The Elgin Public Museum will host an Oddity Evening Friday. The event, from 6 to 9pm at 225 Grand Blvd. in Lords Park, will feature odd items from the museum s collection such as bones from an Irish deer that has been extinct for 10,000 years and Nathan Leopold s bird collection.
Nathan Leopold was not only a notorious Chicago child killer but a noted amateur ornithologist who donated some of his taxidermy birds to the Elgin Public Museum in the 1920s.
The Illinois Firefighter Memorial Plaza, Friends of the Lords Park Zoo and Gilbert Snow Mausoleum are among the 10 winners of this year s Elgin Mayor s Awards for Preservation.
Elgin Public Museum admissions were up 14.5% in 2022 and the big return of school field trips increased education program revenues by 161%, Director Sharry Blazier said.