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Between 1963 and 1965, Marina City was depicted in two posters – for two airlines – that are collector’s items today.
A 25 x 40-inch poster for United Airlines, circa 1963, was painted by Thomas Hoyne (1924-1983), depicting Marina City from the Chicago River east of the State Street Bridge.
Hoyne is better known as a painter of maritime art. A former Navy officer, he started as a commercial artist, drawing advertisements for Green Giant and Charmin, as well as other posters for United. In the mid-1960s, he was diagnosed with cancer and given two years to live. He decided to focus his work on maritime art and lived 17 more years, producing dramatic paintings of America’s nautical past.
In 1965, Marina City at night enticed travelers to “Fly Pan Am to Chicago, U.S.A.” The 24 x 39-inch poster, for an international airline no longer in business, was printed on translucent paper and designed to display in a light box.
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“We have never seen a poster like this from this time,” said Alfra Martini in 2011, a gallery associate at Chisholm Gallery Vintage Posters in New York. “Just holding it up to the light creates the most amazing effect. It really looks like the building is glowing.”
“Promotional travel campaigns did – and still do – focus on the most attractive sites a city has to offer,” noted Martini. “These two posters were created in what we now dub the ‘Mad Men Era,’ which is that innovative period [around 1960] when the collective psyche lay in visions of a rapidly changing time, both philosophically and technologically.”
In March 2011, both posters were sold at a vintage poster fair in Chicago – the United Airlines poster for about $950 and the Pan Am poster for $850. Said Marina City resident Brett Young, buyer of the Pan Am poster, “This thing is amazing. I bought a LED frame to present it...good for 50,000 hours. This will be the perfect night light.”
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