Chestnut Station Cinemas
830 N. Clark Street,
Chicago,
IL
60610
830 N. Clark Street,
Chicago,
IL
60610
4 people
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Previously operated by: Cineplex Odeon, Essaness Theaters Corp.
Styles: Art Deco
Nearby Theaters
News About This Theater
The Chestnut Station Cinemas opened on December 9, 1983 by Essaness inside what had previously been a US Post Office building designed in Art Deco style in the 1930’s. The five-screen movie house was located on N. Clark Street at W. Chestnut Street in the Near North Side neighborhood.
During the early-1990’s, the theatre gained notoriety when a young woman was shot and killed in front of the theatre, and the theatre was known throughout the 1990’s of notorious for gang activity and the quality of films went down. During the mid-to-late-1990’s, the Chestnut Station Cinemas was one of a couple Chicago venues which hosted film festivals, including the Chicago Latino Film Festival and the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. It was closed in 1999.
The former theatre was demolished in 2003 to make way for a planned Jewish community center which never came to fruition, and the property remains a vacant lot today.
Contributed by
Bryan Krefft
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Recent comments (view all 41 comments)
The Jewish center was never built, and the land remains vacant.
This opened on December 12th, 1983. Grand opening ad uploaded.
I notice that the vacant lot on the sw corner of Clark and Chestnut has a new agent offering it for sale. It was the site of a post office and later the Chestnut Station Theater.
From 1987 to 1991, I went to a lot of movies with my girlfriend (once or twice a week, every week…anyone remember $3 Tuesdays?). Chestnut station was an alright place. I stopped going to the movies frequently after 1991 , when we broke-up, so I missed the decline of this Cinema.
The site is still vacant. It is a valuable piece of land, and new buildings are going up around it.
Site to be redeveloped with row houses. DNAInfo story here. The story doesn’t mention the theater, but the picture matches the street view.
This was opened by Essaness Theatres, which Cineplex Odeon purchased in 1986.
Ran across this link with one interior photo as the Post Office and the WPA murals that were on the walls.
http://www.wpamurals.com/chiPOfoy.htm
Opening was December 9, 1983. Credit Tim O'Neill: “40 years ago today, the Essaness Chestnut Station Theatres opened on the Near North Side of Chicago. The first 5-plex theatre in this part of town didn’t actually have five screens just yet on opening night. The four main auditoriums were built and ready to go; however, the smaller 5th screen wasn’t finished; so Essaness went ahead and opened up the new venue anyway, with Theatre 5 opening up a few weeks later in 1984.
At this time, the northern downtown theatres were dying and the Near North Side theatre scene was considered underserved. There were the four Water Tower Theatres, the Carnegie, the Esquire and the McClurg Court. Yeah…..not a whole lot to choose from. With the Chestnut Station Theatres opening up, now there were five more auditoriums. Things started out great for Chestnut Station….but not for long.
The Chestnut Station was not built from the basement on up. Essaness took over an old post office station and built four 200+ seat auditoriums on the main floor and one little room (about 175 seats) upstairs. Typical 1980s shoebox theatres. However, Theatres 1 and 2 had 70mm, and overall, it was a decent place to watch a movie. Mainly Hollywood fare opened at Chestnut Station, with some arthouse fare here and there. One of its biggest attractions was AMADEUS in 70mm. The movie played there for months. I even worked at the Chestnut Station very briefly, for two months, in 1986. Everything was a-okay at Chestnut Station for about 4 years…and then……
Well, first off, Chestnut Station was an Essaness Theatre for just under 2 ½ years. In the Fall of 1985, the Toronto-based theatre chain Cineplex Odeon took over the Plitt Theatres chain. And then, Cineplex Odeon took over the Essaness Theatres chain the following spring. So, it was now Cineplex Odeon Chestnut Station Theatres. Oh boy!!!! Initially, it was a good thing. CO’s top honcho, Garth Drabinsky, was spending money like crazy, and he remodeled many of his new acquisitions, which included the Chestnut Station. He also revamped the Biograph and Lake Shore Theatre on the North Side. Cineplex Odeon was on fire. They were taking over the world….and they closed the last two big Downtown Chicago movie houses in 1988 and January 1989. This is where things started to go downhill around 1988.
Downtown Chicago was once a bustling movie theatre scene. When I was a kid in the 1970s, there were around 13 individual movie theatres still in business. They were going down the tubes and by the mid 1980s, there was about four theatres left. After the United Artists Theatre closed in early 1988 and the Woods closed in early 1989, the rowdy downtown crowd needed someplace to go for their movie fix….so they started checking out the newly-opened (December 1988) Burnham Plaza Theatres ( a 5-lex that originally was supposed to be an Essaness theatre; however after Essaness sold their Chicago area theatres to Cineplex Odeon in 1986, the construction of the new Burnham Plaza became a Cineplex Odeon project), and the former downtown moviegoers also started to patronize the Chestnut Station.
What started out as an unspectacular but still rather nice 5-screen complex on Chicago’s Near North Side, the Chestnut Station became a less desirable location. Horror movies, action movies….the type of movies that attracted the downtown crowd…started playing at the Chestnut Station. There was a tragic shooting of a young woman from Alsip in 1992 outside the Chestnut Station on the opening night of JUICE. She died and the shooter was arrested by theatre security guards. The place was getting so undesirable that by 1996, with the recent opening of Cineplex Odeon’s 600 N. Michigan Theatres, Cineplex Odeon decided to turn Chestnut Station into a 2nd Run, $2 bargain house. One year later, after Thanksgiving weekend, the Chestnut Station Theatres closed forever.
Several years later, there was talk going around that the building that housed the Chestnut Station Theatres was going to be converted into a synagogue, but it never happened, and the building was eventually demolished. Chestnut Station Theatres; 1983-1997. It’s gone."
The Chestnut Station had five screens. Four auditoriums on the main floor; and one puny little auditorium (Theatre 5) upstairs near the rest rooms.