The “other” Grand Theater (Bobby Tanzilo, May 9, 2017)
Long before the palatial Warner Theater was recast as The Grand in 1982, there was the considerably less opulent and spacious Grand Theatre at 2917-23 N. Holton St., where the Harambee/Riverwest neighborhoods meet. This one was built in 1911. (Trainspotters will also note there was yet another Grand Theater that operated briefly, only from 1904 to 1909, at 738 N. 3rd St. Still another was in South Milwaukee.)
Thanks to a foreclosure, the 6,846-square foot Spanish Colonial-style building, which long housed a church, is now in the City of Milwaukee’s commercial real estate portfolio and could be yours for a cool $20,000. Designed by architect John Roth Jr. – who also designed the smaller, 600-seat Aurora at the same time – construction on the 760-seat theater began in December 1911 and it had a long run, showing films until it closed in 1975.
City permits suggest it was enlarged in 1922 to accommodate 850 movie-goers. In 1928, architect A. L. Seidenschwartz remodeled the theater in the atmospheric style, meaning he made the theater space itself appear to be outside, with the addition of clouds and stars and a bit of Mediterranean-style tile roof hints. Permits show that the ceiling was raised, roof trusses added and the exterior altered.
In 1946, some seats were removed to make room for the construction of a candy stand. According to Larry Widen, co-author of the fine book, “Silver Screens: A Pictorial History of Milwaukee’s Movie Theaters,” “They tried some adult films and some art films but both ventures were short lived.”
Some have suggested it may have operated for a time, later in its life, as Puerto (or Porto) Rico (and, briefly, at the very end as the Magik Grand Cine). Local history buff Carl Swanson wrote a good history of the theater here; I will merely summarize that here and encourage you to visit Carl’s site.
Built just a few years after the dawn of dedicated movie houses in Milwaukee, the Grand really is, as the DCD sell sheet notes, one of the oldest cinemas in the city. And, as a smaller neighborhood theater, it hearkens back to a time when Milwaukeeans could walk around the corner to see the latest films, seated among their neighbors, rather than driving to a movie mall somewhere in the suburbs and watching anonymously.
But as that era ended, the theater went into decline – the porn matinees are a clear sign of that – and ultimately closed, replaced by the Church of the Philippians. In 2007, Haven of Hope Ministries bought the building and occupied it until 2015.
It’s unclear which of the two churches built the block of rooms that now occupy the back-center portion of the auditorium, but Haven of Hope must have expected to stay longer than it did. Architectural plans hanging inside show an expansion plan onto the vacant lot to the north.
Heading inside, I was unprepared for just how intact the former Grand is as a theater. Step inside the lobby and there is earth-toned floor tile, exposed beam ceilings with elaborate painted detail that is almost entirely intact. A series of decorative hanging light fixtures remains, too. Solomonic columns and a quartet of medallions are painted gold and there’s still more decoration here above the doors, above the mirrors on either side of the lobby. There’s also wrought iron radiator grates.
Though the movie poster cases are bricked up on the exterior, their access doors remain in the lobby, which is flanked by men’s and women’s rooms that, in large part, maintain their vintage floor and wall tile. A door in the women’s room has a lot of graffiti etched into it.
A narrow bent staircase leads up to the projection room (pictured above), which appears to have the original footprint, though all but one of the openings out into the theater have been dry-walled over.
Step through the padded, studded doors into the auditorium and you’re transported back in time (if you ignore that block of rooms that surely could easily be removed … hand me a sledgehammer and I’ll start).
Rows of theater seats have been replaced with wooden pews, but the proscenium that conjures a Spanish plaza still stands. A series of niches can be found on each side wall. At the back is a strip of Mediterranean roof tile, again suggesting we’re outside.
Follow the north gangway and you’ll find a tight, steep metal staircase up to a space behind the three arched openings in the proscenium. Up here is the remnant of a piano. If The Grand had an organ, the pipes were likely up here.
I couldn’t find a staircase off the south gangway up to a space on the opposite side of the proscenium, but window openings facing the alley out back suggest there is a similar space up there, though the access may have been closed off.
Beneath the stage and running along the back was a narrow space with stairs up to the stage itself. It’s too tight to have been a useful dressing room or orchestra pit, I’d think, so perhaps it was simply a means of access from behind, or it led to the basement.
For someone with the means – or handyman skills – the idea of returning The Grand to use as a theater – be it films, be it live theater, be it concerts – doesn’t seem at all far-fetched.
The Department of City Development is accepting proposals (and offers) for the building until 3 p.m. on June 30.
Some of the permitted uses as listed on the sell sheet are “community center, food bank, restaurant/café, office, artist studio, live/work unit, dance studio, etc.”
Restoration of the building and façade are required in all proposals, but note that grants for the facade and renovation are potentially available and the DCD has access to other financial resources, too.
The theatre includes the vacant lot to the north, bringing the square footage of the land to 8,314.
Urban spelunking: The Ritz/Villa Theater (Bobby Tanzilo, July 18, 2017)
The former Ritz/Villa movie theater on 36th and Villard is for sale. And it’s mostly intact as a cinema.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to step inside the former Ritz Theater movie house 3608 W. Villard Ave. and find it intact as a movie house.
The same thing happened when I visited the old Grand on Holton and Locust. But, other times, like when I explored the old Lyric Theater on Vliet Street, I had to be content with easter eggs and clues, since all the seating had been removed and the auditorium carved up into rooms.
But after The Ritz, which was called the Villa by then, was closed by Marcus Theatres in 1986, it had a brief return as a movie house in the following decade, so it hasn’t really been gone all that long.
Now, the building is vacant and was acquired by the city in a tax foreclosure. The Department of City Development has listed it for sale for $20,000.
The Spanish Colonial style theater was built as the independent, 840-seat Ritz cinema in 1926 by Michael Brumm, who had opened a nickelodeon called The Princess across Villard Avenue in 1912. His son Arnold helped out at the theaters.
As was often the case with movie theaters of the era, The Ritz had an adjacent retail space and offices upstairs. Over the years, those spaces were occupied by a confectioner, a doctor, a barber, a typewriter store, a gift shop, a real estate and mortgage business, and spaces upstairs also served as residences from 1935 until the end of World War II.
“In summer, when business declined, the Brumm family would travel to outlying areas with a portable generator and a movie projector, bringing the movies to farmers or businesspeople in small towns without movie theaters,” wrote Larry Widen and Judi Anderson in their book, “Silver Screens: A Pictorial History of Milwaukee’s Movie Theaters. "The show was done on a weekly circuit, with posters left behind to advertiser the next week’s feature. When Michael Brumm opened The Ritz in 1926, he stopped the traveling shows and settled into more routine business operations.”
Brumm tapped his son, Arnold, as assistant manager once the latter graduated from high school, Widen and Anderson wrote, leading Arnold to ultimately take over the business entirely.
With powerful chains running the theater game, indie owners like Brumm often struggled to stay afloat. “Arnold Brumm remembered many occasions when film booking became a problem at his family’s Ritz Theater,” Widen and Anderson noted in “Silver Screens.” ‘The buying power of the chains really put the squeeze on the little guys,’ Brumm said. ‘And “block booking,” the packaging of one great picture with 20 lousy ones, hurt us a lot.’ Studios often came to the independent owners with a year’s worth of projected films. To keep a constant flow of films on his screen, the theater owner bought the lot sight unseen, hoping that several films in the package would turn out to be hit attractions. Until block booking was made illegal in 1939, it was an accepted way to do business, ‘Film salesmen were very aggressive guys,’ Brumm said. ‘They would do almost anything to … control your screen for 52 weeks at a time.’ In spite of the hardships connected with being independent, the most determined of the owners found their markets, and their theaters prospered.“
For an interesting look at the finances of The Ritz in this era, check out Matthew Prigge’s delve into one of the theater’s ledgers from 1935, a year in which Brumm’s place lost $320.
One way Arnold Brumm worked to "find his market” was to catch the public’s eye in unusual ways, according to Widen and Anderson.
“Although he had always been known for his innovative advertising techniques, such as displaying movie posters upside down, Brumm pulled off his most successful stunt to promote the sale of war bonds in 1944. "Coming up short on the bond sales quota set for his theater, Brumm climbed to the top of the Ritz theater’s five-story chimney on a Saturday afternoon. A huge sign on the chimney said, ‘BUY ME WITH WAR BONDS.’ He stayed at his post for the next 24 hours, and war bond sales were brisk. When the final figures were tallied, Brumm’s stunt had doubled the theater’s goals.”
According to a much later Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article,“ "One of the strangest efforts came in the early 1950s, when the theater implemented something it called ‘Dignity Nights.’ On designated evenings, candy eaters, popcorn munchers and peanut shell snappers were corralled into a special section, protecting the aurally sensitive from the oral cacophony.”
In late 1959, Marcus Theaters, which had moved into the Milwaukee market when it acquired the Tosa Theater (now the Rosebud) in 1940, bought The Ritz and ran it for the last 11 weeks of the year. At the time, movies were 85 cents for adults in the evening, 60 cents for matinees and early bird screenings. Children paid 25 cents and students twice that.
In 1962, three days before Christmas, the theater was re-launched as The Villa, playing both on the architecture of the building and the location on Villard Avenue. Marcus archivist Leslie Heinrichs shared these interesting tidbits from the theater’s Marcus era…
Nov. 4 1977 – one of 8 Marcus Theatres that had a Thanksgiving Food Drive for the Needy in association with the Milwaukee B’nai B’rith council’s 1977 drive. The idea is to show a movie that would appeal to audience of all ages and have everyone who wants to attend get a free ticket. The ticket and at least a $1.00 contribution in food or cash are necessary for admittance. The movie show was a 1976 limited run film “It’s Showtime”.
January 1978 – Villa is one of 10 theatres that has special showings of films for Milwaukee area teachers who want to take their students to the movies as a field trip. Some that are tentatively scheduled include: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Grease,” “Jungle Book,” “Cat from Outer Space,” “International Velvet,” “Wild Billy and the Keystone Cowboy.” Other films may appeal to select student groups such as social studies, humanities or foreign language classes. These are a perfect supplement to classroom studies.
January 1980 – Admission prices are dramatically reduced at the Villa to great success. Ticket prices are only 79 cents. Current showings include two Burt Reynolds hit films “Starting Over” and “The End”. Vice President of the Marcus Corporation, Bruce Olson, said: “ We choose to offer these lower priced admissions especially for those families who may find it difficult, at times, to afford regular admission prices. We also believe it will stimulate the older audiences who seldom go to the movies anymore. Furthermore, in today’s inflationary environment, we want to provide a low cost form of entertainment.” (Note: The Villa is one of two theatres that did this.)
March 1980 – The Marcus Theatres Corporation will institute a $1 admission price on Mondays and Tuesdays beginning Monday, March 16th. The $1 policy will be in effect at most theaters throughout the statewide Marcus Theatres chain, for a limited time only. Note: The Villa is one of 74 theaters that had this policy.
October 1984 – Marcus Corporation offers 50 cent movies for 1 night only at all theaters including the Villa. This is in honor of its 50th anniversary.
In 1986, Marcus closed The Villa and two years later Tanya and Herman Lewis bought the building and attempted to run it as a second-run house, then a first-run cinema, then a community theater and center before calling it quits in March 1995.
Since then, the building has been home to a salon, a school (called AGAPE), a church, a bookstore. But now it’s vacant, and while it’s seen better days – there is a fair bit of water intrusion – it still looks entirely like a theater inside.
There’s a lobby that looks as though it’s definitely been altered at some point. The marquee still hangs above the door, with a vertical sign advertising the school that once occupied the building. Up the terrazzo stairs are a handful of empty offices facing the street. Across the hall are some storage rooms and the projection room, which, as was customary, has its own bathroom.
One door offers a view (though no ladder anymore) up to the attic lit by those dormers you can see on the facade. In the basement, which I didn’t get to explore completely, were the bathrooms, which look as though they’d been updated at least once. Inside the auditorium, the seats are all still there, including what are surely the original cast iron decorative standards at the ends of each row. There are decorative plaster moldings on the walls, and the ceiling has a recessed dome painted blue. Flanking the stage are a pair of exits with organ pipe lofts above (there was a 2/5 Kilgen organ – now in a private collection in Columbus, Ohio – up there). On one side, you can scale a ladder to peek into the organ pipe loft, which is empty and the opening that allowed the sound into the theater has been boarded up. There’s a space below the stage, accessed via the orchestra pit – which itself sits under a stage extension – where there are extra seats and other objects stored.
Up in one of the offices there are more modern plexiglass letters for the marquee. Seven of them now appear outside: “For Sale.”
The owner of the Uptown Theatre shared his vision yesterday, which includes hosting 100 shows a year, offering 200 jobs and even a non-profit arm focused on community arts outreach. Now for the hardest part: raising the remaining $40 million to finish the ambitious renovation. Yesterday, the Chicago Architecture Center hosted a panel featuring those working on the long-awaited restoration. Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones moderated and was joined by co-owner Jerry Mickelson, long-time volunteer Robert Boin and the Department of Planning and Development’s director of historic preservation Eleanor Gorski. “There is nowhere like The Uptown, at least that I’ve been,” said Jones, who has traveled to theaters across the country and around the world.
The Uptown Theatre, the largest freestanding theater ever built in its time, has three marquees, a kid’s playroom and over 17,000 light bulbs in the auditorium. It took 18 months and cost $4 million dollars to construct (over $58 million today if adjusted for inflation). One of the reasons the theatre has lasted so long — despite lying dormant for nearly four decades — is because it was built with one third more steel than necessary, making it able to withstand winter after winter without completely deteriorating. “It’s one of the most beautiful buildings, palaces ever built,” said Mickelson, who talked about the timeline for the restoration project. Although it has been previously reported that construction could start as early as this summer, it is more likely to start near the beginning of 2020. There is still $40 million that needs to be raised, and Mickelson said he won’t feel comfortable breaking ground until he has raised at least $20 million. He said he feels confident in raising those funds, already has an investor who has pledged a million dollars to the theater, and is hoping the theatre will open with its first show in early 2021. Much like in Las Vegas, he said he has been considering the option of having performers in residency who would regularly perform at the venue. To Mickelson, restoring the Uptown Theatre is all about bringing benefit to the Uptown community. His production company JAM also runs the nearby Riviera Theatre and the area is close to his heart. Everyone on the panel agreed the theatre would be a catalyst of economic development for Uptown. “It will bring back the glory of this proud neighborhood,” Mickelson said. “It’s all about creating jobs and opportunities for people who don’t have them.”
Instead of running the Uptown Theatre as a for-profit enterprise, Mickelson hopes the theatre will become a non-profit foundation run by a board of directors. He has already made deals with Chicago Public Schools, After School Matters and The People’s Music School, so that kids will have access to the theater during the restoration and once it’s open for good. “It’s about taking care of the future of us, of our city,” he said. “Kids cannot become what they cannot see.”
The panel recalled some of the theater’s darkest hours, when it looked like it might not be saved. Boin recalled a time in the early 80’s when its owners promised to heat the building in the winter. After failing to do so, several pipes burst, flooding large parts of the theatre. Boin was one of the unsung heroes who helped look after the theatre, often on his own dime. He used to pay for the oil and light the furnaces himself throughout the winter. In the 80’s it cost over $8,000 a year just to buy enough oil. Gorski remembered when the building had fallen into complete disrepair and the top of the building was close to falling off. The city was able to get a judge to allow them to appoint a caretaker, to supplement the careless owners.
Mickelson bought the theatre in 2008, just before the housing market crashed. Those were darker days, he said. When one of the former owners suggested turning the theatre into an indoor go-kart track, Mickelson doubled down on his efforts to save the building. “That really made me mad,” he said. But Gorski said city officials realized they needed to help save the theatre because of its stunning beauty. “This building has an effect unlike any building I have ever seen,” she said. “People are mesmerized. Once they see this building they understand why it needs to be saved.”
While Mickelson plans to restore the theatre to its former glory, there will be some changes made. The largest of those changes includes tiering off the main floor and creating a general admission dance floor. “It will increase the usage and is necessary to support the operational plans of the theatre,” he said.
Crowd members wanted to know if the 46th ward aldermanic race could have an impact on the theatre’s restoration efforts. Ald. James Cappleman (46th) only has a narrow lead over opponent Marianne Lalonde in the still too-close-to-call race, and some worried Lalonde may not be as friendly to the project. “I think the project is bigger than any one person,” said Mickelson. “It would be incredibly wrong to pull the rug out from under us at this point.” This morning, Lalonde said she’s excited for the project, but wants to make sure there’s community input.
“I’m excited for it to be redone, but I think that we need a community benefits agreement for it,” Lalonde said. “The agreement would be to ensure that we have a plan for parking, safety and to make sure that the economic benefit for theater returns the community.”
Others were worried about keeping the theatre accessible to the entire community. Mickelson told them to look at JAM’s average ticket price. He said their average ticket sells for around $33, much lower than his competitors in town. He also talked about opening the theatre during the day as a place for the community, particularly kids, to congregate.
