Chicago Theatre
175 N. State Street,
Chicago,
IL
60601
175 N. State Street,
Chicago,
IL
60601
81 people
favorited this theater
One of the grandest movie palaces ever built, this 3500 seat palace opened in 1921, the work of the firm of Rapp & Rapp, the favored architectural firm of the theater’s original operators, the Balaban & Katz chain.
The Chicago was restored in 1986 to its 1930s apperance and now hosts a mix of concerts, live entertainment, and assorted special events (like the annual Glamorama fashion show sponsored by Macy’s -formerly Marshall Field’s- and the ocassional movie screening for the Chicago International Film Festival).
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Recent comments (view all 301 comments)
That ABC installation was pretty elaborate. Cool post Brian.
A couple pics I took of the Chicago Theater at lunch today here and here. Since when has the vertical sign had the Chase logo on it? I just noticed that today. Is nothing sacred anymore from branding? Thankfully it doesn’t appear on the marquee. I took the second pic from the second floor of the new mega-Walgreens next door in the Joffrey Tower.
http://timeoutchicago.com/things-to-do/this-week-in-chicago/15023003/chase-logo-on-chicago-theatre-what%E2%80%99s-up-with-that It was installed about October 3-4, 2011.
That is so bad. It doesn’t bother me on the Oriental or Palace. But this is a symbol of the city.
The sign was always meant to have a name of some sort up there, though.
So is this going to be known as the Chase Chicago Theatre? I thought Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre and Bank of America Theatre were bad enough. As far as having the name up at that part of the sign, that’s true, but it was always the operator of the theater, like Balaban & Katz or Plitt, not a corporate sponsor.
It’s still The Chicago Theatre. The masthead on the website reads “The Chicago Theatre presented by Chase” but I don’t see anywhere else using that verbiage. I figured out the date by going through Flickr.
If you look at the picture at the top of the page, the Chase name is in the wavy horizontal part just above the first C. I noticed it walking by the theater just the other day.
This doesn’t bother me that much. Whatever it takes to keep the theatre open. And besides…at least they didn’t change the name of the theatre to the “Chase Theatre”. I think the real travesty was having the Shubert Theater’s name being changed altogether to the Bank of America Theater. Now THAT’S bad!!!
Years ago when it was showing movies ti had Plitt in the same spot.