In July TV Land and the City of Chicago commemorated Bob Newhart’s role as Dr. Robert Hartley from The Bob Newhart Show with a life-sized sculpture. Until about October or so this statue sat on the sidewalk on Michigan Avenue pretty much right outside my office. Whenever I went outside and had my camera with me I took photographs of people interacting with it. The statue is moved now, to it’s permanent location, on Navy Pier.
24 responses so far ↓
1 mj // Dec 18, 2004 at 3:54 pm
They should’ve kept it on Michigan Ave. A lot of people interacted with it naturally, and it was integrated into sidewalk life.
2 tien // Dec 19, 2004 at 12:31 am
best. series. ever.
you know, that dude with the long hair kind of looks like the guidance counselor from freaks and geeks.
and what is the couch made of? cast iron?
3 matt // Dec 19, 2004 at 6:36 am
I agree with mj. They should’ve left it on Michigan Ave. On Navy Pier it’s just going to be tourists taking photos. You have some of that at the Michigan Ave. location too, but you also have pedestrians taking breaks, workers eating their lunch, shoppers resting their feet… a better mix of everyday people. IMHO.
4 Noded // Dec 19, 2004 at 7:56 pm
PsychoCeramics
Rachelleb has an amazing series of photographs of people interacting with the Bob Newhart Statue on display last summer in downtown Chicago. The people in the photographs seem so at ease then I remembered that Bob Newhard had been a fixture in their ho…
5 ArthurE212 // Dec 19, 2004 at 8:36 pm
Great series - that could have been a Bob Newhart coffee book. I’d have bought it.
I’d like to see what it looks like - the setting - at Navy Pier.
6 Joel // Dec 19, 2004 at 8:51 pm
before I got to the text in your entry I was wondering - “how the hell long did Rachelle sit out there waiting for people to sit down?”
seriously though, great series of photos. very cool.
7 rachelleb // Dec 19, 2004 at 10:00 pm
the city changes the flowers/bushes/shrubbery in all of the planters on michigan ave, wacker, and all around downtown about 20 times/year. right now they have evergreen and holly berries in them.
if you look close you’ll notice that the flowers in the planter in the meridan of michigan ave, behind the statue, change. proof that i didn’t take these all in one day! the photos were pretty evenly spread through july, august, september and october. i wish i’d taken more.. but some didn’t turn out.. and sometimes i had to stand there so longer than i wanted trying not to look creepy while taking people’s photos. also, the starbucks probably wondered what i was always doing standing with my camera in that same exact spot outside their door. i had lots of really crappy photos of the trib building.. often i would pretend i was some stupid tourist gawking at skyscraper and then i wouuld aim the camera down at the statue.
i totally suck at taking close-ish photos of strangers.
8 rachelleb // Dec 19, 2004 at 10:03 pm
also, i agree that it should have been left on michigan avenue where all sorts of people, chicagoans & visitors alike, could interact with it. at navy pier pretty much only tourists are going to see it.
9 rachelleb // Dec 19, 2004 at 10:06 pm
tien- i know they said at the unvieling, but i forgot.. i think it’s bronze?
10 mj // Dec 19, 2004 at 10:11 pm
Also, on Navy Pier, it becomes an “attraction.” On Michigan Ave. it was public art.
11 whatisee // Dec 20, 2004 at 7:54 am
Nice series. When I saw the first photo, I thought it was a street performer all painted over.
12 rappy // Dec 20, 2004 at 8:35 am
Wow, is that Sydney Bristow trying to sneak by all incognito with her siren red hair in picture 7?
13 Richard // Dec 20, 2004 at 12:32 pm
At first I was thinking the same thing as Joel, that they were all taken on the same day. Even more proof than the floweres that they were not taken in the same day are the jpg filenames. The first is IMG_5801, the last is IMG_7385. That means you took over 1,500 photos between the first and last. If the time span, as you stated above, was about 4 months, then one can conclude that you snap nearly 400 photos per month! Or, approximately 13 per day!!
14 Richard // Dec 20, 2004 at 12:42 pm
Boy, that was kind of nerdish of me. Soryy.
15 Rachelle // Dec 20, 2004 at 4:36 pm
someone would have done that anyway. ahem. joe s.
16 joe // Dec 20, 2004 at 7:30 pm
moi? I was too distracted by the red-haired babe to notice the file names. I did, however, check how many photos I took during the same period.
17 rachelleb // Dec 20, 2004 at 9:19 pm
how many?
18 Keith Garner's Blog // Dec 21, 2004 at 9:36 am
Hi Bob! *drink*
I think I have been remiss and never mentioned the statue of Bob Newhart: psychologist edition that was parked outside my place of business for most of the summer. I should also mention there was an unveiling ceremony aired on TVLand that was in the c…
19 joe // Dec 21, 2004 at 2:22 pm
How many total, per month, or per day?
I took about 1900 photos from July-Oct., probably 1500 of which were crap or near duplicates.
20 roderick // Dec 23, 2004 at 1:12 pm
Awesome series! I was also wondering where it went. When I started working downtown they were there, but I noticed that they disappeared. Thanks for the heads-up.
21 rachelleb.com // Mar 17, 2005 at 12:01 pm
Newhart at the Pier
Bob, Navy Pier, Chicago Bob’s lonely new permanent home, after he was moved from Michigan Ave. I know that no one is at Navy Pier in the winter and in the summer he’ll get a ton of attention, but…
22 Chicagoist // Jun 9, 2005 at 12:13 pm
Chicago on DVD: The Green Mill
Chicagoist was reminded yet again of the filmic lip service given to our city when we were viewing the first season of The Bob Newhart Show on DVD recently. Excited to get a glimpse of Chicago in the 1970s, our hopes were dashed after the opening credi…
23 gregory // Jul 30, 2005 at 6:22 pm
hello chicago…..I am org fr zoo york, lower west side of mannhatten, And i think that you should have left him on Michigan AVE. the fact that he sat right in the middle of the sidewalk was 2 kool 4 school.! the area i grew up in was a mecca 4 art.. so seeing the pictures of people waiting for the bus, or stopping to rest their feet, or just taking a break from ordinary life, to sit and chat with BOB….I think he should be back among his fellow members, on Michigan AVE….with the every day hustle and bustle of normal life..BOB loved his audience, so let him be back where he belongs
24 Geoff // Feb 24, 2006 at 10:53 pm
Enjoyed the photos and site. Love Bob’s shows…
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