As you most know, I love Chicago and everything about it. I found a great new show on our local PBS station WTTW, called Hidden Chicago, where Geoffrey Baer takes you all over the Chicago region in search of often-overlooked fragments of our city’s history. Many are in places you pass by every day. But when you learn their hidden stories you’re sure to say “I never knew that!”.

Leave a comment and tell us your favorite hidden chicago tidbit……

Test Your Own Knowledge of Hidden Chicago:

Q: Where will you find an actual ticket booth from the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893?

A: In the back yard of a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Oak Park. It was moved there after the fair for use as a children’s playhouse and later became a garden shed.

Q: Where is the monument that Benito Mussolini gave to Chicago?

A: Along the Lakefront – just east of Soldier Field on the site of the 1933 World’s Fair. It’s a 2000 year old Roman column commemorating the arrival at the fair of a fleet of Italian seaplanes under the command of General Italo Balbo.

Q: Is there really a cowpath among the skyscrapers in the Loop?

A: There were no cows living in the loop when the highrise building at 100 W. Monroe was constructed in 1928. But a passageway through the building was left open anyway because the deed required it. It was part of a strip of land that a farmer named William Jones retained for his use when he sold this land in 1840. According to newspaper accounts Jones wanted to be sure he still had a way to walk his cows to pasture. It’s behind black metal doors and not open to the public.

Q: What’s that metal blob hiding in the bushes behind the Chicago History Museum at North and Clark?

A: It’s all that’s left of a storefront that melted in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Q: Where was the first movie version of “The Wizard of Oz” filmed?

A: At Selig Studios located at the corner of Byron and Claremont (map) on Chicago’s North Side. The yellow brick structure is now used for condominiums. Chicago was the silent movie capital of America before the industry moved to Hollywood. Another studio, Essanay is also still standing. Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson and others worked there. It’s now St. Augustine College in the Uptown neighborhood.

Q: Why is there a mural behind the clutter in the manager’s office at Meyer’s Ace Hardware in Bronzeville?

A: This building once housed one of Louis Armstrong’s favorite jazz clubs, the Sunset Café. The mural decorated the back wall of the stage, which is now the store manager’s office.o