Vintage Chicago International Livestock Show pictures

Found these looking for something else....pretty amazing photographs
http://www.angushall.com/pdfs/international-livestock.pdf

I love the old trucks.

Those are some of the best pictures I have seen of the stockyards and the International.I went to some of the last shows in the 70's.Cigar smoke,seeing Dividend and Improver who were radically different at the time.The booing and cowboy hats thrown to the ground when Kingsley made Champagne champion bull and the group class for 10 head are some of my more vivid memories.I also had the opportunity to walk through the old Stockyard Inn the day before the salvage and tear down was due to begin.Other than a couple kids in the lobby I never saw another person as I walked through the whole building.I remember standing at the doorway to the room where a lot of the portraits were hung.It was totally black in that room so I didn't go in but reflected on all the livestock history that had taken place there and  represented by the portraits that used to hang on those walls.
Bert Moore has compiled pictures of every International champion Polled Shorthorn bull and Female from its inception to closing except for about a 1/2 dozen.I hope he will publish them soon.

Awesome find Librarian!  Makes me think I should get to Denver before they tear that place down.  The history in the old stock yards is pretty cool.

I never got the opportunity to attend the great Chicago International, but I heard many stories about it, when I was growing up. My grandfather attended it 3 years and exhibited his Shorthorns there on 2 occasions. I can still remember him telling stories of travelling there by train and the show itself. My dad who will be 90, this year, brought this up a couple weeks ago when we were having lunch together. He was reminiscing about the years that my grandfather would pack up and take cattle to the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto or to the Chicago International.  The train trip to Toronto was 4-6 days in each direction and the trip to Chicago was usually 3-4 days in each direction. The cattle cars had to be disconnected at certain places and they were never sure if it would be connected to another train that day or not, so the people who looked after the cattle could not stray too far from the cars. The cattle cars were decked with the feed and tack on the upper deck and oftentimes people who were attending the cattle would have to ride in the cattle car until the train stopped again, and then have to make a mad dash to the rail cars for the passengers. I can't image how much preparation it took to attend these shows as most of the food they needed for themselves had to be packed with them.
I can remember getting breed magazines that had the show results and pictures from Chicago, and spending what seemed to be hours reading and re-reading the show results when I was a kid. The pictures librarian has posted here are pretty cool!  I love this kind of history and I think it is oftentimes good for us to look back at where we came from.... just a little .... to actually get a brief glimpse of where we are going and to understand where we should be heading into the future.
I can still remember how upset my grandfather was when he first heard that the Chicago International was ending and that they yards and buildings were going to be knocked down. This show meant a lot to many people in those days and most of us only have the stories now to remember it by... but as they say... life goes on and the world is constantly changing.

I had to go to Chicago on Tuesday and while I was up there I stopped by the old Stockyards district and took some pictures.The first picture is of the old entrance gate to the yards.The animal head in the center of the arch is a likeness of a famous Shorthorn show steer from the 1870's owned and shown by John Gillette of Central Illinois.I say central Il.because he owned 16,000 acres of land there and ran 1000's of Shorthorn cattle.The second picture is one I took off a display that showed the gate as it looked in 1900.The third picture is looking east on exchange towards halsted st.The building on the left with the high tower is the former Livestock National Bank and right across the street to the south is where the Stockyard Inn was.If you look at the Librarians picture in her post of the Stockyard Inn you can see that tower above the roofline of the Inn. That bank was owned by the family that controlled the Armour Corp and also the Stockyards.Through various sales and mergers the bank wound up being a part of the family tree of Chase Corp.The building itself was built as a replica of Independance hall in Philadelphia.

Wonderful pictures!  They just don't make 'em like they used to! 

The only year I showed at the International was the last year they had it.  I was very glad I went.  Many things made an impression, but two of the biggest were the steel bars on all the windows of the businesses in the area and the "sizzling steaks."  Believe it or not, I had to ask someone why the windows had steel bars in them.  We just didn't see that in Colo, Iowa.  Not surprisingly, the famous "sizzling steaks" were no where near as good as those from our freezer.  They just cost more.

I looked forward for days to getting the Shorthorn World with the report on the International Show in the mail.  The magazine was printed twice a month back then.  Now I can watch the National Western show live on my computer instead of waiting several weeks for the written report.  How times change. 

Thanks r.n. I was born in Illinois and lived there until I was four. I have a strong memory of going to a Fat Stock Show before we moved. All I could see was the gigantic feet of a draft horse. But maybe it was St Louis.
We moved to Texas, near Ft Worth. There is a Children's Museum of Science and Technology just next to the Will Rogers Coliseum building where I spent spent a lot of time, and also wandered aroind looking at these buildings, but never went you a show. I remember we had a hard time getting to church in Ft Worth at that time of year. Hwy 80 was jammed with trucks and trailers going over the overpass downtown. Us kids were always happy to smell the bread baking at Mrs Bairds as went over that overpass.
Here one of an old show in that coliseum.

Oakview,I used to enjoy the old reports on the International and other stock shows as well and I wasn't even into showing.The writers back then captured the atmosphere, competition,and the animals well and made you feel like you had been there.A far cry from our breed journalism today.
Librarian,I started in Fort Worth and came to the Chicago area by way of Ohio.
Just a couple more pictures,the first is the site of the Stockyard Inn.The white building in the background is approximately the site of the Amphitheatre.The second is the same site taken from across Halsted street.The third is part of amphitheatre complex that still stands, this is where the livestock were stalled

Some footage:
1953 market report program
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TX-5mzZbYJM

Short history
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TX-5mzZbYJM