Lans Theatre
3524 Ridge Road,
Lansing,
IL
60438
3524 Ridge Road,
Lansing,
IL
60438
7 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 28 comments
September 11, 2022 article below with the complete Lans Theatre building history from The Lansing Journal. Pipes & Pizza was opened in 1983 by WGN Meteorologist Roger Triemstra and his cousins. Today it is Beggars Pizza.
https://thelansingjournal.com/2022/09/11/lansing-history-the-lans-theater-building/
This opened on January 29th, 1947. Grand opening ad in the photo section.
Thanks for sharing your memories Fred. I have never been to the Lans. I only shared the photos and descriptions as I found them from the various sources I credited.
Speaking of mementos, my new avatar is my one and only memento from the Lans. It’s a letter from the marquee. One day the manager (Her name will not be mentioned in an effort to protect her family) walks up to me and my friend Rob, and she asks if we want to earn some extra hours by painting the marquee letters. In all honesty they looked mostly fine to us. They were black and had an array of chips, dings, and rust speckles. Rob and I were both confused when our manager showed us the many cans of red paint she had purchased. The color change would only be noticeable to people driving past the sign during the day. Once it got dark enough for the lights to come on, they were essentially silhouettes. Painting the metal letters was going to be a tough job but we were being paid by the hour. In reality, we had no idea of what we were doing, but we tried. Rob dipped the face of the letters in the red paint while I quickly painted the sides. There wasn’t much elbow room down the the basement so could only do 20 letters or so at a time. While the paint dried we went across the street and stuffed our faces with pie. When we got back the letters looked pretty good with only a few touch ups to do. It was when we were picking up the painted letters that we noticed that enough red paint had profusely dripped off the letters.
So, being the clever fellows we were, we went around to gather up as much old newspaper we could. After spreading out a bed of newspaper, we tried painting another batch of letters, unfortunately to mixed results. The red paint had slowly dripped onto the newspaper, but then it soaked through the newspaper down to the basement floor. So, we were stuck with a bunch of red marquee letters with a halo of newspaper scraps on them. As time went on we found we could paint the letters with only a modicum of waste and mess. It’s been almost forty minutes to notice since the letter painting took place, but I’m betting if I could somehow get down to the basement of the pizza place, the outline of those two sets of letters would still be there.
I actually took four of the marquee letters: FRED, but over time enough people had pestered me for the letter to their name. There went R and D. The E is probably in a box buried under a pile of Black Widow spiders. I really only wanted the F, so if it’s gone forever, I hope the new owners are enjoying theirs. During the years that passed I kept the F on my office wall. It was getting a bit dull and full of dings, so I decided to paint it myself. I wasn’t happy with black or gold, so I used a sparkly gold paint. It looks so good I’m tempted to try and track down the RED to make a set.
Anywho, I just thought I’d share.
Fred
Thanks for the note, Mike. Hey, DaveZorning, you’ve been talking about photos of the Lans for a while, but were you aware there was a glass etching of photo INSIDE the ticket taker’s booth. I think at one time they would tape the current show schedule to it, but in ‘76 when I started there is was just this black window in the red battered ticket box. Is this old news to you? I wonder what happened to that ticket box.
A video of the current Organ arrangement on the inside. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ-h2jC3Ulc&list=PL9vEkaKp04J6DadeI1goKj-VvOv5WZi35&index=12
Replacement parts for the marquee were becoming hard to find. It has been replaced by a modern facade. They attempted to keep the classic style.
Also the 1969 photo I added had this description.
January 1969 photo & copy credit The Lansing Journal. New owner William Mallers took over. They remodeled some of the interior and they starrted showing “First Runs” of older movies
The Lans had a a pre-opening event on January 28, 1947. An image of the invite has been added to the Photos Section, courtesy of the Lansing Historical Society. So the Overview should be changed to Opened January 28,1947.
1965 photo added courtesy of Brian Pearson.