When asked about his dreams for the theatre, Mickelson said the legacy of the Uptown Theatre will be about giving back. “If the Uptown Theatre becomes a foundation, it will probably be the first theatre in the country where all of its profits will be donated to good causes,” he said. “And that will be the enduring legacy of the theatre.”
This week the Rotary Club of Milwaukee gifted a $50,000 grant to the Warner Grand Theater. Work continues to progress on schedule, with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra aiming to complete transforming the theatre into the “Milwaukee Symphony Center” along with the building’s 12-story office tower. Initially, a $120 million fundraising target was set, but last year that was increased to $139 million in mid-2018 to accommodate the tower renovation as well as building up the orchestra’s endowment. The Rotary Club grant will name two built-in wall fountains in the theatre. Its president said “Rotary Club of Milwaukee is delighted to support MSO’s Grand Theater project. The project provides a beautiful home and community platform for the symphony, affirms Milwaukee’s commitment to the arts, and brings a grand old building back to life revitalizing downtown.”
The MSO plans to host its first concert there in September 2020, but the Rotary Club is hoping to make the theatre available for the July 13-16 Democratic National Convention activities.
After being closed for 32 years, Exeter resident Eric Symeon plans to reopen the Moonlite Drive-In in West Wyoming in June Symeon recently flew to the closed Cascade Drive-In in Chicago and purchased a digital projector. He learned about the projector for sale after reading an article that the Chicago drive-in would close after 58 years in business.
He said he looks forward to re-opening the theater in West Wyoming to offer families in the area something to do and a fun night out for a reasonable price. The cost to see two outdoor movies at the Moonlight Drive-In is $8 for adults and $5 for children. Work is ongoing to reopen the concessions stand and Symeon said some electrical work still needs to be completed as well. Symeon purchased the Moonlite Drive-In in 2017 and the Luzerne County Zoning Board granted him a variance to operate the theater. Last summer, he said a missing panel was replaced on the movie screen and the screen was repainted. He posted a photo of the digital projector on Facebook and the post received more than 700 “likes.” Several people posted that they can’t wait for the drive-in to re-open.
Other drive-in theaters in the area include the Garden Drive-In in Hunlock Creek and the Circle Drive-In in Dickson City. While many drive-in theaters have gone out of businesses, these two have lasted for decades.
The Circle Drive-In, built in 1945, is one of the longest running drive-in theaters in America. It is open for the season and will play movies “Dumbo” and “Captain Marvel” on one screen and “Wonder Park” and “Pet Sematary” on another screen this weekend. Movies are shown Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.
The Garden Drive-In announced on its Facebook page it will begin showing movies this Friday and will hold its first flea market for the season on Sunday. The movies showing this weekend were not yet announced.
The Gardens Amusement Co. built the Garden Drive-In, which opened in July 1952, and it remains in business more than 66 years later. Kim Barbacci’s family bought the drive-in in the 1980s from the Cragle family.
The Laurel Drive-In in Hazleton temporarily closed last season because while other drive-ins have gone digital, it has continued to use 35mm film. It’s not clear if the drive-in will reopen this season. Efforts to reach anyone at the drive-in were not successful on Monday.
Luzerne County formerly was the site of a host of drive-in theaters that have all closed, including the West Side Drive-In in Edwardsville, the Comerford Drive-In in Dupont, the Wilkes-Barre Drive-In in Wilkes-Barre Twp., the Riverview in Pittston and the Dallas Drive-In in Dallas Twp.
Today, there are less than 350 drive-in movie theaters in the U.S. That marks a big decline from more than 4,000 drive-in movie theaters that once operated when they reached the peak of their popularity in the 1950s and 1960s.
“Take in an old movie. The obvious benefit to Montello is the old movie theater. Old meaning vintage, it is slightly quirky in a fun way, no high resolution screen, no balcony or surround sound, yet it works. The comfy burgundy colored leather seats are framed by slightly worn yet still black, wrought iron. Two aisles divide the 1960s space making it friendly. Be forewarned that the theater has one show time daily and only one movie per week, on the plus side you won’t be able to argue on what movie to see. The movie selection is always a popular one. We saw da Vinci Code. The snack prices are great. Imagine paying $1.00 for popcorn! And the movie ticket was only $3.00, making it very affordable teens or families. The theatre is located on the main street near the red granite water falls which makes it hard to miss.” – from a tourist publication
The iconic Arcada Theatre in downtown St. Charles has been ordered to address code violations before reopening, city officials said yesterday, following a thorough code and safety inspection by the St. Charles Fire Department and a third-party fire inspection consultant after receiving complaints regarding overcrowding at the Arcada, accessibility to exits in the building, and issues hearing the fire alarm during a performance. Fire officials decided to schedule a complete code and safety inspection to take place during the building’s regularly scheduled annual review in March. B&F Construction Code Services, Inc., an independent third-party fire protection consultant, and the city’s building and code enforcement staff completed their reviews on March 12. City officials didn’t elaborate on the exact issues at hand but did say they are working with the building’s owner to get the theatre back up and running, and a Facebook post from the Arcada Theatre on March 21 indicated the issue had to do with a cover from the theatre’s electrical system that “came off.” The post reads: “We are feeling the pains of this 93-year-old building! One of the covers from the electrical system came off and we won’t let anyone into the building until it is 100% safe.”
On a Saturday morning in 2014, Scott Dehn received the long-awaited news that the McHenry Outdoor Theatre will get the digital projector it so desperately needed. It probably wasn’t quite the way he’d envisioned the moment going. Dehn, the theater’s owner, was in the middle of an on-camera interview with a crew he’d been told was from a film-related website. Turns out, the crew was from Honda, and they were there to reveal that McHenry Outdoor has won one of five digital projectors the company is giving away through “Project Drive-In.” “The interviewer, the last question he asked me was, ‘How does it feel to win a digital projector?’” Dehn said. Dehn told the guy he’d misunderstood the situation, and that the theater hadn’t won anything yet. That’s when the crew revealed they were from Honda and that McHenry Outdoor had won, Dehn said. “I just fell down to my knees and broke down for a little bit,” he said. “It was pretty emotional.” Dehn has been trying to find a way to update the theater’s equipment since he took it over in early 2012. Because of the movie industry’s ongoing switch from 35 mm film to digital – a format cheaper for studios and distributors – theaters across the country are having to move fast to install digital projectors. Otherwise, their owners are left choosing from a dwindling selection of movies produced on the old format. The change has hit smaller, independent theaters hardest, and threatens many home-grown drive-ins like McHenry Outdoor. Dehn’s campaign on the fundraising website Kickstarter to raise $130,000 for the projector and accompanying maintenance fell short. Kickstarter projects that don’t reach their goals don’t receive any of the funds that donors pledge, so Dehn had to go back to the drawing board. Through online efforts and other donations, the theater had raised $5,000 toward the switch. But under Project Drive-In, Honda’s attempt to help preserve what they call an “iconic part of American car culture,” Dehn turned his attention to asking for votes rather than money. It worked. Voters willed McHenry Outdoor to a spot among the contest’s five winners. “They came together to support something they love,” Dehn said. “I couldn’t be more proud to say I’m from McHenry.” He said it was like getting “the weight of the world” lifted off his shoulders when he found out his theater would survive the switch to digital. The extra $5,000 raised will go toward other repairs. Dehn plans to have the theater revamped and running with the digital projector by next season. “There’s a lot of beautification and a lot of repair work that will be done,” he said. For now, it’s time to celebrate. Dehn was with family and friends Saturday night at the drive-in for a showing of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” “I think we’re just going to take a deep breath and enjoy the moment, enjoy these last few days of 35 mm film we’ve got left,” he said. Dehn wasn’t the only one soaking in the evening Saturday. Cars flooded the theater parking lot as the sun disappeared. Families sat out lawn chairs and tables or piled in the back of pickup trucks. Many curled into blankets as the air cooled. “It’s awesome,” said Cheryl Burke, of Cary, who was playing Scrabble with her husband, Jim, and 15-year-old son, Adam, before the movie started. They’d been planning to come out anyway but when they heard about the projector, a movie became a must. “We own ‘Ferris Buehler,’” Cheryl Burke said, laughing. “But we came here to watch.” Ed and Tammie Majkrzak and their kids Gracee, 11, and Alayna, 8, who live so close to the theater they can tune into its radio station from home, were similarly familiar with the classic flick. But it didn’t matter. The theater is about the experience, they said. We’ve never seen it on the big screen,“ Tammie Majkrzak said. Before the movie started, Dehn spoke through the radio to the crowd, thanking them for their support. Theater-goers responded with car horns that played like applause. "Wow,” Dehn said. “What a night.”
Iconic Cascade Drive-In Closes After 58 Years In West Chicago – Owners of the drive-in theater thanked customers for their support and said, “Our hearts are broken.” (By Lisa Marie Farver, Patch Staff, March 15-18, 2019) ——
WEST CHICAGO, IL — For the past 58 years, you’d know it was the start of summer in the western suburbs by the blinking of fireflies, the chirping of birds, and the smell of popcorn and flickering of big-screen movies at the Cascade Drive-In theater. Just as the iconic drive-in was prepping to open for its 2019 season, news comes that the screens will stay dark. The owners announced Friday that the theater, one of the last of its kind in Chicagoland, has closed indefinitely.
The theater’s owners said on Facebook Friday that the property owner has decided not to permit the theater to open. The parcel of land is up for sale, but Cascade Drive-In owners say it has not yet been sold and that no development plans have been made. Cascade Drive-In owners say they can “only surmise that the landowner believes he has a better chance to get any future development approval from the city of West Chicago and surrounding community if the business is closed.” The current owners have operated the drive-in for the past three decades and have paid $6 million in rent, the Facebook post said. They added “A conversation and a decent transition would have been the least we could expect from the landowner. It’s devastating to us but we always knew the sale would be imminent one day but this scenario of closing with no other use for the property was totally unexpected.” On March 23, Cascade will host a sale of hoodies, popcorn machines, grills, a golf cart and more to give customers a chance to get their hands on a “piece of nostalgia.” The owners of Cascade closed their post by expressing a sentiment that will likely be shared throughout the surrounding community in the wake of news of the drive-in’s closure. They said, “Our hearts are broken.”
Alexander “Alex” Kouvalis – born in 1934 in a regional unit of Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece …died in Chicago on October 2, 2011 and was interred at Maryhill Catholic Cemetery & Mausoleum in Niles, Cook County, Illinois, USA ——————————————
“I know a place where there are electric clouds overhead and twenty-five cent lightbulbs become stars with eyes I see, so it must be true, a dancer of light, a silver shadow who is the keeper of illusions, yours and mine … he dwells in a grand mosaic just west of Austin Boulevard.” … Filmmaker Louis Antonelli wrote that poem about Mr. Kouvalis, and made a 1994 short about his passion for Chicago’s Patio Theatre: “The Wizard of Austin Boulevard.” Alexander Kouvalis, who cared for the Patio Theatre as tenderly as a lover and guarded it as fiercely as Cerberus, was a hero to film buffs for not only keeping the jewelbox of a moviehouse running — but also for refusing to slice up its big screen for a multiplex. Mr. Kouvalis and his family burnished the 1927 Patio at Irving and Austin and re-opened it with a $5 admission, unusual work for a man who immigrated from Greece at age 18 in short pants in the middle of December with no English and went on to become a physicist with four college degrees.
Mr. Kouvalis, 77, died on Sunday, October 2, 2011 at Lutheran General Hospital after suffering a heart attack while driving.
In 1987 Mr. Kouvalis, with some partners, bought the block-long building that houses the neo-Pompeiian Patio as well as apartments and commercial tenants. “It was a mess, but I could see a thing of beauty underneath the dirt,” he said before the June re-opening. “Like ‘My Fair Lady,‘ the beauty was there; you just had to bring it out.” He did it all, from booking second-run films to selling popcorn. He rousted teenage vandals and he was not above patting someone’s pocket if he thought they were sneaking in candy. But he faced hard times in the late 1990s when the city tried to impose additional fees, and the air-conditioning system broke down. He shuttered the Patio in 2001. For years thereafter, the Patio’s marquee said “UNDER RENOVATION.” But Mr. Kouvalis, his daughter Amalia and his son repainted and reupholstered and found a company to fix the Patio’s air conditioning. Mr. Kouvalis bought out all but one partner. Today, the Patio still has its trademark twinkling ceiling lights and a projector that makes the ceiling look like moving clouds. “The fact that it’s still there, doing what it started out as in 1927, that’s a pretty amazing thing,” said Richard Sklenar, executive director of the Elmhurst-based Theatre Historical Society of America. “It’s been on that corner for three generations… . We give him credit for hanging on to it.” When he arrived in the U.S. in 1952 “he thought he saw so many stars in the sky,” said his wife, Magdalena. “Then he found out they were [the lights of] cars.” He had an uncle from the Old Country in Casper, Wyoming, so he went to stay with him. But there he washed dishes from morning until night, or shivered on a truck that delivered ice. Mr. Kouvalis came to Chicago to get an education. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Elmhurst College and three degrees at the Illinois Institute of Technology: a bachelor’s in physics and also in management, and a master’s degree in economics. The U.S. Army came calling, and he was supposed to serve in Japan. But he wanted to be near Greece, so he told a general he was a skilled mechanic who could better serve his new country in Europe. It worked; he was stationed in Germany, and he returned to Greece for a visit. “Alex didn’t even know how to drive the car, and he said he was a car mechanic,” his wife said. “They found out he’s not much of a mechanic.” Later, Mr. Kouvalis worked for Argonne National Laboratory, Sunbeam and Zenith, and he taught economics and real estate at Triton College. At the time of his passing, the Patio Theatre was screening “The Help.” Mr. Kouvalis married when he was 54, because for decades he focused on sending money to his family in Greece, his son said. He helped provide a dowry for his sister, Maria Kostopoulos, and he helped put his brother John through dental school. He met his Polish-born wife when she was visiting a relative in Chicago one summer, and she began working at the Patio. His wake and funeral service were at the Smith-Corcoran Funeral Home at 6150 North Cicero Avenue, with interment following at Maryhill Cemetery in Niles. He was interred with a handmade blanket that his mother, Vasiliki, sent him when he first arrived in America.
Winners Use Imagination to Capture ‘NIMH’ Cash (BOXOFFICE, January 1983, David Linck)
Entries in the recently completed MGM-UA “The Secret of NIMH” Showmanship Contest conducted through BOXOFFICE displayed some of the same originality and imagination found in the animated Aurora Productions film. Judging the many entries from theatres around the country was a difficult task for BOXOFFICE staffers. Each entry sparkled in its own way, with many offering unique methods to promote the adventures of Mrs. Brisby and the rats of NIMH. … Perhaps the best example of linking the film with the book it was based upon, “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH,” came from another $2,000 winner, the Genoa Theatre in Genoa City, Wisconsin. The theatre’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. John Ingalls, devised a brilliant reading contest that allowed local students to read the book in school and earn free passes to the film’s showing. The Ingalls' also integrated clever merchant tie-ins and hidden “NIMH” stickers on concession items into their overall promotional plan.
Milwaukee Film surpassed its $10 million capital campaign goal to restore the Oriental Theatre and even provided the nonprofit with its first-ever operating reserve. The campaign began in 2017 when Milwaukee Film entered into a 31-year lease to operate the 92-year-old Oriental Theatre and assumed operations in July 2018. The campaign drew gifts from 900 contributors and brought in $10.03 million. Lead donors included Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele who made a personal contribution of $2 million to kick off the campaign, the largest gift in Milwaukee Film history, and also Donald and Donna Baumgartner, the Herzfeld Foundation, the Sheldon and Marianne Lubar Charitable Fund, Allen H. (Bud) and Suzanne L. Selig, and The Yabuki Family Foundation. The Seligs offered a $1.5 million matching grant on opening night of the 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival, and an unspecified but “significant" pledge from The Yabuki Family Foundation allowed the campaign to exceed its goal. “We are grateful for the enormous amount of support given by the Milwaukee community” said Jonathan Jackson, CEO and artistic director of Milwaukee Film. “Accomplishing this campaign in such an accelerated timespan speaks not only to the tireless effort of our team, but also to the passion of donors and audiences.” The campaign will support the restoration of the Oriental Theatre and provide financial stability for the organization. The first phase of the project, completed last year, included adding a women’s lavatory suite to the first floor and replacing mechanical equipment throughout the theatre. A full rehabilitation of the main auditorium is expected this year. “We’ve always had an ambitious vision for what Milwaukee Film can become, and we’ve made incredible strides in meeting some pretty big goals,” Jackson said. “The commitment of all of our supporters, and particularly the generosity of our lead donors in this campaign, shows me we can dream even bigger and do more within our community.”
Several theatres at one time or another served Libertyville: the Lyric Theatre, an earlier version of the Liberty Theatre, and the Auditorium Theatre. The immediate predecessor of the current Liberty Theatre, the LaVilla Theatre, was located on the second floor of the First National Bank building. However, the LaVilla had only hardwood seating and a screen which would roll up when not in use. One can imagine this did not meet the standards that the movie-going public of Libertyville was coming to expect.
