Lakeside Theatre
4730 N. Sheridan Road,
Chicago,
IL
60640
4730 N. Sheridan Road,
Chicago,
IL
60640
4 people
favorited this theater
Opened in 1915 for the Ascher Brothers circuit (two years later taken over by the Lubliner & Trinz circuit) in the once-fashionable Uptown neighborhood, the Lakeside was located on Sheridan Road at Lakeside Place, not far from Lincoln Park. Originally, the theater sat well over 1000.
The Lakeside Theatre closed around late 1966 or the beginning of 1967, and was acquired by the Dance Center of Columbia College in 1970.
Thirty years later Columbia College vacated the building for a larger, new home in the South Loop. The former Lakeside today houses a youth center.
Contributed by
Bryan Krefft, Ray Martinez
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Recent comments (view all 17 comments)
The auditorium did seem large. You could have told me there were more than 960 seats in there and I would have believed it. I was inside in 1993 for a show when it was the Columbia College Dance Center. It seemed to be more or less intact at that point. Who knows what it is like now.
From the Chicago Tribune: June 19, 1955:
BEAUTY QUEEN TO BE
SELECTED BY POST
OF JEWISH WAR VETS
Uptown Edgewater post,
Jewish War Veterans, will
sponsor a motion picture party
and the selection of a beauty
queen, to be crowned Miss Up-
town Edgwater, June 28 in
the Lakeside theater, 4730
Sheridan rd.
Entrants in the queen con-
test must be between 18 and
25 years of age. Ben Goldblatt
is in charge of registration.
Judges will include radio
performer Marty Faye, Patri-
cia Vance, Ald. Freeman [48th],
and Theodore Pickard, past de-
partment commander, J.W.W.
In my post from 9-15-04, I was off by about a year re: the closing of the Lakeside. From the Chicago Sun Times movie directory dated Monday Oct. 24, 1966: LAKESIDE 4730 N. Sheridan Road “VISIT to a SMALL PLANET” “AROUND THE WORLD UNDER THE SEA”. I’m pretty sure the Lakeside closed by late ‘66 or early “67.
Here’s one of my pictures of the Lakeside from yesterday morning:
View link
Took me a while to track this theater down. I attended a dance show here that a friend’s sister performed in around 1986.
They performed “Businessman’s Lunch”, which included a famous typewriter themed dance routine.
I asked the school about the theatre’s history then, but had completely forgotten about it until now. I recall the stage as being quite wide. And the seating was nothing like an old theater. I believe we sat on platorms that had been built at different levels. Like a theater in the round would be. But the stage was still along the back, West wall as I recall.
I do not recall anything else about the interior.
Thanks David.
Photos of the Lakeside from 1936: Lakeside Theater.
All 5 photos of the Lakeside as a functioning movie house were taken in 1961. I worked there as an assistant manager when I was an art student in Chicago.
Thanks for those great photos of the Lakeside, Jon. Love that triple feature! The auditorium- more beautiful than I recall. Most unusual thing about the Lakeside- the location of the mens room. Literally just a few steps away from the exit doors and the sidewalk.
Thank you Ken. Glad you like the photos. Truth be told, I probably spent more hours at the Lakeside than I did in class.