Uptown Theater to be auctioned

posted by balabanandkatz on July 25, 2008 at 8:05 am

CHICAGO, IL — It has come to the attention of the Balaban and Katz Historical Foundation that the Uptown Theater building at 4816 North Broadway in Chicago will be auctioned publicly on July 29th at 10:30 am at the offices of the Judicial Sales Corporation. The address is 1 South Wacker Drive (24th floor) in Chicago.

The Judicial Sales Corporation has a website. The law firm involved in the case is Noonan and Lieberman LTD. located at 105 West Adams Street Chicago. The Balaban and Katz Historical Foundation’s website is here. Our email is The most recent interior pictures of the theater may be viewed at http://www.balabanandkatzmagazine.com.

(Thanks to chrisjuno for providing the photo.)

Theaters in this post

Comments (6)

markp
markp on July 26, 2008 at 6:47 am

Looks to be in fairly decent shape. Is it landmarked, or can it destroyed for another office tower or condo.

TheaterBuff1
TheaterBuff1 on July 27, 2008 at 10:38 pm

Do I see another DuPage tragedy in the making with this latest news flash? I sure hope not! The DuPage was another theater designed by the firm of Rapp & Rapp, in its case, located in Lombard, which is a suburb of Chicago. And in that case there was a heated rush to demolish it by a group of backwards-minded disidents even there was a sincere effort made on the part of a well-meaning group to try to restore it. But sadly, under the worse type of politics imaginable, it got demolished, while I wonder if we’ll see a repeat of that again here. I thought there was a good plan underway to restore the historic Uptown, so this news comes as a major shock to me!

GFeret
GFeret on July 28, 2008 at 6:15 am

WHAT??!! You’re giving only 3 days to come up with the money? Help!!

I went by UPTOWN coupla days ago. Some terra-cotta near the top is tarpaulined over I noted , I presume to protect against injury from falling.

MiltonSmith
MiltonSmith on July 28, 2008 at 11:33 am

Ugh, looks like someone wants to build a condo so they are rushing it to “public auction”. Which to me says “we have someone that wants it for development but we want to make it look like anyone can buy it so if someone wants to preserve it they better be the highest bidder. However, we know there is no way they could outbid the deep pockets of whatever developer wants to turn it into an office/condo. Oh well.”

It doesn’t look good, or else its just the cynic in me that sees it that way.

KJB2012
KJB2012 on July 29, 2008 at 11:08 am

No, you are not being a cynic. The term development is just a code word for vandalism. The old time Vandals sacked Rome, they have been doing the same to Americans cities since the 1940s.

MiltonSmith
MiltonSmith on July 29, 2008 at 6:41 pm

Well, lucky it was sold off to Jam Productions, which seem very likely to use it as its intended use.

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