Into this picture stepped Frederick William Dobe. Born in Germany in 1873, Dobe had emigrated to the United States at age 19 in 1892, eventually settling down in Libertyville. Noticing that while the small theatre on Milwaukee Avenue served its purpose and sensing a potential business opportunity, Dobe polled the community to see if they were happy with the existing theatre. Finding that the people of Libertyville were indeed looking for a more luxurious movie going experience, Dobe contracted Chicago-based architects Edward P. Rupert and William L. Pereira to design a theatre befitting a town of Libertyville’s stature.
The design that was eventually settled upon was the art moderne style with a cream terra-cotta exterior, dark blue trim, and a stunning vertical art deco sign. Able to seat 706 customers (44 fewer than promised), the theatre boasted the most up-to-date amenities. Construction on the theater began on Friday April 9, 1937 with the work contracted to the Kaiser-Ducett Company o Chicago.
In the weeks leading up to the Liberty’s opening, stores decorated their windows and had “Theatre opening sales”, light posts in the business district bore red, white and blue bunting, and almost the entire issue of the August 26 Independent Register dedicated to the theatre’s opening. On Friday August 27, 1937 the theatre opened to a capacity crowd with a large number of would-be customers being turned away, Frederick Dobe was at the front of the line, buying the first ticket. As the audience filled in they were met by Mark Fisher, a popular Chicago band leader who acted as the master of ceremonies that evening. After Fisher came a short speech by A.E. Suter, President of the Village Board, to an audience that, as one can imagine, was probably impatient for the movie, The Slave Ship staring Warner Baxter and Elizabeth Allen.
The theatre quickly became the go-to place for kids to hang out on weekends. According to Marylyn Alkire of the Libertyville-Mundelein Historical Society, in the 1940s kids would go to the penny candy store just south of the Liberty, buy a pocketful of candy and then hurry back to buy a movie ticket for 20¢. Once in the theatre they might have been escorted to their seats by a young Marlon Brando, who worked as an usher during the short time he and his family lived in Libertyville (Summer of 1938 – spring of 1941). The films they would have watched ranged from western to on-location newsreels produced by Time Inc. The theatre would have regular blackouts in the middle of movies, leaving the children in the audience to wait impatiently until the movie started up again.
The manager during the 1940s was Robert L. Collier. Born in Peoria, he was a well-known business man, avid bowler, and during the blackouts was known to send uniformed ushers to keep the kids in line.
On September 3, 1942, James Cagney visited Libertyville as part of the effort to sell war bonds. Drawing a crowd of some 4,000 at Cook Park (according to the 1940 census the population of Libertyville was 3,930), Cagney spoke on the steps of the Cook Memorial Library then located in Cook House, and the town had pledged nearly $111,000. As a reward for the town’s patriotism, Liberty Theatre was chosen to be the location of the world premiere of “Desperate Journey”, a film about a group of downed Allied airmen making their way out of Nazi Germany, and starring Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan. As part of the ceremonies, then-Illinois Governor Dwight H. Green drove a horse-drawn carriage loaned to him by publishing magnate John F. Cuneo on Milwaukee Avenue.
In 1948 Frederick Dobe followed with the construction of the Grayslake Outdoor Theatre along Highway 120 East at Route 83. At some point after 1955 the art deco vertical sign that had for so long beckoned moviegoers of all ages was taken down. In 1960 on Saturday, June 18 at the age of 87, Frederick Dobe passed away at St. Therese’s Hospital in Waukegan. He was interred at the Ridgewood Cemetery in Des Plaines.
In 2012 the theatre was bought by Scott Dehn, who purchased two digital projectors totaling about $130,000 and the theatre had a grand re-opening early that same year. The theatre then came under the ownership of Golden Age Cinemas, which also owns the McHenry Outdoor Theatre.
Brando, Marlon, and Robert Lindsey. Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me. New York, NY: Random House Inc., 1994.
Builder of Theatre. 1937. Libertyville Independent Register Dec 3, 1936 thru Dec 29, 1938, Cook Memorial Public Library, Libertyville.
Cizek, Carl. Liberty Theatre. 1955. Libertyville History, Libertyville-Mundelein Historical Society, Libertyville. Accessed January 11, 2017. http://www.idaillinois.org/cdm/ref/collection/cookmemo11/id/1252.
Friddy, Gladys. “New Theatre is modern in every detail.” Independent Register(Libertyville), August 26, 1937. Microform.
“F.W. Dobe believes in work, hobbies, and perseverance .” Independent Register(Libertyville), August 26, 1937. Microform.
Grogan Photo Company. Milwaukee Avenue looking south from School Street. Libertyville History, Libertyville-Mundelein Historical Society, Libertyville. Accessed January 16, 2017. http://www.idaillinois.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/cookmemo11/id/205/rec/2.
Head Contracting Firm. 1937. Libertyville Independent Register Dec 3, 1936 thru Dec 29, 1938, Cook Memorial Public Library, Libertyville.
Here for bond premiere. 1942. Libertyville Independent Register April 10, 1941 thru July 29, 1943, Cook Memorial Public Library, Libertyville.
Kanfer, Stefan. Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando. New York, NY: Random House Inc., 2008.
“Man who built Liberty Theater dies at age 87.” Independent Register(Libertyville), June 23, 1960. Microform
Lane, Arlene, and Schoenfield, Sonia. “Going to the Movies.” Libertyville Review, 200
Takeguchi. “Portrait of a hustling, live town promoter: R.L. Collier.” Independent Register (Libertyville), May 27, 1941. Microform.
“Theatre opens August 27; Village plans celebration in honor of event.” Independent Register (Libertyville), August 19, 1937. Microform.
United States of America. United States Census Bureau. Suitland, Maryland. Census of Population and Housing. By Leon E. Truesdell. Accessed January 23, 2017. http://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html.
Vogel, Paul R. Liberty Theatre, Libertyville, Ill. 1938. Libertyville History, Libertyville-Mundelein Historical Society, Libertyville. In Illinois Digital Archive. Accessed January 11, 2017. http://www.idaillinois.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/cookmemo11/id/121/rec/2.
Waukegan City and Lake County Directory Including Rural Route 1916-1917. p.
“Work gets under way.” Independent Register (Libertyville), August 26, 1937. Microform
Zawislak, Mick. “Libertyville’s Liberty theater to join digital age .” Daily Herald, January 5, 2014. Accessed January 9, 2017. http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20140115/news/7011599
From the early 20th century, several theaters at one time or another served Libertyville: the Lyric Theatre, an earlier version of the Liberty Theatre, and the Auditorium Theatre. The immediate predecessor of the current Liberty Theatre was the LaVilla Theatre on the second floor of the First National Bank building. The LaVilla had only hardwood seating and a screen which would roll up when not in use. One can imagine this did not meet the standards that the movie-going public of Libertyville was coming to expect. Frederick William Dobe, born in Germany in 1873, had emigrated to the United States at age 19 in 1892, eventually settling down in Libertyville. While the LaVilla Theatre on Milwaukee Avenue served its purpose, Dobe sensed a desire on the part of the townspeople for a dedicated theatre and a potential business opportunity. Dobe polled the community to see if they were happy with the LaVilla and found that the citizens of Libertyville were indeed looking for a more luxurious moviegoing experience, Dobe contracted Chicago-based architects Edward P. Rupert and William L. Pereira to design a theater befitting a town of Libertyville’s stature.
When it opened in 1926, the State Theatre embodied Hollywood glamor in a small Wisconsin city. Built by the Minnesota-based Finkelstein and Ruben theater chain at a cost of $315,000 – that’s nearly $4.5 million today – the State Theatre was hailed as a “veritable fairyland” in a special edition of the Eau Claire Leader published on Jan. 19, 1926:
“NEW THEATER IS BRIGHTEST GEM IN GLITTERING CHAIN OF F&R AMUSEMENT HOUSES,” blared a headline, which shared the page with photos of the theater’s interior and exterior and articles touting its $20,000 Wurlitzer organ, its fine seats and carpet, and its vaudeville lineup. “For sheer beauty and artistic appeal this playhouse will intrigue the most delicate cultural sensitiveness,” one article stated. “In the lobby alone its designers achieved art such as seldom is created in a theater of its size.” In addition to the organ, the theater had its own orchestra (“under the director of M.J. Deglman, an Eau Claire orchestra leader of well know ability”) to accompany both silent motion pictures and live vaudeville acts. An ad noted that evening performances would cost 40 cents, matinees would cost a quarter, and children would be entertained for just 10 cents. On opening night, thousands of would-be patrons braved a winter storm to get tickets. In fact, more people bought tickets than could fit in the State’s 1,300-seats, forcing the theater’s management to publish an apologetic advertisement a few days later promising to honor the tickets at future performances. Those who were able to get seats were treated to a full evening of entertainment, which began with an orchestral overture followed by a newsreel, comedy (with organ accompaniment), a jazz revue with 18 singers and dancers titled “A Syncopated Menu,” a novelty film, and then the main feature: the silent 1925 drama “Classified” starring Corinne Griffith, one of the top stars of the day. Ticket fiasco aside, the new theater was a success, although that success came at the expense of the competition. By June, the locally owned Eau Claire Theater Co. had shut down and leased three of its theaters – the Grand, the Unique, and the Wisconsin – to Finkelstein and Ruben. The State, it seems, had quickly become Eau Claire’s dominant theatrical venue. The days were numbered for silent films and vaudeville performances for which the State had been constructed. By 1928, the State began using the Vitaphone system, which played phonograph records in sync to the film. “Lights of New York” – the first all-talking feature film – was screened that December, and Al Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer” soon followed. After the curtain fell on vaudeville, the State settled into its role as one of city’s dominant movie houses, welcoming several generations of Eau Claire residents for children’s matinees, big-budget features and midnight movies. From the beginning, the State offered multiple entertainment opportunities. The basement was home to eight bowling lanes plus pool, billiard, and snooker tables. Upstairs was a large dance hall. On the ground floor, next to the theatre entrance, was a restaurant (originally the State Cafe) and by the 1940s, the Greyhound bus station. Over the years, some of Hollywood’s most legendary films created indelible experiences for audiences. Gradually, the movie business changed, and the State began to lose its luster. With the proliferation of entertainment options, the rise of multiplexes or the advent of home video and cable TV, audiences began to shrink. By the 1970s, the State was owned by ABC Theatres, part of the American Broadcasting Co., which later sold it to the national Plitt Theatres chain. By 1982, the Leader-Telegram reported that “single-screen theaters no longer are profitable,” and that Plitt was building multiplexes elsewhere, including in La Crosse. “We felt there was no room for us to expand anymore in (Eau Claire),” a Plitt executive told the newspaper. “There are enough screens in Eau Claire, and if we were to expand we’d just be throwing our money down the sewer.” At the time, most of Eau Claire’s screens – including the Hollywood, the Downtown Cinema, and the Stardusk and Gemini drive-ins – were owned by Gene Grengs. The State screened its last film in 1982, and Grengs and developer Warren Barberg bought the place with big dreams about restoring the theatre and turning it into a live entertainment venue. And now the State is ready for its next act.
A half year after The State Theatre was closed and replaced by a new performing arts center, plans call for it to house a children’s foundation and host events again. Azara Properties of Elk Mound bought the theatre on January 31 for $195,000 to house the Luginbill Children’s Foundation founded by Joe Luginbill in December 2016 as a nonprofit with 13 “education, entertainment and youth development” programs, noting the initiative is in its preliminary stages and details remain to be worked out. Other agencies could be housed at the State as well, he said. Azara Properties is registered to Mohammad Hashlamoun of Elk Mound, Wisconsin. He owns properties and businesses in the region, including Azara, a Water Street hookah and vape shop, and the former My Place Bar, 406-408 Galloway St., which he plans to reopen as a coffee shop and bar called My Office Lounge.
The 1926 State Theatre was not designed to host large-scale, modern productions and is in need of repairs such as a new roof and furnace. Those limitations and the region’s booming arts scene prompted the construction of the Pablo Center at the Confluence, which opened in September. Luginbill said plans call for events to once again be staged at the State. A deed restriction that would have prevented such shows at the State so as not to compete with the Pablo Center was discussed but wasn’t a part of the sale, said Pam Rasmussen, president of Eau Claire Regional Arts Center Board that owned the State, saying such a restriction would have hindered its sale. “The performances that would take place (at the State) would seem to be complimentary to the Pablo and not direct competition,” she said, but before that can happen, Rasmussen said “That building is going to need some love first.” An assessment of the State’s construction needs is ongoing and will seek to maintain as much of the existing structure and its historic as possible, while providing needed updates.
The owner of Milwaukee’s historic MODJESKA Theatre at 1134 W. Historic Mitchell Street is seeking proposals to make improvements to and operate the building. The MODJESKA has been shuttered since 2010. It first opened its doors to patrons in 1910, and was replaced with a much larger structure in 1924 that contained 2,000 seats, a full orchestra pit and a Barton pipe organ, according to a request for proposals recently issued by Modjeska owner Mitchell Street Development Opportunities Corp. The owner’s goals for the theater include maximizing it as a community resource, using it as a catalyst for further economic development of Historic Mitchell Street, and ensuring the facility is maintained and improved so it can remain a “cultural asset for the Historic Mitchell Street community and the city of Milwaukee.” according to the RFP, which comes after the city’s Historic Preservation Commission earlier this month considered extending a mothball certificate for the theater. This would further delay the issuance of building code violations.
The document also notes the theater may be situated in an Opportunity Zone and may also be eligible for state or federal historical tax credits. John Kesselman is the president of MSDOC.
The Historic Mitchell Street Business Improvement District voiced its opposition to extending the mothball certificate. Rudy Gutierrez, board president of the Mitchell Street BID, wrote in a letter to commission members that BID “urges that the theatre’s future use be community-oriented, and that plans move ahead as soon as possible for its future use.” The Commission agreed to hold the extension request for a month as the Modjeska owner worked through the RFP process. The RFP had not been made final at the time of the meeting.
Responses to the RFP are due on Feb. 15.
Artifacts from the Uptown Theatre in Chicago have over the years been removed and brought to the Sanfilippo Foundation’s Place de la Musique museum for safekeeping. Hidden away in boxes and barns — or merely hanging in sumptuous plain sight — the gorgeous chandeliers and fixtures of the Uptown Theatre have been vacationing these past few years in Barrington Hills. They have been cared for by an eccentric but loving crew of collectors, restorers and guardians, rescued from avaricious thieves and the neglect of a convicted slumlord as if they were evacuees rushed to safety from a war zone. And on Tuesday of this week, under the careful eyes of most of those who have cared for them for so long — they all began their journey back to Uptown Chicago and home.
The story of how the Sanfilippo Estate, the family home of Jasper Sanfilippo (a hugely successful American businessman and a nut magnate who turned proprietory shelling techniques into a business with 2018 net sales of $889 million) came to help save the treasures of the Uptown is a fascinating one. The Sanfilippo Estate is not an ordinary home, even by the grand standards of Barrington Hills. Sanfilippo, 87, is a collector of automatic mechanical instruments, but the word “collector” does not do justice to the scale of his world-class acquisitions, which now occupy several buildings on his estate, nor the level of restoration in which he has invested, which is dazzling. When his collecting was at its peak in the 1990s, Sanfilippo defined mechanical instruments very broadly, collecting pipe organs, fairground ticket booths, steam engines and locomotives, slot machines, stereoscopes, mutoscopes, vending machines, calliopes, a carousel, player pianos and impossibly complex lighting fixtures — brass arms and internal beading polished to a shine.
The Sanfilippo Estate is not a public museum but it is well known locally, and frequently opens its doors to charity fundraisers and for concerts in its grand private theater, home to an 8000-pipe 1927 Wurlitzer, one of the largest pipe organs in the world. To those who love historic theaters and cherish their decoration, it’s known internationally as one of the best private collections in the world.
When the late Louis Wolf and his partner, Kenneth Goldberg, bought the theater from the Plitt movie chain after the Uptown’s 1979 closure, it was clear to preservationists that the new landlords did not intend to restore the building. Wolf’s modus operandi was to let historic buildings fall into disrepair, usually because the land was expected to increase in value. All kinds of horrors were being discussed for the Uptown following its closure to the public as a concert venue. Somebody wanted to install an indoor go-kart track. Someone else wanted to turn it into a mausoleum. As all this chatter went on, thieves were already seen entering the building. Indeed, according to Bob Boin, a civil engineer and longstanding Uptown volunteer, some of the Uptown’s fixtures already were showing up a local salvage stores, where volunteers would proceed to buy them back and then store them in their homes. The volunteers decided something had to be done.
It so happened that Curt Mangel, an Uptown-loving engineer, was working at the Sanfillipo estate on the restoration of a steam engine. The Friends of the Uptown (both upper and lower case) decided that Mangel should approach Sanfilippo about quietly moving as much as possible to Barrington Hills where it could wait for a happier time.
If there is one hero in this story, Mangel (who now lives in Philadelphia where he tends to a pipe organ – the Wanamaker – inside Macy’s City Center) is that hero.
And thus, in 1992, the group persuaded Wolf (who did prison time for tax evasion) and Goldberg that they could write off the value of the chandeliers and other decorative elements if they donated them to a non-profit. Mangel and the other Uptown caretakers enlisted Sanfilippo’s cooperation in an agreement to return the items when — or, more accurately if — the theater was restored. And that process began.
