Among the notables on hand opening night was poet Carl Sandburg, reporting on the event for the Chicago Tribune. A capacity crowd greeted the new theater. The opening attraction was “The Sign on the Door,” a film starring Norma Talmadge. The new Chicago Theater formally opened Wednesday evening, 26 October 1921. Indeed, the final design of the theater and its carefully selected interior decorations reflected the Rapp brothers’ and Balaban and Katz’s belief that wealthier Chicagoans would be more willing to partake in low-brow amusements, such as movie-watching, if they could do so in a setting that upheld their high-class cultural pretensions. As in the palaces of the seventeenth century, so in the Chicago Theater of the 1920s was high-class architecture used to broker social differences, only this time between the city’s native-born, middle-class whites and growing numbers of working-class immigrants and African-Americans. Likewise, the theater’s auditorium offered 5,000 upholstered seats beneath a well-lit, sculptured ceiling. The new theater’s lobby, for instance, sported marble columns, glass chandeliers, and red-carpeted stairways that led to the upper balconies. The Rapp brothers modeled the Chicago after seventeenth-century European palaces that had been built to help the aristocratic classes of Europe use architecture and culture to set themselves apart from an upstart merchant class. To design the theater along lines that would distinguish it from the area’s less highly regarded movie houses, Balaban and Katz hired the famed theater architects C.W. Completed in 1919-the same year that plans for the Chicago were announced-the cost of the State-Lake was only $2.5 million, an amount that covered construction not only of the theater, but also nine floors of office space above it. Prior to that, the city’s most expensive theater construction project had been the State-Lake vaudeville theater, located across the street from the Chicago site. The cost of the entire project-land and construction-topped $4 million. It expected the new theater to garner huge profits, not only because of its location in the heart of the city, but also by offering exclusive engagements of newly released motion pictures in an exceptionally elegant setting.Īs a result, Balaban & Katz spared no expense in building the Chicago. With the Chicago, the company gained its first toehold in the Loop. ![]() Balaban & Katz first made a name for itself in the city’s outlying neighborhoods by opening large movie palaces in predominately middle-class residential areas. That is why booking The Chicago Theatre parking in advance of the show with ParkWhiz is definitely needed.Opened in 1921, the Chicago served as the flagship for the Balaban & Katz Company, a fast-growing Chicago theater circuit destined to become one of the city’s largest and most profitable amusement enterprises. Guests can go on a history-filled journey from the establishment in 1921 up to present day to experience theatrical plays, ballets, orchestra shows and concerts. ![]() On OctoNew York’s Madison Square Garden Entertainment announced that they would buy the theatre, which it now manages. The theatre is also known for its grand Wurlitzer pipe organ. The theatre hosted the annual opening film of the Chicago International Film Festival until 2008. Like the other theatres around Chicago, Frank Sinatra graced the stage as it reopened after restorations. The venue has been associated with popular culture events, one of which was when Ronald Regan proposed to Jenny Wyman there. The theatre catered to motion pictures, concerts and live stage shows for the first 40 years in operation and concentrated in featuring Jazz in which it became the mainstay in Chicago theatres. During its opening week, crowds packed the theatre which was then penned “Wonder Theatre of the World”. ![]() Rapp, famous for their New-Baroque French-revival style in which the theatre was styled it is the oldest surviving example in Chicago. The Chicago Theatre was designed by Cornelius W. Formerly known as the Balaban and Katz Chicago Theatre in 1921, the theatre became the flagship for 28 theatres, which became one of the largest chain of lavish motion picture theatres in the country. It is imperative to book The Chicago Theatre parking ahead of time with ParkWhiz for convenience. One of these is The Chicago Theatre, located in the Loop. ![]() Chicago, Illinois is a place where many notable historical theatres were built during the early years of the 19th century, where each façade of the building is unique and tells a story.
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