August 1954 photo added courtesy of Lansing Historical.
As a kid in Lansing in the ‘50s, I remember that the Lans had a unique programming approach—it would play family/kids films Friday-Monday, then offer more adult fare the nights of Tuesday-Thursday. And it never offered double features…. we would head to Hammond, Indiana, theaters for twin bills.
Please note, there is an pipe organ in the old Lans Theatre, the console was moved to I assume where center stage would have been, (if there was a stage) the organ is played for the entertainment of the diners. The Pizza is very good.
In my days with Loews we had our conncession girls trained to ask if the patrons want “Butter Flavoring” since it was not really butter and to avoid any lawsuits.
fred,enjoyed the story on Buttered popcorn.I have been on CT a couple of years and that was the first time i had ever read that on the Butter.It was the same thing at the theatres I worked at.thanks.
Thanks for the photo Don, and the story anon99.
It is a summer morning and Scott and I do our usual of collecting pop bottles from sand lots and pooling our money together. You get 2 cent deposit on the bottles, which we turn in at the meat market. The movie cost 35 cents, and you want 10 cents for popcorn and 5 cents for pop. 50 cents total. Then we ride our bikes over to the Lans from the Indiana side. The movie matinee is “The First Men in the Moon” based on the novel by HG Wells, released in 1964, and I was eleven.
From around 1949 a photo of the Lans Theatre in Lansing.
There were some photos in Boxoffice in November 1947:
http://tinyurl.com/ydqwqlk
I was on my way home one evening and as I walked passed the Lans that they just finished they were having there Grand opening for all the dignitaries in town. The door was open so I walked right in and passed through the lobby into the theater. There was a 4 foot high wall before the seating so I leaned on that wall and watched the movie. The movie was Three Little Girls In Blue with the Andrews Sisters.I think it was early in 1947. I later got a job there and was a usher and did other things like make popcorn, clean the popcorn machine, change the outside marquees and the posters discribing the movie. It was great having it in town. Rich
803, well wha’d'yanno, didn’t think it was that big. The walls were stucco painted with a bizarre underwater theme basically aqua or blue-green with 18" wide twisted strands of darker blue and green seaweed going up perhaps 15 feet, five foot high sea horses floating about and huge seashells. The house lights were huge wall sconces that looked like immense scallop shells; I regret not being able to obtain one but I had left town by then.
As I said, it was a tad bizarre, but at least it was decorated unlike today’s boxes.
Construction on the Lans Theatre began during WWII, but was delayed by material shortages. Kalafat Brothers, the operators of the house, scheduled the opening for January 29, 1947, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of February 15 that year. The Lans was designed by Chicago theater architect Erwin G Fredrick.
The Lans Theater now Beggars Pizza is a building that is now 61 years old which means the Lans Theater must have opened in 1947. Lansing was settled by a lot of Dutch folks and those Dutch Reformed are pretty strict so it’s understandable what kind of movies the Lans showed. It’s a wonder they allowed the theater to be open on Sunday!
When it was Pipes and Pizza, Roger Triemstra, the WGN AM720 Radio, Superstation WGN TV9, Meteorologist from 1965 to 1998 was one of the owners. As far as I know a theater pipe organ had never been installed in the theater and the owners installed a 4 manual Barton Theater Pipe Organ. I don’t remember how many ranks and I don’t recall where it came from, but it’s a safe to say it came from Wisconsin cause all Bartons came from Oshkosh.
I don’t know about now, but as of last year Glenn Tallar was playing the Barton each Tuesday and Saturday night for Beggars Pizza. He’s 20, lives out southwest of Chicago in Homer Glen, is a Lockport Township High School graduate and goes to Columbia College. He sure makes it a fun place to eat pizza!
“Gee Dad, it’s a Barton!”
This was indeed a great place. I think I saw every Disney movie there from 1974 until it closed!!!
Listed in the Film Daily Yearbook,1950 edition it had a seating capacity of 803.