The Uptown’s new owner, Jerry Mickelson of Jam Productions, was there for the first time. So were employees of Farpoint Development, Mickelson’s partner in the restoration. So were employees of the Chicago-based Schuler Shook, a consultant on the renovation. So were restorers, historic theater specialists and several members of Mickelson’s staff. So was Lisa Sanfilippo, Jasper’s daughter. So were the Uptown’s longtime caretakers such as Boin and Jimmy Wiggins, who spend the entire day grinning from ear to ear. All were agog at the size and abiding beauty of the main chandeliers, as restored by Sanfilippo’s staff. “The people that do this,” Jimmy Wiggins, an Uptown volunteer whom Jam eventually hired, said “do it because it is in their heart. How wonderful that they have a place to do what is part of their soul.”
The Uptown’s main chandelier hangs in the entrance hallway of the main Sanfilippo building. Few visitors would know its provenance. It is soon to come down — but Greg Leifel, the caretaker of the collection pointed out the obvious to a visitor: “We have other chandeliers to take its place.” Indeed they do.
Over the course of a morning, the group looked for wall sconces and light fixtures, finding some inside boxes in a workshop, others looking yet more beautiful than they ever first appeared. All of the originals are returning, and where there are missing fixtures, they will provide a template for fabricators to match the precise original appearance. Everyone is aware that all of this was almost lost. “If it had not cost $8.4 million to demolish the theater,” Mickelson said, “they would have knocked it down. It was that cost that saved the theater.”
Rapp & Rapp, the Chicago firm that designed and built the Uptown were known, in the words of Boin, for “overbuilding their steel.”
There was so much steel in the Uptown that conventional cheap demolition methods could not be used. Hence the price tag, at which Wolf and Goldberg balked. “You couldn’t punch a pillar in a Rapp & Rapp theater and then watch the roof collapse,” Boin said.
“Thank God.”
The weather was awful, but still a day for taking inventory, and giving thanks and a day that neither Wiggins nor Boin nor Mickelson nor, most likely, Sanfilippo, ever expected to come.
By Chris Jones, a Tribune critic (edited for brevity.)
Bob Boin, Dave Syfczak and Jimmy Wiggins are volunteers who help take care of the Uptown Theatre. (Ryan Ori, Reporter; Chicago Tribune)
A 37-year intermission has not been kind to the Uptown Theatre.
Fires, cascading rainwater, sheets of ice, broken pipes, frozen boilers, rodents, crumbling plaster, financial distress, vandals, thieves and squatters have all taken their shots since the last concert there. Yet the 4,381-seat theater, said to be one of the most spectacular movie palaces ever built, is on the verge of a long-dreamed-of restoration to return the towering structure on North Broadway back to its 1925 opulence. In large part, the Uptown stands ready for its $75 million makeover because of a few guardians who’ve protected it from irreparable harm. The Uptown’s protectors have lent a collective hand to historic properties ranging from Wrigley Field to the Chicago Theatre. But the Uptown stands out as a particularly enduring and demanding labor of love. “When you love a place like this, it’s in your heart,” said Jimmy Wiggins, one of the protectors. “They’ll never build anything like this again. I mean, just look at it.” The men have endured ownership changes, broken promises, false starts, late-night alarms, pigeon poop and oil fumes. They’ve teetered from I-beams several stories above the stage in order to repair roof drains, shooed away intruders, and sacrificed countless hours of their nights and weekends — and, in some instances, their retirements. “Very few people know about them, but they’ve been heroes,” said Jerry Mickelson, co-founder and co-owner of Jam Productions, which has owned the Uptown since 2008. “I don’t know that I could have bought the building without them, because it might not have been standing.” The Uptown Theatre is finally to be restored to its 1925 glory. Inside the shuttered movie palace, the guardians include three men who have helped protect the theater since the 1980s: restoration expert Curt Mangel, 68; retired civil engineer Bob Boin, 72, a longtime volunteer on Chicago theater restoration projects; and Jam’s facilities manager, Wiggins, 57, who also oversees the Vic and Riviera theaters on the North Side. Retired Chicago police officer Dave Syfczak, 66, who watched movies at the Uptown while growing up in the neighborhood, has been a volunteer security guard and handyman since the 1990s. Those four lead a larger list of people who have contributed to the Uptown’s survival. Most have worked as volunteers, with approval of the property’s various owners. “I always told the guys, ‘Just keep it alive and its time will come,’ ” said Mangel, who now lives in Philadelphia. “By the grace of God, the economy and everything else, the right things came together. We’re overjoyed that day has finally come. “The people of Chicago are not going to believe what they have when it’s done.” The Spanish Baroque structure at 4816 N. Broadway roared to life in 1925 as the flagship of a Balaban & Katz theater chain known for its breathtaking movie palaces. Much later, it became known for concerts by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, the Grateful Dead, Prince and the Kinks. The last show was a J. Geils Band concert on Dec. 19, 1981. The property cycled through a series of owners who proposed but never executed plans to bring it back to life. Finally, in June, Mayor Rahm Emanuel unveiled plans for a $75 million renovation, backed by funding from several public and private sources. The joint venture of Jam and Chicago real estate firm Farpoint Development plans to begin the heavy lifting by the summer, with plans to reopen the Uptown as a live events venue in 2021. It is envisioned as the centerpiece of a broader entertainment district in Uptown, which is also home to venues such as the Aragon Ballroom, Riviera Theatre, Wilson Avenue Theater and Green Mill nightclub. Farpoint principal Scott Goodman credits the caretakers for the Uptown’s survival, and said their dedication demonstrates the strong pull many people feel toward it. “It’s that kind of building,” Goodman said. “I don’t think there’s another asset in Chicago where people have this kind of emotional attachment. It’s a magnificent structure with amazingly ornamental finishes, and it’s so instrumental to the success of the neighborhood. To get those things all in one bucket, there’s nothing else like it.” The group of Uptown watchers has endured, even years after Mangel eventually moved from Chicago. “It was years of backbreaking work and we had several (redevelopment) deals fall apart, which was heartbreaking,” Mangel said. “I don’t regret it one bit. I’m very proud of the guys for sticking with it and keeping the torch. I passed the torch and they kept it burning.”
Mangel’s tinkering skills have led him to a broad range of projects, including once repairing the clock on Wrigley Field’s scoreboard — which he said led to an on-air shout-out from Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray, who had often complained about the clock’s neglected condition.
Other restorations included the clocks in the Waveland Fieldhouse tower along Lake Michigan, just east of the ballpark, and chandeliers at the Chicago Theatre in the Loop. He’s moved around the country to lead other restorations, including Shea’s Performing Arts Center in Buffalo, N.Y., and Denver’s Paramount Theatre. Mangel now lives in Philadelphia, where he led the restoration of the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, the largest functioning pipe organ in the world. The Uptown proved especially challenging, because of its sheer size and the building’s decades-long vacancy. To prevent pipes from freezing, the men burned thousands of gallons of gummy, low-quality motor oil in an old boiler. Firing up the system took hours of exhausting work, and the fumes frequently left people in the boiler room feeling sick. The process also sent black smoke pouring from the building, which would cause neighbors to call 911. “It got to the point where we had to call the Fire Department to let them know we were going to start the boiler at the Uptown,” Syfczak said. When firefighters were called on those instances, the Uptown guardians hustled to meet them out front. “Or else they’d use their key to come in,” Syfczak said. “And their key was an ax. So I repaired the doors three or four times too.” There also were real fires, including one time in the 1990s when on a late-night security check Wiggins discovered homeless people huddled around several campfires on the building’s marble floors. Other intruders, including metal scavengers, would set off the Uptown’s alarm. “When I lived a block away, I’d have to go scare the bejesus out of someone who was in the building,” Mangel said. Many of the Uptown’s unique and highly valuable light fixtures also were snatched. Looting led to the decision to pack up ornate chandeliers and other remaining fixtures. They were transported to the Sanfilippo Foundation’s Place de la Musique museum in Barrington and other Chicago-area locations, where they’ll remain stored until the late stages of the theater’s restoration. “That was painful for us, because part of the beauty of the building is the magnificent light fixtures,” Mangel said. “But we had to do it or they would all be gone.” Critters also have snuck in.
Syfczak once decided to clean a wall of pigeon poop near the theater’s front windows, only to encounter something else. “As I put a shovel through it, a stench was released, and mice started jumped out of the pile of dung,” Syfczak siad. “That was one of my worst days here.”
Better days are near, finally, because of a complex financing package that includes state and federal funds, as well as debt and equity secured by the development partners. Farpoint and Jam’s pending renovation is validation to those who thought the theater was worth saving, but it’s bittersweet for them as they move into the background.
“There is a little tinge of almost depression when you’re no longer involved with it,” said Boin, who previously volunteered for eight years helping restore the Chicago Theatre’s organ. Although the Uptown has swallowed up their spare time, it’s also been a home away from home for the friends to gather, talk and tinker on other projects. “We have to give up our clubhouse,” Wiggins joked. Then he turned serious.
“We’re overjoyed that the building is going to be restored and used again, because it really comes alive when there’s people in here,” Wiggins said. “This is fun. This has been our sanctuary. I think we’ve all enjoyed it. But when you see people here smiling and looking at it, and the building comes alive, that’s the best gift of all.”
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Emagine Entertainment Inc. of Troy, Mich. officially opened its first Wisconsin location with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 6 p.m. on August 28, 2018 as a charity event for the Lakeland Animal Shelter, with the first revenue screenings at 10 a.m. on August 29. The redecorated 35,000-square-foot theatre offers online ticketing, 646 reserved powered reclining seats with seven-foot row spacings (and a front row of love-seat chairs) in eight stadium-style auditoriums (some with Christie 4K DLP Digital Cinema projectors and Dolby Atmos immersive sound systems), specialty popcorn, a full-service bar, self-service 100-flavor soda machines, a three-season beer garden featuring craft beers from area craft breweries, expanded food choices including stone-oven pizzas, and assistive devices for seeing- and hearing-impaired patrons. Paul Glantz is Emagine Entertainment’s chairman. Admissions range from $6 to $10.
Chicago’s Community Development Commission members (appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel) approved the public financing elements for partners Jam Productions and Farpoint Development and the $1.00 sale of a 31,000-square-foot city-owned parking lot at 1130 W. Lawrence Avenue one-half block south and a half-block east of the theatre. The lead architects will be Lamar Johnson Collaborative (founded by Lamar and Lisa Johnson); theatre consultant Schuler Shook (PALACE, St. Paul. and KINGS, Brooklyn); MacRostie Historic Advisors, tax-credit specialists; Forefront Structural Engineers; Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, façade restoration; WMA Consulting Engineers, mechanicals; and Conrad Schmitt Studios. Reportedly the $75 million restoration includes $13 million in tax increment financing (TIF) assistance, $14 million in property-assessed clean-energy financing, $3 million in Adopt-a-Landmark funding, with the rest from investments by Farpoint and Jam and from a commercial bank loan. There’ll be new elevators and concession areas and seating for about 4,100 but with some removable seats on the Orchestra Floor to permit up to 5,800 including standees. The UPTOWN’s last event was a concert by the J. Geils Band on December 19, 1981. Expectations are for 200 short-term construction jobs and 200 long-term positions at its reopening.
Five years after the roof of Pretty Prairie’s Civic Theatre blew off in a storm, it’s back in business and operated by local high school students as the Blue Shoes Theatre because the words “Blue Shoes” were painted on the bricks above the Collingwood General Merchandising store and spotted by Cliff Wray in a historic photograph. It was Wray, from Hutchinson, who restored the building before handing it over to the high school’s entrepreneur, career, and technical management classes. “When I saw that picture I wanted to name it Blue Shoes,” je said. (Blue Shoes were a brand of footwear sold back in the late 1800s and early 1900s.)
Two back-to-back storms blew through Pretty Prairie during the summer of 2013 causing extensive structural damage to the 1890s buildings housing the Civic Theatre. It left the carpet in the lobby saturated and covered with chunks of plaster. After the storm, Wray with Wray Roofing, was in town repairing the roof at Pretty Prairie Middle School. He heard about the damage to the theatre which occupies the former Collingwood General Merchandising and Coal building and the State Bank, both once owned by the Collingwood family, early settlers of Pretty Prairie.
Wray was concerned when he heard talk that it might have to be torn down because the city couldn’t afford the repairs. So he went to the city council to see if he could buy the buildings and prevent an empty gap appearing on Main Street. “I’m not from Pretty Prairie, but they always talked about the theatre,” Wray said. “And tearing it down would be like pulling up roots underneath a tree.” He was prepared to pay up to $500 for the buildings, but the city sold the theatre for $1. It took several years, but with the help of the city, family, volunteers and his crew with Wray Roofing, the job was completed.
After giving it some thought, Wray, who has served on the Buhler School Board for 23 years, handed the theatre over to the Pretty Prairie School District to use as an extension of their classrooms. “Kids don’t have a lot of opportunities, and I thought what a great idea for them to run the theatre,” Wray said. “It’s now their theatre; they are invested,” said Randy Hendrickson, superintendent. They applied for and received a movie license. Then they were trained to be projectionists by Darrell Albright, who operated the Civic Theatre on a volunteer base for more than 30 years. Students had already operated the theatre on different occasions, including after-school movies on Fridays.
“I know the high school kids can do a good job,” Hendrickson said. “They will learn how to deal with people, showing up on time to work. They will learn about advertising and marketing. They’ll get a lot out of it.” Already they have selected and ordered movies; others operate the projector while some get the popcorn ready, and others sell tickets in the original ticket booth. After the show, there is clean-up detail including windows and bathrooms. Hendrickson said the gift of the theater opens up a variety of learning opportunities with everything from entrepreneurial theater management and business to technology and theater classes.
Meeting in the lobby of the small theater on a recent morning with Hendrickson and Albright, Wray said that Darrell, the former proprietor of the theater represented the past, while the school was the future. In the 1920s the store was known as Grace Graber’s Dry Goods; then, in 1936, the two stores and the bank were converted into the Civic Theatre. By 1955, television had killed the small town’s theatre business, said Albright.
For the next few decades, the theatre was used for special town gatherings. Then in April 1981, Albright and his family re-opened with the movie “High Noon.”
Before the storm hit this town of 600 people, the Civic Theatre was the place to go for classic Saturday night movies. An “Our Gang” episode played before the feature film. That’s because Carl Switzer, who played Alfalfa in the series, briefly lived in Pretty Prairie while he was married to Dian Collingwood.
On a good year, about 3,000 people would come from around the area to see an old movie at the theatre. It has also been used as a spot for class reunions and wedding receptions, especially popular with couples who met and fell in love at the theater.
On June 24, 2018, the Blue Shoes Theatre hosted “Stage 9: On Broadway”, with all the proceeds going to the career and technical education program for the entrepreneurial theater management.
“If not for Cliff this would be a bare lot,” Hendrickson said. “We’re indebted to him for his work, time and for our kids to have this opportunity.”
It was the place where people saw their first movie on a big screen, where they had their first bucket of popcorn or their first date. But the future of the theater at 244 Broad St., Lake Geneva, became uncertain after it closed in 2010. At one point, there were plans to turn the historic building — which once hosted appearances by the Marx Brothers, Bela Lugosi and Will Rogers — into a boutique shopping mall. Fate took a different turn, and in 2017, after a renovation, the Geneva Theater reopened. Once again, the theater brings first-run films to downtown Lake Geneva, and the stage that once existed when the theater was built in 1928 has been restored.
Back in the early days of the theater, vaudeville acts performed at least twice a week as a way for owners of the single-screen movie theater to supplement their income. “Just like they did in the late 20s and early 30s, we are using that stage,” said Marie Frederick, Geneva Theater’s events coordinator. Frederick and Geneva Theater owner Shad Branen discussed how the history of the theater guided the new look and plan for the building.
In 1928, the theater was a single-screen auditorium, with 750 seats, including a balcony. At its opening gala June 6, 1928, the theater hosted a screening of “Telling the World,” a comedic drama starring William Haines and Anita Page, released that same year.
Geneva and the Burlington Plaza theaters were both built in 1928 and operated by the same company, Community Theaters Inc. The president of Community Theaters Inc. was William F. Pabst, whom Frederick believes to be a descendant of Frederick Pabst, who was perhaps most remembered as president of Pabst Brewing Co. Coincidentally, Branen also owns the Burlington Plaza. He said the purchase and renovation of Geneva Theater cost in excess of $2 million.
Over the years since its opening gala, Geneva Theater changed ownership. During subsequent renovations, the single auditorium became two screening rooms, then four — three on the ground floor, and the former balcony was turned into the fourth room. By the time Branen was involved, Geneva Theater had been gutted. In the upper-level screening room, the wall with the projection screen had been torn down. Roof leaks caused water damage in Theater 1, the location of the historic stage.
“Usually they’re in pretty rough shape,” said Branen, of old theaters. “Either they’re empty, and sitting empty, or they’ve been repurposed into something else, and to bring them back requires a lot of work because they aren’t the auditoriums that they were.”
Branen discussed renovation plans with Friends of the Geneva Theater, a citizen group which sought to turn the building into a cultural center. He said they tried to keep as much of the old theater intact as they could, but changed other parts to create special event accommodations. Much of Theater 1, including the stage and ceiling, was restored. The wall to the upper-level screening room was rebuilt.
