Chicago Theatre

Stand on the pavement of State Street and look up. Light pours down on you from hundreds of bulbs, warm and slightly golden, chasing each other along the edge of the marquee. Above them, seven tall letters climb the front of the building and spell the name of the city itself. Cars hiss past behind you. Elevated trains rattle a block or two away. And in front of you is a doorway that has been pulling people in off this street for more than a century.

This is the Chicago Theatre. It opened in 1921, at a moment when going to the movies was becoming the great shared entertainment of American life. The building was not made for plays alone. It was a movie palace — a place where a ticket bought you a film, a live stage show, an orchestra, and a few hours inside a world far grander than most people's homes. That idea explains almost everything you are about to see.

The theatre was built for Balaban and Katz, a Chicago company run by brothers and partners who changed how Americans watched films. They believed the building itself should be part of the show. For the design they hired Rapp and Rapp, an architectural firm led by the brothers Cornelius and George Rapp. The firm went on to design many movie palaces across the country. This one, on State Street, became one of their best-known works, and the company's flagship.

Look at the front of the building again, above the marquee. The great arch is modelled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the triumphal arch at the top of the Champs-Élysées. The whole façade borrows from French Baroque style — a seventeenth-century style of rich curves, heavy ornament, and theatrical drama. The message to a 1920s audience was simple. You do not need to cross the ocean to see Paris. You only need the price of a ticket.

Inside the arch sits a large round window of stained glass. Here is a detail many visitors miss. The window carries the emblem of Balaban and Katz, and in it two horses hold strips of motion-picture film. It is a company logo, but it is set into the building like a coat of arms on a palace. In a sense, the owners signed their name on the front of their work, in coloured glass, for the whole street to read.

Now step through the doors. The grand lobby rises several storeys above you, and it takes its inspiration from the Royal Chapel at the Palace of Versailles, the home of the French kings outside Paris. Columns climb toward the ceiling. Gilded plaster catches the light. The grand staircase draws on the Paris Opera House. It was built for people to see and be seen — to pause halfway up and look down at the crowd arriving below.

The auditorium is the heart of it all. It holds several thousand people, which made it one of the largest theatres of its era. The ceiling is painted, the walls curve with ornament, and the balconies sweep back in long, deep arcs. When the house lights dim, the gold and red seem to soften into shadow. Even in a full house, many people say the room feels strangely intimate for its size.

Here is a second surprise. Balaban and Katz were early champions of mechanical cooling in their theatres. In the hot, humid Chicago summers of the 1920s, few homes had anything like air conditioning. A movie palace offered something rare — a cool, dark room on a sweltering afternoon. Comfort was part of the attraction. For many families, the film was almost secondary to the relief of stepping inside.

Music mattered just as much. The theatre still holds a Mighty Wurlitzer, the large theatre organ built to accompany silent films and fill the hall with sound. Before films had recorded soundtracks, an organist could play thunder, birdsong, chase scenes, and love themes, all from one console. The instrument is a living link to those years, and it is still heard on special occasions today.

The golden age did not last forever. After the Second World War, television pulled audiences home, and many downtown movie palaces across America closed or fell to the wrecking ball. This theatre struggled too, and by the mid-1980s it had closed its doors. Demolition was a real threat. Preservationists and civic leaders pushed back, and the building was saved, restored, and reopened in 1986. Frank Sinatra performed at the reopening, a fitting choice for a singer so closely tied to this city.

Since then, the theatre has become a home for live performance rather than films. Comedians, rock bands, singers, and touring shows fill the stage through the year. Backstage, there is a tradition that many visitors never see. Performers sign the walls of the dressing rooms and corridors, layer upon layer of names and messages from decades of shows. If you join a guided tour, you may get a look at this signed history up close.

Take a moment, too, to think about where you are standing. State Street has long been one of Chicago's main shopping streets, the spine of the Loop — the downtown district named for the ring of elevated train tracks that circles it. Department stores, offices, and theatres grew up together here. The marquee was designed to compete with all of that noise and light, and to win.

Before you walk on, turn back once more. Watch the bulbs run along the marquee and the tall letters glow against the evening sky. Notice the round window above, and the two horses holding their film. People have stood on this same spot since 1921, looking up at the same name in lights. As you step back into the flow of State Street, listen for the trains overhead... and carry a little of that old gold glow with you.