogers Park so I have a very sentimental attachment to it. Recently while going to North Park University's Brandeis Library to pick up some books I also picked up this great photographic history of Rogers Park and the surrounding neighborhoods called Neighborhoods Within neighborhoods: Twentieth Century Life on Chicago's Far North Side I found out about this book a few months ago when one of the authors, Mary Jo Doyle passed away. She was this amazing historian that loved to profile the Rogers Park neighborhood from top and to bottom and it is quite a shame that we have lost this wonderful being.

One of the first photos featured here on the blog today from the book is a mid 1940s shot of a Millie's Beauty Salon once located at 6310 N Western. Long gone now, Millie's originally started out in the early thirties as a beauty salon under a different name, one called Ralph Love Salon Artist where you can bring a friend and get two "permanents" for $3. Seems like this salon was a chain of some sort because it had at one time or another a few different locations one on Clark street around 1940 that boasted about the "only one left in Chicago." I am guessing there may have been others elsewhere. Also interesting is that Ralph Love is also the name of an artist. Not sure if there is a connection here or what. It would be interesting to find out whether the salons were named after the artist.

A great shot from Kieth's Malls of America is of a salon in a 50s Belk-Hudson department store where the dryers look even more space aged than at Millie's. Both are fun shots at a look at how women in the past got their hair do-ed up. Millie's seems to be a great timepiece of seeing how far north side neighborhood ladies congregated. BTW< check out those monster pipes!