During the renovation, Branen discovered several features of the building that had been walled off — old staircases, including one which led from the main lobby to the old balcony, which is where an alcove now stands that displays old theater pictures. He also found a basement wall signed by those who participated in previous theater programs and productions. The wall has been preserved, and another next to it left blank, waiting to be signed by those who take part in future plays and happenings at the theater. Now, the theater is a place where state-of-the-art projection and sound systems exist alongside images and artifacts from celluloid yesteryear. A table that projectionists used to splice film reels together juts out of the wall near Theaters 3 and 4.
Frederick wants to create historic displays about the people who first opened the theater. But in the last year, Geneva Theater has played host to various private and public gatherings — film festivals, comedy shows, productions by local theater groups.
People tell Branen stories all the time about movies they remembered seeing at Geneva Theater. But to him, right now, Geneva Theater is a success story.“The community of Lake Geneva played a big part in that,” he said. “It wouldn’t have happened without the community support.”
Visit geneva4.com to find out more about movie screenings and special events at the theater.
The “other” Grand Theater (Bobby Tanzilo, May 9, 2017) Long before the palatial Warner Theater was recast as The Grand in 1982, there was the considerably less opulent and spacious Grand Theatre at 2917-23 N. Holton St., where the Harambee/Riverwest neighborhoods meet. This one was built in 1911. (Trainspotters will also note there was yet another Grand Theater that operated briefly, only from 1904 to 1909, at 738 N. 3rd St. Still another was in South Milwaukee.) Thanks to a foreclosure, the 6,846-square foot Spanish Colonial-style building, which long housed a church, is now in the City of Milwaukee’s commercial real estate portfolio and could be yours for a cool $20,000. Designed by architect John Roth Jr. – who also designed the smaller, 600-seat Aurora at the same time – construction on the 760-seat theater began in December 1911 and it had a long run, showing films until it closed in 1975. City permits suggest it was enlarged in 1922 to accommodate 850 movie-goers. In 1928, architect A. L. Seidenschwartz remodeled the theater in the atmospheric style, meaning he made the theater space itself appear to be outside, with the addition of clouds and stars and a bit of Mediterranean-style tile roof hints. Permits show that the ceiling was raised, roof trusses added and the exterior altered. In 1946, some seats were removed to make room for the construction of a candy stand. According to Larry Widen, co-author of the fine book, “Silver Screens: A Pictorial History of Milwaukee’s Movie Theaters,” “They tried some adult films and some art films but both ventures were short lived.” Some have suggested it may have operated for a time, later in its life, as Puerto (or Porto) Rico (and, briefly, at the very end as the Magik Grand Cine). Local history buff Carl Swanson wrote a good history of the theater here; I will merely summarize that here and encourage you to visit Carl’s site.
Built just a few years after the dawn of dedicated movie houses in Milwaukee, the Grand really is, as the DCD sell sheet notes, one of the oldest cinemas in the city. And, as a smaller neighborhood theater, it hearkens back to a time when Milwaukeeans could walk around the corner to see the latest films, seated among their neighbors, rather than driving to a movie mall somewhere in the suburbs and watching anonymously. But as that era ended, the theater went into decline – the porn matinees are a clear sign of that – and ultimately closed, replaced by the Church of the Philippians. In 2007, Haven of Hope Ministries bought the building and occupied it until 2015. It’s unclear which of the two churches built the block of rooms that now occupy the back-center portion of the auditorium, but Haven of Hope must have expected to stay longer than it did. Architectural plans hanging inside show an expansion plan onto the vacant lot to the north.
Heading inside, I was unprepared for just how intact the former Grand is as a theater. Step inside the lobby and there is earth-toned floor tile, exposed beam ceilings with elaborate painted detail that is almost entirely intact. A series of decorative hanging light fixtures remains, too. Solomonic columns and a quartet of medallions are painted gold and there’s still more decoration here above the doors, above the mirrors on either side of the lobby. There’s also wrought iron radiator grates.
Though the movie poster cases are bricked up on the exterior, their access doors remain in the lobby, which is flanked by men’s and women’s rooms that, in large part, maintain their vintage floor and wall tile. A door in the women’s room has a lot of graffiti etched into it.
A narrow bent staircase leads up to the projection room (pictured above), which appears to have the original footprint, though all but one of the openings out into the theater have been dry-walled over.
Step through the padded, studded doors into the auditorium and you’re transported back in time (if you ignore that block of rooms that surely could easily be removed … hand me a sledgehammer and I’ll start).
Rows of theater seats have been replaced with wooden pews, but the proscenium that conjures a Spanish plaza still stands. A series of niches can be found on each side wall. At the back is a strip of Mediterranean roof tile, again suggesting we’re outside.
Follow the north gangway and you’ll find a tight, steep metal staircase up to a space behind the three arched openings in the proscenium. Up here is the remnant of a piano. If The Grand had an organ, the pipes were likely up here.
I couldn’t find a staircase off the south gangway up to a space on the opposite side of the proscenium, but window openings facing the alley out back suggest there is a similar space up there, though the access may have been closed off. Beneath the stage and running along the back was a narrow space with stairs up to the stage itself. It’s too tight to have been a useful dressing room or orchestra pit, I’d think, so perhaps it was simply a means of access from behind, or it led to the basement. For someone with the means – or handyman skills – the idea of returning The Grand to use as a theater – be it films, be it live theater, be it concerts – doesn’t seem at all far-fetched.
The Department of City Development is accepting proposals (and offers) for the building until 3 p.m. on June 30.
Some of the permitted uses as listed on the sell sheet are “community center, food bank, restaurant/café, office, artist studio, live/work unit, dance studio, etc.”
Restoration of the building and façade are required in all proposals, but note that grants for the facade and renovation are potentially available and the DCD has access to other financial resources, too. The theatre includes the vacant lot to the north, bringing the square footage of the land to 8,314.
Urban spelunking: The Ritz/Villa Theater (Bobby Tanzilo, July 18, 2017) The former Ritz/Villa movie theater on 36th and Villard is for sale. And it’s mostly intact as a cinema. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to step inside the former Ritz Theater movie house 3608 W. Villard Ave. and find it intact as a movie house. The same thing happened when I visited the old Grand on Holton and Locust. But, other times, like when I explored the old Lyric Theater on Vliet Street, I had to be content with easter eggs and clues, since all the seating had been removed and the auditorium carved up into rooms. But after The Ritz, which was called the Villa by then, was closed by Marcus Theatres in 1986, it had a brief return as a movie house in the following decade, so it hasn’t really been gone all that long. Now, the building is vacant and was acquired by the city in a tax foreclosure. The Department of City Development has listed it for sale for $20,000. The Spanish Colonial style theater was built as the independent, 840-seat Ritz cinema in 1926 by Michael Brumm, who had opened a nickelodeon called The Princess across Villard Avenue in 1912. His son Arnold helped out at the theaters. As was often the case with movie theaters of the era, The Ritz had an adjacent retail space and offices upstairs. Over the years, those spaces were occupied by a confectioner, a doctor, a barber, a typewriter store, a gift shop, a real estate and mortgage business, and spaces upstairs also served as residences from 1935 until the end of World War II. “In summer, when business declined, the Brumm family would travel to outlying areas with a portable generator and a movie projector, bringing the movies to farmers or businesspeople in small towns without movie theaters,” wrote Larry Widen and Judi Anderson in their book, “Silver Screens: A Pictorial History of Milwaukee’s Movie Theaters. "The show was done on a weekly circuit, with posters left behind to advertiser the next week’s feature. When Michael Brumm opened The Ritz in 1926, he stopped the traveling shows and settled into more routine business operations.” Brumm tapped his son, Arnold, as assistant manager once the latter graduated from high school, Widen and Anderson wrote, leading Arnold to ultimately take over the business entirely. With powerful chains running the theater game, indie owners like Brumm often struggled to stay afloat. “Arnold Brumm remembered many occasions when film booking became a problem at his family’s Ritz Theater,” Widen and Anderson noted in “Silver Screens.” ‘The buying power of the chains really put the squeeze on the little guys,’ Brumm said. ‘And “block booking,” the packaging of one great picture with 20 lousy ones, hurt us a lot.’ Studios often came to the independent owners with a year’s worth of projected films. To keep a constant flow of films on his screen, the theater owner bought the lot sight unseen, hoping that several films in the package would turn out to be hit attractions. Until block booking was made illegal in 1939, it was an accepted way to do business, ‘Film salesmen were very aggressive guys,’ Brumm said. ‘They would do almost anything to … control your screen for 52 weeks at a time.’ In spite of the hardships connected with being independent, the most determined of the owners found their markets, and their theaters prospered.“ For an interesting look at the finances of The Ritz in this era, check out Matthew Prigge’s delve into one of the theater’s ledgers from 1935, a year in which Brumm’s place lost $320. One way Arnold Brumm worked to "find his market” was to catch the public’s eye in unusual ways, according to Widen and Anderson. “Although he had always been known for his innovative advertising techniques, such as displaying movie posters upside down, Brumm pulled off his most successful stunt to promote the sale of war bonds in 1944. "Coming up short on the bond sales quota set for his theater, Brumm climbed to the top of the Ritz theater’s five-story chimney on a Saturday afternoon. A huge sign on the chimney said, ‘BUY ME WITH WAR BONDS.’ He stayed at his post for the next 24 hours, and war bond sales were brisk. When the final figures were tallied, Brumm’s stunt had doubled the theater’s goals.” According to a much later Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article,“ "One of the strangest efforts came in the early 1950s, when the theater implemented something it called ‘Dignity Nights.’ On designated evenings, candy eaters, popcorn munchers and peanut shell snappers were corralled into a special section, protecting the aurally sensitive from the oral cacophony.” In late 1959, Marcus Theaters, which had moved into the Milwaukee market when it acquired the Tosa Theater (now the Rosebud) in 1940, bought The Ritz and ran it for the last 11 weeks of the year. At the time, movies were 85 cents for adults in the evening, 60 cents for matinees and early bird screenings. Children paid 25 cents and students twice that. In 1962, three days before Christmas, the theater was re-launched as The Villa, playing both on the architecture of the building and the location on Villard Avenue. Marcus archivist Leslie Heinrichs shared these interesting tidbits from the theater’s Marcus era…
Nov. 4 1977 – one of 8 Marcus Theatres that had a Thanksgiving Food Drive for the Needy in association with the Milwaukee B’nai B’rith council’s 1977 drive. The idea is to show a movie that would appeal to audience of all ages and have everyone who wants to attend get a free ticket. The ticket and at least a $1.00 contribution in food or cash are necessary for admittance. The movie show was a 1976 limited run film “It’s Showtime”. January 1978 – Villa is one of 10 theatres that has special showings of films for Milwaukee area teachers who want to take their students to the movies as a field trip. Some that are tentatively scheduled include: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Grease,” “Jungle Book,” “Cat from Outer Space,” “International Velvet,” “Wild Billy and the Keystone Cowboy.” Other films may appeal to select student groups such as social studies, humanities or foreign language classes. These are a perfect supplement to classroom studies. January 1980 – Admission prices are dramatically reduced at the Villa to great success. Ticket prices are only 79 cents. Current showings include two Burt Reynolds hit films “Starting Over” and “The End”. Vice President of the Marcus Corporation, Bruce Olson, said: “ We choose to offer these lower priced admissions especially for those families who may find it difficult, at times, to afford regular admission prices. We also believe it will stimulate the older audiences who seldom go to the movies anymore. Furthermore, in today’s inflationary environment, we want to provide a low cost form of entertainment.” (Note: The Villa is one of two theatres that did this.) March 1980 – The Marcus Theatres Corporation will institute a $1 admission price on Mondays and Tuesdays beginning Monday, March 16th. The $1 policy will be in effect at most theaters throughout the statewide Marcus Theatres chain, for a limited time only. Note: The Villa is one of 74 theaters that had this policy. October 1984 – Marcus Corporation offers 50 cent movies for 1 night only at all theaters including the Villa. This is in honor of its 50th anniversary. In 1986, Marcus closed The Villa and two years later Tanya and Herman Lewis bought the building and attempted to run it as a second-run house, then a first-run cinema, then a community theater and center before calling it quits in March 1995.
Since then, the building has been home to a salon, a school (called AGAPE), a church, a bookstore. But now it’s vacant, and while it’s seen better days – there is a fair bit of water intrusion – it still looks entirely like a theater inside.
There’s a lobby that looks as though it’s definitely been altered at some point. The marquee still hangs above the door, with a vertical sign advertising the school that once occupied the building. Up the terrazzo stairs are a handful of empty offices facing the street. Across the hall are some storage rooms and the projection room, which, as was customary, has its own bathroom. One door offers a view (though no ladder anymore) up to the attic lit by those dormers you can see on the facade. In the basement, which I didn’t get to explore completely, were the bathrooms, which look as though they’d been updated at least once. Inside the auditorium, the seats are all still there, including what are surely the original cast iron decorative standards at the ends of each row. There are decorative plaster moldings on the walls, and the ceiling has a recessed dome painted blue. Flanking the stage are a pair of exits with organ pipe lofts above (there was a 2/5 Kilgen organ – now in a private collection in Columbus, Ohio – up there). On one side, you can scale a ladder to peek into the organ pipe loft, which is empty and the opening that allowed the sound into the theater has been boarded up. There’s a space below the stage, accessed via the orchestra pit – which itself sits under a stage extension – where there are extra seats and other objects stored. Up in one of the offices there are more modern plexiglass letters for the marquee. Seven of them now appear outside: “For Sale.”
The owner of the Uptown Theatre shared his vision yesterday, which includes hosting 100 shows a year, offering 200 jobs and even a non-profit arm focused on community arts outreach. Now for the hardest part: raising the remaining $40 million to finish the ambitious renovation. Yesterday, the Chicago Architecture Center hosted a panel featuring those working on the long-awaited restoration. Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones moderated and was joined by co-owner Jerry Mickelson, long-time volunteer Robert Boin and the Department of Planning and Development’s director of historic preservation Eleanor Gorski. “There is nowhere like The Uptown, at least that I’ve been,” said Jones, who has traveled to theaters across the country and around the world.
The Uptown Theatre, the largest freestanding theater ever built in its time, has three marquees, a kid’s playroom and over 17,000 light bulbs in the auditorium. It took 18 months and cost $4 million dollars to construct (over $58 million today if adjusted for inflation). One of the reasons the theatre has lasted so long — despite lying dormant for nearly four decades — is because it was built with one third more steel than necessary, making it able to withstand winter after winter without completely deteriorating. “It’s one of the most beautiful buildings, palaces ever built,” said Mickelson, who talked about the timeline for the restoration project. Although it has been previously reported that construction could start as early as this summer, it is more likely to start near the beginning of 2020. There is still $40 million that needs to be raised, and Mickelson said he won’t feel comfortable breaking ground until he has raised at least $20 million. He said he feels confident in raising those funds, already has an investor who has pledged a million dollars to the theater, and is hoping the theatre will open with its first show in early 2021. Much like in Las Vegas, he said he has been considering the option of having performers in residency who would regularly perform at the venue. To Mickelson, restoring the Uptown Theatre is all about bringing benefit to the Uptown community. His production company JAM also runs the nearby Riviera Theatre and the area is close to his heart. Everyone on the panel agreed the theatre would be a catalyst of economic development for Uptown. “It will bring back the glory of this proud neighborhood,” Mickelson said. “It’s all about creating jobs and opportunities for people who don’t have them.”
Instead of running the Uptown Theatre as a for-profit enterprise, Mickelson hopes the theatre will become a non-profit foundation run by a board of directors. He has already made deals with Chicago Public Schools, After School Matters and The People’s Music School, so that kids will have access to the theater during the restoration and once it’s open for good. “It’s about taking care of the future of us, of our city,” he said. “Kids cannot become what they cannot see.”
The panel recalled some of the theater’s darkest hours, when it looked like it might not be saved. Boin recalled a time in the early 80’s when its owners promised to heat the building in the winter. After failing to do so, several pipes burst, flooding large parts of the theatre. Boin was one of the unsung heroes who helped look after the theatre, often on his own dime. He used to pay for the oil and light the furnaces himself throughout the winter. In the 80’s it cost over $8,000 a year just to buy enough oil. Gorski remembered when the building had fallen into complete disrepair and the top of the building was close to falling off. The city was able to get a judge to allow them to appoint a caretaker, to supplement the careless owners.
Mickelson bought the theatre in 2008, just before the housing market crashed. Those were darker days, he said. When one of the former owners suggested turning the theatre into an indoor go-kart track, Mickelson doubled down on his efforts to save the building. “That really made me mad,” he said. But Gorski said city officials realized they needed to help save the theatre because of its stunning beauty. “This building has an effect unlike any building I have ever seen,” she said. “People are mesmerized. Once they see this building they understand why it needs to be saved.”
While Mickelson plans to restore the theatre to its former glory, there will be some changes made. The largest of those changes includes tiering off the main floor and creating a general admission dance floor. “It will increase the usage and is necessary to support the operational plans of the theatre,” he said.
