https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/077eed8a-1607-481f-8495-091768dbbf3e Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCddem5RlB3bQe99wyY49g0g/join Join us on Patreon. Visit https://www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Visit our website www.PeriscopeFilm.com Dating to 1963, "Behind the Skyscrapers" was directed by Frederick Niemann, with a score by Win Strake and Frank Hamilton, and produced by the National Women's Christian Temperance Union of Evanston, Illinois. This remarkable documentary is about life on “Skid Row”, a section of Chicago, where down and out people live in doorways and in condemned housing. Factual, unrehearsed scenes show us their lives. The traditional Skid Row areas in Chicago were located on West Madison Street and North Clark Street, but both have been gentrified since the 1980s. Skid Row was a 12-block stretch of flophouses and bars that was a popular winter destination for hobos, bums, and tramps. Chicagoans were both attracted to and repelled by Skid Row, and some even enjoyed an evening of "slumming" at its honky-tonks. 00:00 - 1:07: Chicago Rapid Transit train arrives at an elevated station. The song "Oh What a Beautiful City" is sung, mentioning the 12 gates to the city. :40 distant skyline of Chicago, followed by images of the downtown, etc. 1:11 - 1:26: The song continues with the mention of gates in the East, West, North, and South. 1:45 - 2:05: Descriptions of people and vehicles heading to the city. 2:11 - 2:33: A man drives a Mercedes convertible in traffic. The song "Sunday is a Happy Day" begins, describing Sunday activities like riding in the summer breeze. 2:46 - 3:10: The song continues with mentions of fishing on a sunny shore with family. 3:22 - 3:47: Images of the Chicago waterfront and skyline. The song describes cruising on a lake on Sunday. At 4:09, an ocean liner marked Transamerica / Poseidon is visible at the docks. At 4:19 the Wrigley Building in the Loop as well as other beautiful buildings. 4:20: The narrative shifts to gliding up the river and through the city, observing its beauty and bridges before shifting to images of abandoned buildings and blight in an urban ghetto. 5:28 - 6:26: A reflection on an old house where children once played, now abandoned. 6:26 - 7:03: A plea to remember friends and neighbors as the house is left behind. 7:11: A ride around Skid Row, observing the lives of men who live there, some of whom were once successful professionals. Now they are vagrants and bums. 8:17: Troubles shared by the men on Skid Row. 8:28: Police paddy wagon picks up drunks. 8:44 - 9:03: Billboard for a pawn shop. A song about pawning personal items to afford travel. 9:21: A song about walking down the street with tears, trying to read a letter from home. 10:00: An adult movie theater / burlesque show in the skid row area. 11:00: A drunken man lies in a heap next to a tenement building. Portraits of various street people. 13:07: Homeless men sit around a fire in a trash barrel for warmth. 13:36 - 14:16: A song about running far and considering trying the river to reach the other shore. 14:58: Two young boys watch their father, who is apparently homeless, on the street. 16:52: A Chicago fire department fire truck races to put out a fire in an abandoned building. Firefighters are shown at work putting out the blaze. 18:30: Vagrants sleep off their liquor on the street. 19:21: Men who are collecting bottles and other junk to sell for money to buy wine push baby carriages and carts across the cityscape. 21:25: The "House of Rothschild" liquor store is visible on the street, while a wrecking ball looms to demolish another derelict building. 23:09: A disoriented unhoused person with a bandage on his head, tries to get his bearings. 23:21: A sign says "Mother's Prayers Follow You". 23:39 - 24:54: Police remove a drunk man from a sidewalk. Other men are shown wandering around drunk; an inebriated man lies on the trolley tracks on a busy street. The song continues about trials and the inevitability of death, with a hopeful note that trials will soon be over. Motion picture films don't last forever; many have already been lost or destroyed. For almost two decades, we've worked to collect, scan and preserve the world as it was captured on 35mm, 16mm and 8mm movies -- including home movies, industrial films, and other non-fiction. If you have endangered films you'd like to have scanned, or wish to donate celluloid to Periscope Film so that we can share them with the world, we'd love to hear from you. Contact us via the weblink below. This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOgE8UkI-XU Mirrored from Periscope Film (https://www.youtube.com/@PeriscopeFilm) Sat, 13 Jun 2026 15:12:28 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://peertube.dngr.us https://peertube.dngr.us/lazy-static/avatars/41a6fee9-7f57-42d0-a5fc-5db4f1af2e31.png https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/077eed8a-1607-481f-8495-091768dbbf3e All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://peertube.dngr.us/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.