Wrigley Field historical sleuthing: A 1950s mystery

There’s not much of Wrigley Field visible in this photo; the exterior of the ballpark takes up only about a third of the frame. And there’s no baseball action visible, so we can’t begin to sleuth out any dates from that.

Even so, I think I’ve got this one narrowed down at least to a year and month.

Your first clue is the license plate on the car visible at the right of the photo. It has a very distinctive typeface that was used on Illinois plates from around 1950 through 1978.

This site, which has a photo of every Illinois plate ever issued, at first glance appears to indicate that plate matches the 1959 Illinois plate, white on dark brown.

And there’s the problem. See that thing in the middle…