Crowd members wanted to know if the 46th ward aldermanic race could have an impact on the theatre’s restoration efforts. Ald. James Cappleman (46th) only has a narrow lead over opponent Marianne Lalonde in the still too-close-to-call race, and some worried Lalonde may not be as friendly to the project. “I think the project is bigger than any one person,” said Mickelson. “It would be incredibly wrong to pull the rug out from under us at this point.” This morning, Lalonde said she’s excited for the project, but wants to make sure there’s community input. “I’m excited for it to be redone, but I think that we need a community benefits agreement for it,” Lalonde said. “The agreement would be to ensure that we have a plan for parking, safety and to make sure that the economic benefit for theater returns the community.”
Others were worried about keeping the theatre accessible to the entire community. Mickelson told them to look at JAM’s average ticket price. He said their average ticket sells for around $33, much lower than his competitors in town. He also talked about opening the theatre during the day as a place for the community, particularly kids, to congregate.
When asked about his dreams for the theatre, Mickelson said the legacy of the Uptown Theatre will be about giving back. “If the Uptown Theatre becomes a foundation, it will probably be the first theatre in the country where all of its profits will be donated to good causes,” he said. “And that will be the enduring legacy of the theatre.”
This week the Rotary Club of Milwaukee gifted a $50,000 grant to the Warner Grand Theater. Work continues to progress on schedule, with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra aiming to complete transforming the theatre into the “Milwaukee Symphony Center” along with the building’s 12-story office tower. Initially, a $120 million fundraising target was set, but last year that was increased to $139 million in mid-2018 to accommodate the tower renovation as well as building up the orchestra’s endowment. The Rotary Club grant will name two built-in wall fountains in the theatre. Its president said “Rotary Club of Milwaukee is delighted to support MSO’s Grand Theater project. The project provides a beautiful home and community platform for the symphony, affirms Milwaukee’s commitment to the arts, and brings a grand old building back to life revitalizing downtown.”
The MSO plans to host its first concert there in September 2020, but the Rotary Club is hoping to make the theatre available for the July 13-16 Democratic National Convention activities.
After being closed for 32 years, Exeter resident Eric Symeon plans to reopen the Moonlite Drive-In in West Wyoming in June Symeon recently flew to the closed Cascade Drive-In in Chicago and purchased a digital projector. He learned about the projector for sale after reading an article that the Chicago drive-in would close after 58 years in business.
He said he looks forward to re-opening the theater in West Wyoming to offer families in the area something to do and a fun night out for a reasonable price. The cost to see two outdoor movies at the Moonlight Drive-In is $8 for adults and $5 for children. Work is ongoing to reopen the concessions stand and Symeon said some electrical work still needs to be completed as well. Symeon purchased the Moonlite Drive-In in 2017 and the Luzerne County Zoning Board granted him a variance to operate the theater. Last summer, he said a missing panel was replaced on the movie screen and the screen was repainted. He posted a photo of the digital projector on Facebook and the post received more than 700 “likes.” Several people posted that they can’t wait for the drive-in to re-open.
Other drive-in theaters in the area include the Garden Drive-In in Hunlock Creek and the Circle Drive-In in Dickson City. While many drive-in theaters have gone out of businesses, these two have lasted for decades.
The Circle Drive-In, built in 1945, is one of the longest running drive-in theaters in America. It is open for the season and will play movies “Dumbo” and “Captain Marvel” on one screen and “Wonder Park” and “Pet Sematary” on another screen this weekend. Movies are shown Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.
The Garden Drive-In announced on its Facebook page it will begin showing movies this Friday and will hold its first flea market for the season on Sunday. The movies showing this weekend were not yet announced.
The Gardens Amusement Co. built the Garden Drive-In, which opened in July 1952, and it remains in business more than 66 years later. Kim Barbacci’s family bought the drive-in in the 1980s from the Cragle family.
The Laurel Drive-In in Hazleton temporarily closed last season because while other drive-ins have gone digital, it has continued to use 35mm film. It’s not clear if the drive-in will reopen this season. Efforts to reach anyone at the drive-in were not successful on Monday.
Luzerne County formerly was the site of a host of drive-in theaters that have all closed, including the West Side Drive-In in Edwardsville, the Comerford Drive-In in Dupont, the Wilkes-Barre Drive-In in Wilkes-Barre Twp., the Riverview in Pittston and the Dallas Drive-In in Dallas Twp.
Today, there are less than 350 drive-in movie theaters in the U.S. That marks a big decline from more than 4,000 drive-in movie theaters that once operated when they reached the peak of their popularity in the 1950s and 1960s.
“Take in an old movie. The obvious benefit to Montello is the old movie theater. Old meaning vintage, it is slightly quirky in a fun way, no high resolution screen, no balcony or surround sound, yet it works. The comfy burgundy colored leather seats are framed by slightly worn yet still black, wrought iron. Two aisles divide the 1960s space making it friendly. Be forewarned that the theater has one show time daily and only one movie per week, on the plus side you won’t be able to argue on what movie to see. The movie selection is always a popular one. We saw da Vinci Code. The snack prices are great. Imagine paying $1.00 for popcorn! And the movie ticket was only $3.00, making it very affordable teens or families. The theatre is located on the main street near the red granite water falls which makes it hard to miss.” – from a tourist publication
The WORLD Theatre is seen briefly in a night scene in “Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine” (1965).
The iconic Arcada Theatre in downtown St. Charles has been ordered to address code violations before reopening, city officials said yesterday, following a thorough code and safety inspection by the St. Charles Fire Department and a third-party fire inspection consultant after receiving complaints regarding overcrowding at the Arcada, accessibility to exits in the building, and issues hearing the fire alarm during a performance. Fire officials decided to schedule a complete code and safety inspection to take place during the building’s regularly scheduled annual review in March. B&F Construction Code Services, Inc., an independent third-party fire protection consultant, and the city’s building and code enforcement staff completed their reviews on March 12. City officials didn’t elaborate on the exact issues at hand but did say they are working with the building’s owner to get the theatre back up and running, and a Facebook post from the Arcada Theatre on March 21 indicated the issue had to do with a cover from the theatre’s electrical system that “came off.” The post reads: “We are feeling the pains of this 93-year-old building! One of the covers from the electrical system came off and we won’t let anyone into the building until it is 100% safe.”
On a Saturday morning in 2014, Scott Dehn received the long-awaited news that the McHenry Outdoor Theatre will get the digital projector it so desperately needed. It probably wasn’t quite the way he’d envisioned the moment going. Dehn, the theater’s owner, was in the middle of an on-camera interview with a crew he’d been told was from a film-related website. Turns out, the crew was from Honda, and they were there to reveal that McHenry Outdoor has won one of five digital projectors the company is giving away through “Project Drive-In.” “The interviewer, the last question he asked me was, ‘How does it feel to win a digital projector?’” Dehn said. Dehn told the guy he’d misunderstood the situation, and that the theater hadn’t won anything yet. That’s when the crew revealed they were from Honda and that McHenry Outdoor had won, Dehn said. “I just fell down to my knees and broke down for a little bit,” he said. “It was pretty emotional.” Dehn has been trying to find a way to update the theater’s equipment since he took it over in early 2012. Because of the movie industry’s ongoing switch from 35 mm film to digital – a format cheaper for studios and distributors – theaters across the country are having to move fast to install digital projectors. Otherwise, their owners are left choosing from a dwindling selection of movies produced on the old format. The change has hit smaller, independent theaters hardest, and threatens many home-grown drive-ins like McHenry Outdoor. Dehn’s campaign on the fundraising website Kickstarter to raise $130,000 for the projector and accompanying maintenance fell short. Kickstarter projects that don’t reach their goals don’t receive any of the funds that donors pledge, so Dehn had to go back to the drawing board. Through online efforts and other donations, the theater had raised $5,000 toward the switch. But under Project Drive-In, Honda’s attempt to help preserve what they call an “iconic part of American car culture,” Dehn turned his attention to asking for votes rather than money. It worked. Voters willed McHenry Outdoor to a spot among the contest’s five winners. “They came together to support something they love,” Dehn said. “I couldn’t be more proud to say I’m from McHenry.” He said it was like getting “the weight of the world” lifted off his shoulders when he found out his theater would survive the switch to digital. The extra $5,000 raised will go toward other repairs. Dehn plans to have the theater revamped and running with the digital projector by next season. “There’s a lot of beautification and a lot of repair work that will be done,” he said. For now, it’s time to celebrate. Dehn was with family and friends Saturday night at the drive-in for a showing of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” “I think we’re just going to take a deep breath and enjoy the moment, enjoy these last few days of 35 mm film we’ve got left,” he said. Dehn wasn’t the only one soaking in the evening Saturday. Cars flooded the theater parking lot as the sun disappeared. Families sat out lawn chairs and tables or piled in the back of pickup trucks. Many curled into blankets as the air cooled. “It’s awesome,” said Cheryl Burke, of Cary, who was playing Scrabble with her husband, Jim, and 15-year-old son, Adam, before the movie started. They’d been planning to come out anyway but when they heard about the projector, a movie became a must. “We own ‘Ferris Buehler,’” Cheryl Burke said, laughing. “But we came here to watch.” Ed and Tammie Majkrzak and their kids Gracee, 11, and Alayna, 8, who live so close to the theater they can tune into its radio station from home, were similarly familiar with the classic flick. But it didn’t matter. The theater is about the experience, they said. We’ve never seen it on the big screen,“ Tammie Majkrzak said. Before the movie started, Dehn spoke through the radio to the crowd, thanking them for their support. Theater-goers responded with car horns that played like applause. "Wow,” Dehn said. “What a night.”
Iconic Cascade Drive-In Closes After 58 Years In West Chicago – Owners of the drive-in theater thanked customers for their support and said, “Our hearts are broken.” (By Lisa Marie Farver, Patch Staff, March 15-18, 2019) ——
WEST CHICAGO, IL — For the past 58 years, you’d know it was the start of summer in the western suburbs by the blinking of fireflies, the chirping of birds, and the smell of popcorn and flickering of big-screen movies at the Cascade Drive-In theater. Just as the iconic drive-in was prepping to open for its 2019 season, news comes that the screens will stay dark. The owners announced Friday that the theater, one of the last of its kind in Chicagoland, has closed indefinitely. The theater’s owners said on Facebook Friday that the property owner has decided not to permit the theater to open. The parcel of land is up for sale, but Cascade Drive-In owners say it has not yet been sold and that no development plans have been made. Cascade Drive-In owners say they can “only surmise that the landowner believes he has a better chance to get any future development approval from the city of West Chicago and surrounding community if the business is closed.” The current owners have operated the drive-in for the past three decades and have paid $6 million in rent, the Facebook post said. They added “A conversation and a decent transition would have been the least we could expect from the landowner. It’s devastating to us but we always knew the sale would be imminent one day but this scenario of closing with no other use for the property was totally unexpected.” On March 23, Cascade will host a sale of hoodies, popcorn machines, grills, a golf cart and more to give customers a chance to get their hands on a “piece of nostalgia.” The owners of Cascade closed their post by expressing a sentiment that will likely be shared throughout the surrounding community in the wake of news of the drive-in’s closure. They said, “Our hearts are broken.”
Alexander “Alex” Kouvalis – born in 1934 in a regional unit of Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece …died in Chicago on October 2, 2011 and was interred at Maryhill Catholic Cemetery & Mausoleum in Niles, Cook County, Illinois, USA —————————————— “I know a place where there are electric clouds overhead and twenty-five cent lightbulbs become stars with eyes I see, so it must be true, a dancer of light, a silver shadow who is the keeper of illusions, yours and mine … he dwells in a grand mosaic just west of Austin Boulevard.” … Filmmaker Louis Antonelli wrote that poem about Mr. Kouvalis, and made a 1994 short about his passion for Chicago’s Patio Theatre: “The Wizard of Austin Boulevard.” Alexander Kouvalis, who cared for the Patio Theatre as tenderly as a lover and guarded it as fiercely as Cerberus, was a hero to film buffs for not only keeping the jewelbox of a moviehouse running — but also for refusing to slice up its big screen for a multiplex. Mr. Kouvalis and his family burnished the 1927 Patio at Irving and Austin and re-opened it with a $5 admission, unusual work for a man who immigrated from Greece at age 18 in short pants in the middle of December with no English and went on to become a physicist with four college degrees.
Mr. Kouvalis, 77, died on Sunday, October 2, 2011 at Lutheran General Hospital after suffering a heart attack while driving.
In 1987 Mr. Kouvalis, with some partners, bought the block-long building that houses the neo-Pompeiian Patio as well as apartments and commercial tenants. “It was a mess, but I could see a thing of beauty underneath the dirt,” he said before the June re-opening. “Like ‘My Fair Lady,‘ the beauty was there; you just had to bring it out.” He did it all, from booking second-run films to selling popcorn. He rousted teenage vandals and he was not above patting someone’s pocket if he thought they were sneaking in candy. But he faced hard times in the late 1990s when the city tried to impose additional fees, and the air-conditioning system broke down. He shuttered the Patio in 2001. For years thereafter, the Patio’s marquee said “UNDER RENOVATION.” But Mr. Kouvalis, his daughter Amalia and his son repainted and reupholstered and found a company to fix the Patio’s air conditioning. Mr. Kouvalis bought out all but one partner. Today, the Patio still has its trademark twinkling ceiling lights and a projector that makes the ceiling look like moving clouds. “The fact that it’s still there, doing what it started out as in 1927, that’s a pretty amazing thing,” said Richard Sklenar, executive director of the Elmhurst-based Theatre Historical Society of America. “It’s been on that corner for three generations… . We give him credit for hanging on to it.” When he arrived in the U.S. in 1952 “he thought he saw so many stars in the sky,” said his wife, Magdalena. “Then he found out they were [the lights of] cars.” He had an uncle from the Old Country in Casper, Wyoming, so he went to stay with him. But there he washed dishes from morning until night, or shivered on a truck that delivered ice. Mr. Kouvalis came to Chicago to get an education. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Elmhurst College and three degrees at the Illinois Institute of Technology: a bachelor’s in physics and also in management, and a master’s degree in economics. The U.S. Army came calling, and he was supposed to serve in Japan. But he wanted to be near Greece, so he told a general he was a skilled mechanic who could better serve his new country in Europe. It worked; he was stationed in Germany, and he returned to Greece for a visit. “Alex didn’t even know how to drive the car, and he said he was a car mechanic,” his wife said. “They found out he’s not much of a mechanic.” Later, Mr. Kouvalis worked for Argonne National Laboratory, Sunbeam and Zenith, and he taught economics and real estate at Triton College. At the time of his passing, the Patio Theatre was screening “The Help.” Mr. Kouvalis married when he was 54, because for decades he focused on sending money to his family in Greece, his son said. He helped provide a dowry for his sister, Maria Kostopoulos, and he helped put his brother John through dental school. He met his Polish-born wife when she was visiting a relative in Chicago one summer, and she began working at the Patio. His wake and funeral service were at the Smith-Corcoran Funeral Home at 6150 North Cicero Avenue, with interment following at Maryhill Cemetery in Niles. He was interred with a handmade blanket that his mother, Vasiliki, sent him when he first arrived in America.
Winners Use Imagination to Capture ‘NIMH’ Cash (BOXOFFICE, January 1983, David Linck) Entries in the recently completed MGM-UA “The Secret of NIMH” Showmanship Contest conducted through BOXOFFICE displayed some of the same originality and imagination found in the animated Aurora Productions film. Judging the many entries from theatres around the country was a difficult task for BOXOFFICE staffers. Each entry sparkled in its own way, with many offering unique methods to promote the adventures of Mrs. Brisby and the rats of NIMH. … Perhaps the best example of linking the film with the book it was based upon, “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH,” came from another $2,000 winner, the Genoa Theatre in Genoa City, Wisconsin. The theatre’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. John Ingalls, devised a brilliant reading contest that allowed local students to read the book in school and earn free passes to the film’s showing. The Ingalls' also integrated clever merchant tie-ins and hidden “NIMH” stickers on concession items into their overall promotional plan.
Milwaukee Film surpassed its $10 million capital campaign goal to restore the Oriental Theatre and even provided the nonprofit with its first-ever operating reserve. The campaign began in 2017 when Milwaukee Film entered into a 31-year lease to operate the 92-year-old Oriental Theatre and assumed operations in July 2018. The campaign drew gifts from 900 contributors and brought in $10.03 million. Lead donors included Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele who made a personal contribution of $2 million to kick off the campaign, the largest gift in Milwaukee Film history, and also Donald and Donna Baumgartner, the Herzfeld Foundation, the Sheldon and Marianne Lubar Charitable Fund, Allen H. (Bud) and Suzanne L. Selig, and The Yabuki Family Foundation. The Seligs offered a $1.5 million matching grant on opening night of the 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival, and an unspecified but “significant" pledge from The Yabuki Family Foundation allowed the campaign to exceed its goal. “We are grateful for the enormous amount of support given by the Milwaukee community” said Jonathan Jackson, CEO and artistic director of Milwaukee Film. “Accomplishing this campaign in such an accelerated timespan speaks not only to the tireless effort of our team, but also to the passion of donors and audiences.” The campaign will support the restoration of the Oriental Theatre and provide financial stability for the organization. The first phase of the project, completed last year, included adding a women’s lavatory suite to the first floor and replacing mechanical equipment throughout the theatre. A full rehabilitation of the main auditorium is expected this year. “We’ve always had an ambitious vision for what Milwaukee Film can become, and we’ve made incredible strides in meeting some pretty big goals,” Jackson said. “The commitment of all of our supporters, and particularly the generosity of our lead donors in this campaign, shows me we can dream even bigger and do more within our community.”
