Robert Loerzel

Chicago

Photographer and Journalist at Freelance

Contributing Copy Editor at Chicago Magazine

Freelance Copy Editor at Chicago Tribune

Contributing Copy Editor at Naperville Magazine

Chicagoan, journalist, photographer, author, copy editor, flâneur.

Articles

Prejudice ‘follows us to the grave’: The segregated past of Chicago cemeteries

3 weeks ago | wbez.org | Robert Loerzel

WBEZ’s Curious City answers questions from listeners about Chicago and the region. We include the public in our storytelling, making journalism more transparent and interconnected. In May 1963, an estimated 2,000 people marched to Oak Woods Cemetery on Chicago’s South Side. These protesters included Black undertakers and ministers, as well as NAACP officials. They carried signs: “No Jim Crow in Heaven.” “Discrimination in Life.
Requiem for the Montrose Beavers

1 month ago | chicagomag.com | Robert Loerzel

First I saw the tooth marks. Walking at the Montrose Beach Dunes one morning in November 2020, I noticed some tree stumps clustered along the edge of Lake Michigan. A foot or so above the muddy sand, each came to a rough-hewed point, like the end of a pencil sharpened with a knife. Inch-square wood chips were scattered nearby. Surely, I thought, this must be the work of beavers.
Midland Authors Announces 2025 Award Winners and Honorees

2 months ago | midlandauthors.org | Robert Loerzel

April 16, 2025 — The Society of Midland Authors today announced its annual awards, honoring its choices for the best books by Midwest authors published in 2024. In each category, a panel of judges chose a winner as well as one or more honorees whose work was also deemed worthy of recognition. The winners and honorees will be recognized at an awards dinner on May 13 in Chicago. Congratulations to all authors and publishers on submitting such an outstanding field of publications.
Piecing Together Capone’s Early Chicago Years

2 months ago | l8r.it | Robert Loerzel

Keeping an eye out for approaching trains, I walked across the rails along Brainard Avenue at the state line, stepping onto a scrubby patch of land wedged between various sets of tracks. There wasn’t much to see — shrubs, discarded liquor bottles, piles of rocks. On the morning I visited this spot in south suburban Burnham, the air rang with the shrill shrieks of blue jays and red-winged blackbirds, occasionally drowned out by the clatter of freight cars or a South Shore Line passenger train.
A Castle Made From Gum

2 months ago | chicagomag.com | Robert Loerzel

That moniker for North Michigan Avenue wouldn’t be coined until the 1940s, but the glitzy corridor began taking shape with the completion in 1921 of the building’s south tower, the stretch’s first major structure, a year after the Michigan Avenue Bridge opened.
Decades before Irish were Chicago political royalty, they lived in a ramshackle slum called Kilgubbin

Mar 16, 2025 | chicagotribune.com | Robert Loerzel

Kilgubbin won’t be found on modern-day maps of Chicago, but there once was a place known by that name — a settlement of Irish immigrants on the city’s North Side. In the 1850s and 1860s, Kilgubbin was often mentioned in the pages of the Tribune and other Chicago newspapers. The name became symbolic of slums where poor Irish immigrants lived in ramshackle shanties, squatting on property they didn’t own. In an era when the Irish faced widespread prejudice, “Kilgubbin” was used as an insult.
The lost year of Chicago’s Christkindlmarket

Dec 4, 2024 | wbez.org | Erin Allen |Susie An |Jesse Dukes |Robert Loerzel

Bust out the handmade goods, beer steins and bratwurst. It’s Chicago’s annual holiday tradition, the Christkindlmarket in Daley Plaza. The market started in 1996, and it may feel much older because it’s inspired by the original Christkindlmarket in Nuremberg, Germany. It features German food and beverages and the market’s signature mugs. Curious City listener Dahiana Barasz collects the mugs to use at her annual Yuletide party.
What happens to birds stuck inside the airport?

Nov 27, 2024 | wbez.org | Erin Allen |Susie An |Jesse Dukes |Robert Loerzel

The holiday travel season is in full swing, with nearly 80 million people expected to travel across the country over Thanksgiving, according to AAA. A record-breaking 5.8 million of those travelers are expected to fly. That’s likely to mean long lines at airport security checkpoints, giving passengers plenty of time to … bird-watch. “I was looking around and seeing so many different types of birds just flying around and landing right by us,” said Nicole Burmingham.
What’s the oldest family-owned business in Chicago?

Nov 21, 2024 | chicago.suntimes.com | Robert Loerzel

Countless businesses have come and gone in Chicago since it became a city in 1837. But some of the longest-standing companies are family-owned, which may be one of the keys to that longevity. “Family businesses tend to be more committed to employees, so less likely to close or move facilities, which creates more job stability,” said Jennifer Pendergast, an adjunct professor and family enterprise consultant at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
What’s the oldest family-owned business in Chicago?

Nov 12, 2024 | wbez.org | Robert Loerzel

Countless businesses have come and gone in Chicago since it became a city in 1837. But some of the longest-standing companies are family-owned, which may be one of the keys to that longevity. “Family businesses tend to be more committed to employees, so less likely to close or move facilities, which creates more job stability,” said Jennifer Pendergast, an adjunct professor and family enterprise consultant at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.