Several theatres at one time or another served Libertyville: the Lyric Theatre, an earlier version of the Liberty Theatre, and the Auditorium Theatre. The immediate predecessor of the current Liberty Theatre, the LaVilla Theatre, was located on the second floor of the First National Bank building. However, the LaVilla had only hardwood seating and a screen which would roll up when not in use. One can imagine this did not meet the standards that the movie-going public of Libertyville was coming to expect.
Into this picture stepped Frederick William Dobe. Born in Germany in 1873, Dobe had emigrated to the United States at age 19 in 1892, eventually settling down in Libertyville. Noticing that while the small theatre on Milwaukee Avenue served its purpose and sensing a potential business opportunity, Dobe polled the community to see if they were happy with the existing theatre. Finding that the people of Libertyville were indeed looking for a more luxurious movie going experience, Dobe contracted Chicago-based architects Edward P. Rupert and William L. Pereira to design a theatre befitting a town of Libertyville’s stature.
The design that was eventually settled upon was the art moderne style with a cream terra-cotta exterior, dark blue trim, and a stunning vertical art deco sign. Able to seat 706 customers (44 fewer than promised), the theatre boasted the most up-to-date amenities. Construction on the theater began on Friday April 9, 1937 with the work contracted to the Kaiser-Ducett Company o Chicago.
In the weeks leading up to the Liberty’s opening, stores decorated their windows and had “Theatre opening sales”, light posts in the business district bore red, white and blue bunting, and almost the entire issue of the August 26 Independent Register dedicated to the theatre’s opening. On Friday August 27, 1937 the theatre opened to a capacity crowd with a large number of would-be customers being turned away, Frederick Dobe was at the front of the line, buying the first ticket. As the audience filled in they were met by Mark Fisher, a popular Chicago band leader who acted as the master of ceremonies that evening. After Fisher came a short speech by A.E. Suter, President of the Village Board, to an audience that, as one can imagine, was probably impatient for the movie, The Slave Ship staring Warner Baxter and Elizabeth Allen.
The theatre quickly became the go-to place for kids to hang out on weekends. According to Marylyn Alkire of the Libertyville-Mundelein Historical Society, in the 1940s kids would go to the penny candy store just south of the Liberty, buy a pocketful of candy and then hurry back to buy a movie ticket for 20¢. Once in the theatre they might have been escorted to their seats by a young Marlon Brando, who worked as an usher during the short time he and his family lived in Libertyville (Summer of 1938 – spring of 1941). The films they would have watched ranged from western to on-location newsreels produced by Time Inc. The theatre would have regular blackouts in the middle of movies, leaving the children in the audience to wait impatiently until the movie started up again.
The manager during the 1940s was Robert L. Collier. Born in Peoria, he was a well-known business man, avid bowler, and during the blackouts was known to send uniformed ushers to keep the kids in line.
On September 3, 1942, James Cagney visited Libertyville as part of the effort to sell war bonds. Drawing a crowd of some 4,000 at Cook Park (according to the 1940 census the population of Libertyville was 3,930), Cagney spoke on the steps of the Cook Memorial Library then located in Cook House, and the town had pledged nearly $111,000. As a reward for the town’s patriotism, Liberty Theatre was chosen to be the location of the world premiere of “Desperate Journey”, a film about a group of downed Allied airmen making their way out of Nazi Germany, and starring Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan. As part of the ceremonies, then-Illinois Governor Dwight H. Green drove a horse-drawn carriage loaned to him by publishing magnate John F. Cuneo on Milwaukee Avenue.
In 1948 Frederick Dobe followed with the construction of the Grayslake Outdoor Theatre along Highway 120 East at Route 83. At some point after 1955 the art deco vertical sign that had for so long beckoned moviegoers of all ages was taken down. In 1960 on Saturday, June 18 at the age of 87, Frederick Dobe passed away at St. Therese’s Hospital in Waukegan. He was interred at the Ridgewood Cemetery in Des Plaines. In 2012 the theatre was bought by Scott Dehn, who purchased two digital projectors totaling about $130,000 and the theatre had a grand re-opening early that same year. The theatre then came under the ownership of Golden Age Cinemas, which also owns the McHenry Outdoor Theatre.
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Here for bond premiere. 1942. Libertyville Independent Register April 10, 1941 thru July 29, 1943, Cook Memorial Public Library, Libertyville.
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“Work gets under way.” Independent Register (Libertyville), August 26, 1937. Microform
Zawislak, Mick. “Libertyville’s Liberty theater to join digital age .” Daily Herald, January 5, 2014. Accessed January 9, 2017. http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20140115/news/7011599
From the early 20th century, several theaters at one time or another served Libertyville: the Lyric Theatre, an earlier version of the Liberty Theatre, and the Auditorium Theatre. The immediate predecessor of the current Liberty Theatre was the LaVilla Theatre on the second floor of the First National Bank building. The LaVilla had only hardwood seating and a screen which would roll up when not in use. One can imagine this did not meet the standards that the movie-going public of Libertyville was coming to expect. Frederick William Dobe, born in Germany in 1873, had emigrated to the United States at age 19 in 1892, eventually settling down in Libertyville. While the LaVilla Theatre on Milwaukee Avenue served its purpose, Dobe sensed a desire on the part of the townspeople for a dedicated theatre and a potential business opportunity. Dobe polled the community to see if they were happy with the LaVilla and found that the citizens of Libertyville were indeed looking for a more luxurious moviegoing experience, Dobe contracted Chicago-based architects Edward P. Rupert and William L. Pereira to design a theater befitting a town of Libertyville’s stature.
When it opened in 1926, the State Theatre embodied Hollywood glamor in a small Wisconsin city. Built by the Minnesota-based Finkelstein and Ruben theater chain at a cost of $315,000 – that’s nearly $4.5 million today – the State Theatre was hailed as a “veritable fairyland” in a special edition of the Eau Claire Leader published on Jan. 19, 1926:
“NEW THEATER IS BRIGHTEST GEM IN GLITTERING CHAIN OF F&R AMUSEMENT HOUSES,” blared a headline, which shared the page with photos of the theater’s interior and exterior and articles touting its $20,000 Wurlitzer organ, its fine seats and carpet, and its vaudeville lineup. “For sheer beauty and artistic appeal this playhouse will intrigue the most delicate cultural sensitiveness,” one article stated. “In the lobby alone its designers achieved art such as seldom is created in a theater of its size.” In addition to the organ, the theater had its own orchestra (“under the director of M.J. Deglman, an Eau Claire orchestra leader of well know ability”) to accompany both silent motion pictures and live vaudeville acts. An ad noted that evening performances would cost 40 cents, matinees would cost a quarter, and children would be entertained for just 10 cents. On opening night, thousands of would-be patrons braved a winter storm to get tickets. In fact, more people bought tickets than could fit in the State’s 1,300-seats, forcing the theater’s management to publish an apologetic advertisement a few days later promising to honor the tickets at future performances. Those who were able to get seats were treated to a full evening of entertainment, which began with an orchestral overture followed by a newsreel, comedy (with organ accompaniment), a jazz revue with 18 singers and dancers titled “A Syncopated Menu,” a novelty film, and then the main feature: the silent 1925 drama “Classified” starring Corinne Griffith, one of the top stars of the day. Ticket fiasco aside, the new theater was a success, although that success came at the expense of the competition. By June, the locally owned Eau Claire Theater Co. had shut down and leased three of its theaters – the Grand, the Unique, and the Wisconsin – to Finkelstein and Ruben. The State, it seems, had quickly become Eau Claire’s dominant theatrical venue. The days were numbered for silent films and vaudeville performances for which the State had been constructed. By 1928, the State began using the Vitaphone system, which played phonograph records in sync to the film. “Lights of New York” – the first all-talking feature film – was screened that December, and Al Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer” soon followed. After the curtain fell on vaudeville, the State settled into its role as one of city’s dominant movie houses, welcoming several generations of Eau Claire residents for children’s matinees, big-budget features and midnight movies. From the beginning, the State offered multiple entertainment opportunities. The basement was home to eight bowling lanes plus pool, billiard, and snooker tables. Upstairs was a large dance hall. On the ground floor, next to the theatre entrance, was a restaurant (originally the State Cafe) and by the 1940s, the Greyhound bus station. Over the years, some of Hollywood’s most legendary films created indelible experiences for audiences. Gradually, the movie business changed, and the State began to lose its luster. With the proliferation of entertainment options, the rise of multiplexes or the advent of home video and cable TV, audiences began to shrink. By the 1970s, the State was owned by ABC Theatres, part of the American Broadcasting Co., which later sold it to the national Plitt Theatres chain. By 1982, the Leader-Telegram reported that “single-screen theaters no longer are profitable,” and that Plitt was building multiplexes elsewhere, including in La Crosse. “We felt there was no room for us to expand anymore in (Eau Claire),” a Plitt executive told the newspaper. “There are enough screens in Eau Claire, and if we were to expand we’d just be throwing our money down the sewer.” At the time, most of Eau Claire’s screens – including the Hollywood, the Downtown Cinema, and the Stardusk and Gemini drive-ins – were owned by Gene Grengs. The State screened its last film in 1982, and Grengs and developer Warren Barberg bought the place with big dreams about restoring the theatre and turning it into a live entertainment venue. And now the State is ready for its next act.
A half year after The State Theatre was closed and replaced by a new performing arts center, plans call for it to house a children’s foundation and host events again. Azara Properties of Elk Mound bought the theatre on January 31 for $195,000 to house the Luginbill Children’s Foundation founded by Joe Luginbill in December 2016 as a nonprofit with 13 “education, entertainment and youth development” programs, noting the initiative is in its preliminary stages and details remain to be worked out. Other agencies could be housed at the State as well, he said. Azara Properties is registered to Mohammad Hashlamoun of Elk Mound, Wisconsin. He owns properties and businesses in the region, including Azara, a Water Street hookah and vape shop, and the former My Place Bar, 406-408 Galloway St., which he plans to reopen as a coffee shop and bar called My Office Lounge. The 1926 State Theatre was not designed to host large-scale, modern productions and is in need of repairs such as a new roof and furnace. Those limitations and the region’s booming arts scene prompted the construction of the Pablo Center at the Confluence, which opened in September. Luginbill said plans call for events to once again be staged at the State. A deed restriction that would have prevented such shows at the State so as not to compete with the Pablo Center was discussed but wasn’t a part of the sale, said Pam Rasmussen, president of Eau Claire Regional Arts Center Board that owned the State, saying such a restriction would have hindered its sale. “The performances that would take place (at the State) would seem to be complimentary to the Pablo and not direct competition,” she said, but before that can happen, Rasmussen said “That building is going to need some love first.” An assessment of the State’s construction needs is ongoing and will seek to maintain as much of the existing structure and its historic as possible, while providing needed updates.
The owner of Milwaukee’s historic MODJESKA Theatre at 1134 W. Historic Mitchell Street is seeking proposals to make improvements to and operate the building. The MODJESKA has been shuttered since 2010. It first opened its doors to patrons in 1910, and was replaced with a much larger structure in 1924 that contained 2,000 seats, a full orchestra pit and a Barton pipe organ, according to a request for proposals recently issued by Modjeska owner Mitchell Street Development Opportunities Corp. The owner’s goals for the theater include maximizing it as a community resource, using it as a catalyst for further economic development of Historic Mitchell Street, and ensuring the facility is maintained and improved so it can remain a “cultural asset for the Historic Mitchell Street community and the city of Milwaukee.” according to the RFP, which comes after the city’s Historic Preservation Commission earlier this month considered extending a mothball certificate for the theater. This would further delay the issuance of building code violations. The document also notes the theater may be situated in an Opportunity Zone and may also be eligible for state or federal historical tax credits. John Kesselman is the president of MSDOC. The Historic Mitchell Street Business Improvement District voiced its opposition to extending the mothball certificate. Rudy Gutierrez, board president of the Mitchell Street BID, wrote in a letter to commission members that BID “urges that the theatre’s future use be community-oriented, and that plans move ahead as soon as possible for its future use.” The Commission agreed to hold the extension request for a month as the Modjeska owner worked through the RFP process. The RFP had not been made final at the time of the meeting. Responses to the RFP are due on Feb. 15.
Artifacts from the Uptown Theatre in Chicago have over the years been removed and brought to the Sanfilippo Foundation’s Place de la Musique museum for safekeeping. Hidden away in boxes and barns — or merely hanging in sumptuous plain sight — the gorgeous chandeliers and fixtures of the Uptown Theatre have been vacationing these past few years in Barrington Hills. They have been cared for by an eccentric but loving crew of collectors, restorers and guardians, rescued from avaricious thieves and the neglect of a convicted slumlord as if they were evacuees rushed to safety from a war zone. And on Tuesday of this week, under the careful eyes of most of those who have cared for them for so long — they all began their journey back to Uptown Chicago and home.
The story of how the Sanfilippo Estate, the family home of Jasper Sanfilippo (a hugely successful American businessman and a nut magnate who turned proprietory shelling techniques into a business with 2018 net sales of $889 million) came to help save the treasures of the Uptown is a fascinating one. The Sanfilippo Estate is not an ordinary home, even by the grand standards of Barrington Hills. Sanfilippo, 87, is a collector of automatic mechanical instruments, but the word “collector” does not do justice to the scale of his world-class acquisitions, which now occupy several buildings on his estate, nor the level of restoration in which he has invested, which is dazzling. When his collecting was at its peak in the 1990s, Sanfilippo defined mechanical instruments very broadly, collecting pipe organs, fairground ticket booths, steam engines and locomotives, slot machines, stereoscopes, mutoscopes, vending machines, calliopes, a carousel, player pianos and impossibly complex lighting fixtures — brass arms and internal beading polished to a shine.
The Sanfilippo Estate is not a public museum but it is well known locally, and frequently opens its doors to charity fundraisers and for concerts in its grand private theater, home to an 8000-pipe 1927 Wurlitzer, one of the largest pipe organs in the world. To those who love historic theaters and cherish their decoration, it’s known internationally as one of the best private collections in the world.
When the late Louis Wolf and his partner, Kenneth Goldberg, bought the theater from the Plitt movie chain after the Uptown’s 1979 closure, it was clear to preservationists that the new landlords did not intend to restore the building. Wolf’s modus operandi was to let historic buildings fall into disrepair, usually because the land was expected to increase in value. All kinds of horrors were being discussed for the Uptown following its closure to the public as a concert venue. Somebody wanted to install an indoor go-kart track. Someone else wanted to turn it into a mausoleum. As all this chatter went on, thieves were already seen entering the building. Indeed, according to Bob Boin, a civil engineer and longstanding Uptown volunteer, some of the Uptown’s fixtures already were showing up a local salvage stores, where volunteers would proceed to buy them back and then store them in their homes. The volunteers decided something had to be done.
It so happened that Curt Mangel, an Uptown-loving engineer, was working at the Sanfillipo estate on the restoration of a steam engine. The Friends of the Uptown (both upper and lower case) decided that Mangel should approach Sanfilippo about quietly moving as much as possible to Barrington Hills where it could wait for a happier time.
If there is one hero in this story, Mangel (who now lives in Philadelphia where he tends to a pipe organ – the Wanamaker – inside Macy’s City Center) is that hero.
And thus, in 1992, the group persuaded Wolf (who did prison time for tax evasion) and Goldberg that they could write off the value of the chandeliers and other decorative elements if they donated them to a non-profit. Mangel and the other Uptown caretakers enlisted Sanfilippo’s cooperation in an agreement to return the items when — or, more accurately if — the theater was restored. And that process began.
The Uptown’s new owner, Jerry Mickelson of Jam Productions, was there for the first time. So were employees of Farpoint Development, Mickelson’s partner in the restoration. So were employees of the Chicago-based Schuler Shook, a consultant on the renovation. So were restorers, historic theater specialists and several members of Mickelson’s staff. So was Lisa Sanfilippo, Jasper’s daughter. So were the Uptown’s longtime caretakers such as Boin and Jimmy Wiggins, who spend the entire day grinning from ear to ear. All were agog at the size and abiding beauty of the main chandeliers, as restored by Sanfilippo’s staff. “The people that do this,” Jimmy Wiggins, an Uptown volunteer whom Jam eventually hired, said “do it because it is in their heart. How wonderful that they have a place to do what is part of their soul.”
The Uptown’s main chandelier hangs in the entrance hallway of the main Sanfilippo building. Few visitors would know its provenance. It is soon to come down — but Greg Leifel, the caretaker of the collection pointed out the obvious to a visitor: “We have other chandeliers to take its place.” Indeed they do.
Over the course of a morning, the group looked for wall sconces and light fixtures, finding some inside boxes in a workshop, others looking yet more beautiful than they ever first appeared. All of the originals are returning, and where there are missing fixtures, they will provide a template for fabricators to match the precise original appearance. Everyone is aware that all of this was almost lost. “If it had not cost $8.4 million to demolish the theater,” Mickelson said, “they would have knocked it down. It was that cost that saved the theater.”
Rapp & Rapp, the Chicago firm that designed and built the Uptown were known, in the words of Boin, for “overbuilding their steel.” There was so much steel in the Uptown that conventional cheap demolition methods could not be used. Hence the price tag, at which Wolf and Goldberg balked. “You couldn’t punch a pillar in a Rapp & Rapp theater and then watch the roof collapse,” Boin said. “Thank God.”
The weather was awful, but still a day for taking inventory, and giving thanks and a day that neither Wiggins nor Boin nor Mickelson nor, most likely, Sanfilippo, ever expected to come.
By Chris Jones, a Tribune critic (edited for brevity.)
Bob Boin, Dave Syfczak and Jimmy Wiggins are volunteers who help take care of the Uptown Theatre. (Ryan Ori, Reporter; Chicago Tribune)
A 37-year intermission has not been kind to the Uptown Theatre. Fires, cascading rainwater, sheets of ice, broken pipes, frozen boilers, rodents, crumbling plaster, financial distress, vandals, thieves and squatters have all taken their shots since the last concert there. Yet the 4,381-seat theater, said to be one of the most spectacular movie palaces ever built, is on the verge of a long-dreamed-of restoration to return the towering structure on North Broadway back to its 1925 opulence. In large part, the Uptown stands ready for its $75 million makeover because of a few guardians who’ve protected it from irreparable harm. The Uptown’s protectors have lent a collective hand to historic properties ranging from Wrigley Field to the Chicago Theatre. But the Uptown stands out as a particularly enduring and demanding labor of love. “When you love a place like this, it’s in your heart,” said Jimmy Wiggins, one of the protectors. “They’ll never build anything like this again. I mean, just look at it.” The men have endured ownership changes, broken promises, false starts, late-night alarms, pigeon poop and oil fumes. They’ve teetered from I-beams several stories above the stage in order to repair roof drains, shooed away intruders, and sacrificed countless hours of their nights and weekends — and, in some instances, their retirements. “Very few people know about them, but they’ve been heroes,” said Jerry Mickelson, co-founder and co-owner of Jam Productions, which has owned the Uptown since 2008. “I don’t know that I could have bought the building without them, because it might not have been standing.” The Uptown Theatre is finally to be restored to its 1925 glory. Inside the shuttered movie palace, the guardians include three men who have helped protect the theater since the 1980s: restoration expert Curt Mangel, 68; retired civil engineer Bob Boin, 72, a longtime volunteer on Chicago theater restoration projects; and Jam’s facilities manager, Wiggins, 57, who also oversees the Vic and Riviera theaters on the North Side. Retired Chicago police officer Dave Syfczak, 66, who watched movies at the Uptown while growing up in the neighborhood, has been a volunteer security guard and handyman since the 1990s. Those four lead a larger list of people who have contributed to the Uptown’s survival. Most have worked as volunteers, with approval of the property’s various owners. “I always told the guys, ‘Just keep it alive and its time will come,’ ” said Mangel, who now lives in Philadelphia. “By the grace of God, the economy and everything else, the right things came together. We’re overjoyed that day has finally come. “The people of Chicago are not going to believe what they have when it’s done.” The Spanish Baroque structure at 4816 N. Broadway roared to life in 1925 as the flagship of a Balaban & Katz theater chain known for its breathtaking movie palaces. Much later, it became known for concerts by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, the Grateful Dead, Prince and the Kinks. The last show was a J. Geils Band concert on Dec. 19, 1981. The property cycled through a series of owners who proposed but never executed plans to bring it back to life. Finally, in June, Mayor Rahm Emanuel unveiled plans for a $75 million renovation, backed by funding from several public and private sources. The joint venture of Jam and Chicago real estate firm Farpoint Development plans to begin the heavy lifting by the summer, with plans to reopen the Uptown as a live events venue in 2021. It is envisioned as the centerpiece of a broader entertainment district in Uptown, which is also home to venues such as the Aragon Ballroom, Riviera Theatre, Wilson Avenue Theater and Green Mill nightclub. Farpoint principal Scott Goodman credits the caretakers for the Uptown’s survival, and said their dedication demonstrates the strong pull many people feel toward it. “It’s that kind of building,” Goodman said. “I don’t think there’s another asset in Chicago where people have this kind of emotional attachment. It’s a magnificent structure with amazingly ornamental finishes, and it’s so instrumental to the success of the neighborhood. To get those things all in one bucket, there’s nothing else like it.” The group of Uptown watchers has endured, even years after Mangel eventually moved from Chicago. “It was years of backbreaking work and we had several (redevelopment) deals fall apart, which was heartbreaking,” Mangel said. “I don’t regret it one bit. I’m very proud of the guys for sticking with it and keeping the torch. I passed the torch and they kept it burning.” Mangel’s tinkering skills have led him to a broad range of projects, including once repairing the clock on Wrigley Field’s scoreboard — which he said led to an on-air shout-out from Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray, who had often complained about the clock’s neglected condition. Other restorations included the clocks in the Waveland Fieldhouse tower along Lake Michigan, just east of the ballpark, and chandeliers at the Chicago Theatre in the Loop. He’s moved around the country to lead other restorations, including Shea’s Performing Arts Center in Buffalo, N.Y., and Denver’s Paramount Theatre. Mangel now lives in Philadelphia, where he led the restoration of the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, the largest functioning pipe organ in the world. The Uptown proved especially challenging, because of its sheer size and the building’s decades-long vacancy. To prevent pipes from freezing, the men burned thousands of gallons of gummy, low-quality motor oil in an old boiler. Firing up the system took hours of exhausting work, and the fumes frequently left people in the boiler room feeling sick. The process also sent black smoke pouring from the building, which would cause neighbors to call 911. “It got to the point where we had to call the Fire Department to let them know we were going to start the boiler at the Uptown,” Syfczak said. When firefighters were called on those instances, the Uptown guardians hustled to meet them out front. “Or else they’d use their key to come in,” Syfczak said. “And their key was an ax. So I repaired the doors three or four times too.” There also were real fires, including one time in the 1990s when on a late-night security check Wiggins discovered homeless people huddled around several campfires on the building’s marble floors. Other intruders, including metal scavengers, would set off the Uptown’s alarm. “When I lived a block away, I’d have to go scare the bejesus out of someone who was in the building,” Mangel said. Many of the Uptown’s unique and highly valuable light fixtures also were snatched. Looting led to the decision to pack up ornate chandeliers and other remaining fixtures. They were transported to the Sanfilippo Foundation’s Place de la Musique museum in Barrington and other Chicago-area locations, where they’ll remain stored until the late stages of the theater’s restoration. “That was painful for us, because part of the beauty of the building is the magnificent light fixtures,” Mangel said. “But we had to do it or they would all be gone.” Critters also have snuck in. Syfczak once decided to clean a wall of pigeon poop near the theater’s front windows, only to encounter something else. “As I put a shovel through it, a stench was released, and mice started jumped out of the pile of dung,” Syfczak siad. “That was one of my worst days here.” Better days are near, finally, because of a complex financing package that includes state and federal funds, as well as debt and equity secured by the development partners. Farpoint and Jam’s pending renovation is validation to those who thought the theater was worth saving, but it’s bittersweet for them as they move into the background. “There is a little tinge of almost depression when you’re no longer involved with it,” said Boin, who previously volunteered for eight years helping restore the Chicago Theatre’s organ. Although the Uptown has swallowed up their spare time, it’s also been a home away from home for the friends to gather, talk and tinker on other projects. “We have to give up our clubhouse,” Wiggins joked. Then he turned serious. “We’re overjoyed that the building is going to be restored and used again, because it really comes alive when there’s people in here,” Wiggins said. “This is fun. This has been our sanctuary. I think we’ve all enjoyed it. But when you see people here smiling and looking at it, and the building comes alive, that’s the best gift of all.” ( )
Emagine Entertainment Inc. of Troy, Mich. officially opened its first Wisconsin location with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 6 p.m. on August 28, 2018 as a charity event for the Lakeland Animal Shelter, with the first revenue screenings at 10 a.m. on August 29. The redecorated 35,000-square-foot theatre offers online ticketing, 646 reserved powered reclining seats with seven-foot row spacings (and a front row of love-seat chairs) in eight stadium-style auditoriums (some with Christie 4K DLP Digital Cinema projectors and Dolby Atmos immersive sound systems), specialty popcorn, a full-service bar, self-service 100-flavor soda machines, a three-season beer garden featuring craft beers from area craft breweries, expanded food choices including stone-oven pizzas, and assistive devices for seeing- and hearing-impaired patrons. Paul Glantz is Emagine Entertainment’s chairman. Admissions range from $6 to $10.
Chicago’s Community Development Commission members (appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel) approved the public financing elements for partners Jam Productions and Farpoint Development and the $1.00 sale of a 31,000-square-foot city-owned parking lot at 1130 W. Lawrence Avenue one-half block south and a half-block east of the theatre. The lead architects will be Lamar Johnson Collaborative (founded by Lamar and Lisa Johnson); theatre consultant Schuler Shook (PALACE, St. Paul. and KINGS, Brooklyn); MacRostie Historic Advisors, tax-credit specialists; Forefront Structural Engineers; Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, façade restoration; WMA Consulting Engineers, mechanicals; and Conrad Schmitt Studios. Reportedly the $75 million restoration includes $13 million in tax increment financing (TIF) assistance, $14 million in property-assessed clean-energy financing, $3 million in Adopt-a-Landmark funding, with the rest from investments by Farpoint and Jam and from a commercial bank loan. There’ll be new elevators and concession areas and seating for about 4,100 but with some removable seats on the Orchestra Floor to permit up to 5,800 including standees. The UPTOWN’s last event was a concert by the J. Geils Band on December 19, 1981. Expectations are for 200 short-term construction jobs and 200 long-term positions at its reopening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awLLxN2BTaA
Five years after the roof of Pretty Prairie’s Civic Theatre blew off in a storm, it’s back in business and operated by local high school students as the Blue Shoes Theatre because the words “Blue Shoes” were painted on the bricks above the Collingwood General Merchandising store and spotted by Cliff Wray in a historic photograph. It was Wray, from Hutchinson, who restored the building before handing it over to the high school’s entrepreneur, career, and technical management classes. “When I saw that picture I wanted to name it Blue Shoes,” je said. (Blue Shoes were a brand of footwear sold back in the late 1800s and early 1900s.)
Two back-to-back storms blew through Pretty Prairie during the summer of 2013 causing extensive structural damage to the 1890s buildings housing the Civic Theatre. It left the carpet in the lobby saturated and covered with chunks of plaster. After the storm, Wray with Wray Roofing, was in town repairing the roof at Pretty Prairie Middle School. He heard about the damage to the theatre which occupies the former Collingwood General Merchandising and Coal building and the State Bank, both once owned by the Collingwood family, early settlers of Pretty Prairie.
Wray was concerned when he heard talk that it might have to be torn down because the city couldn’t afford the repairs. So he went to the city council to see if he could buy the buildings and prevent an empty gap appearing on Main Street. “I’m not from Pretty Prairie, but they always talked about the theatre,” Wray said. “And tearing it down would be like pulling up roots underneath a tree.” He was prepared to pay up to $500 for the buildings, but the city sold the theatre for $1. It took several years, but with the help of the city, family, volunteers and his crew with Wray Roofing, the job was completed.
After giving it some thought, Wray, who has served on the Buhler School Board for 23 years, handed the theatre over to the Pretty Prairie School District to use as an extension of their classrooms. “Kids don’t have a lot of opportunities, and I thought what a great idea for them to run the theatre,” Wray said. “It’s now their theatre; they are invested,” said Randy Hendrickson, superintendent. They applied for and received a movie license. Then they were trained to be projectionists by Darrell Albright, who operated the Civic Theatre on a volunteer base for more than 30 years. Students had already operated the theatre on different occasions, including after-school movies on Fridays.
“I know the high school kids can do a good job,” Hendrickson said. “They will learn how to deal with people, showing up on time to work. They will learn about advertising and marketing. They’ll get a lot out of it.” Already they have selected and ordered movies; others operate the projector while some get the popcorn ready, and others sell tickets in the original ticket booth. After the show, there is clean-up detail including windows and bathrooms. Hendrickson said the gift of the theater opens up a variety of learning opportunities with everything from entrepreneurial theater management and business to technology and theater classes.
Meeting in the lobby of the small theater on a recent morning with Hendrickson and Albright, Wray said that Darrell, the former proprietor of the theater represented the past, while the school was the future. In the 1920s the store was known as Grace Graber’s Dry Goods; then, in 1936, the two stores and the bank were converted into the Civic Theatre. By 1955, television had killed the small town’s theatre business, said Albright.
For the next few decades, the theatre was used for special town gatherings. Then in April 1981, Albright and his family re-opened with the movie “High Noon.”
Before the storm hit this town of 600 people, the Civic Theatre was the place to go for classic Saturday night movies. An “Our Gang” episode played before the feature film. That’s because Carl Switzer, who played Alfalfa in the series, briefly lived in Pretty Prairie while he was married to Dian Collingwood.
On a good year, about 3,000 people would come from around the area to see an old movie at the theatre. It has also been used as a spot for class reunions and wedding receptions, especially popular with couples who met and fell in love at the theater.
On June 24, 2018, the Blue Shoes Theatre hosted “Stage 9: On Broadway”, with all the proceeds going to the career and technical education program for the entrepreneurial theater management.
“If not for Cliff this would be a bare lot,” Hendrickson said. “We’re indebted to him for his work, time and for our kids to have this opportunity.”
It was the place where people saw their first movie on a big screen, where they had their first bucket of popcorn or their first date. But the future of the theater at 244 Broad St., Lake Geneva, became uncertain after it closed in 2010. At one point, there were plans to turn the historic building — which once hosted appearances by the Marx Brothers, Bela Lugosi and Will Rogers — into a boutique shopping mall. Fate took a different turn, and in 2017, after a renovation, the Geneva Theater reopened. Once again, the theater brings first-run films to downtown Lake Geneva, and the stage that once existed when the theater was built in 1928 has been restored.
Back in the early days of the theater, vaudeville acts performed at least twice a week as a way for owners of the single-screen movie theater to supplement their income. “Just like they did in the late 20s and early 30s, we are using that stage,” said Marie Frederick, Geneva Theater’s events coordinator. Frederick and Geneva Theater owner Shad Branen discussed how the history of the theater guided the new look and plan for the building.
In 1928, the theater was a single-screen auditorium, with 750 seats, including a balcony. At its opening gala June 6, 1928, the theater hosted a screening of “Telling the World,” a comedic drama starring William Haines and Anita Page, released that same year.
Geneva and the Burlington Plaza theaters were both built in 1928 and operated by the same company, Community Theaters Inc. The president of Community Theaters Inc. was William F. Pabst, whom Frederick believes to be a descendant of Frederick Pabst, who was perhaps most remembered as president of Pabst Brewing Co. Coincidentally, Branen also owns the Burlington Plaza. He said the purchase and renovation of Geneva Theater cost in excess of $2 million.
Over the years since its opening gala, Geneva Theater changed ownership. During subsequent renovations, the single auditorium became two screening rooms, then four — three on the ground floor, and the former balcony was turned into the fourth room. By the time Branen was involved, Geneva Theater had been gutted. In the upper-level screening room, the wall with the projection screen had been torn down. Roof leaks caused water damage in Theater 1, the location of the historic stage.
“Usually they’re in pretty rough shape,” said Branen, of old theaters. “Either they’re empty, and sitting empty, or they’ve been repurposed into something else, and to bring them back requires a lot of work because they aren’t the auditoriums that they were.”
Branen discussed renovation plans with Friends of the Geneva Theater, a citizen group which sought to turn the building into a cultural center. He said they tried to keep as much of the old theater intact as they could, but changed other parts to create special event accommodations. Much of Theater 1, including the stage and ceiling, was restored. The wall to the upper-level screening room was rebuilt.
During the renovation, Branen discovered several features of the building that had been walled off — old staircases, including one which led from the main lobby to the old balcony, which is where an alcove now stands that displays old theater pictures. He also found a basement wall signed by those who participated in previous theater programs and productions. The wall has been preserved, and another next to it left blank, waiting to be signed by those who take part in future plays and happenings at the theater. Now, the theater is a place where state-of-the-art projection and sound systems exist alongside images and artifacts from celluloid yesteryear. A table that projectionists used to splice film reels together juts out of the wall near Theaters 3 and 4.
Frederick wants to create historic displays about the people who first opened the theater. But in the last year, Geneva Theater has played host to various private and public gatherings — film festivals, comedy shows, productions by local theater groups.
People tell Branen stories all the time about movies they remembered seeing at Geneva Theater. But to him, right now, Geneva Theater is a success story.“The community of Lake Geneva played a big part in that,” he said. “It wouldn’t have happened without the community support.”
Visit geneva4.com to find out more about movie screenings and special events at the theater.