Roll Call Inside the Uptown Theatre

Between 1918 and 1921, the synthesis of entertainment team Balaban and Katz with architectural duo Rapp and Rapp helped popularize the concept of the movie palace. The palaces were entertainment hubs that, unlike vaudeville and burlesque theaters, offered entertainment suitable for the whole family. Although Balaban and Katz built several movie palaces in Chicago, the Uptown Theatre was their crowning achievement.

Its decorative splendor included gilded corridors and ceilings, oriental rugs, elaborate murals, heavy drapery, massive chandeliers, and gargoyles. Even still, the Uptown Theatre stands at 4816 N. Broadway Avenue with its 104-foot deteriorating terra-cotta, Spanish-gothic façade.

For the past 30 years, the Uptown Theatre has been closed to the public. And thanks to former Mayor Daley’s effort to stabilize a theater district in the loop, the Uptown district was hit with a tax increase in the early ’90s, leaving the theater in a state of total neglect. 

But the now-dubbed “Uptown Square Historic District” has development plans for retail, dining, and entertainment—including talk of a $70 million restoration plan for the Uptown Theatre. After continued efforts from advocacy groups to make sure the Uptown is conserved under the city and state governments—and a piqued interest from the Wilco-loving, ballet-dancing Mayor Rahm Emanuel—plans to reform the Uptown neighborhood into the “Uptown Music District” seem to be becoming increasingly plausible.

Now the Uptown Theatre is under the ownership of Jam Productions, which purchased the building for $3.2 million in July 2008 with the intent to turn it into a premier music venue. To help bring this vision to fruition, Jam CEO Jerry Mickelson has recently brought on Phil Tagami, the man responsible for the restoration of Oakland California’s similarly ornate Fox Theater and, according to the Chicago Tribune, the two have been in meetings all week with city officials to discuss their options.

With any luck, the theater will be able to fill its 4,000-plus seats and Broadway-sized stage in the foreseeable future, but until then, a few noted points from the Uptown’s past:

• The Uptown’s grand opening was celebrated with the Central Uptown Parade, a 200-float affair sprawling from Montrose Avenue, Argyle Street, Racine Avenue, and Lake Michigan. Pairing the sweltering August sun with the packed crowd, the massive parade was littered with dehydrated women passed out in the streets—luckily there were 500 cops on duty for damage control.

• Advertised as “an acre of seats in a magic city,” the Uptown Theatre opened itself to a frenzy of more than 12,000 Chicagoans all vying for their spot in the 4,381-seat auditorium. Among those admitted was “city of the big shoulders” poet Carl Sandburg, reviewing the theater’s first show, The Lady Who Lied, for the Chicago Tribune.

• The 46,000-square-foot venue is the largest freestanding theater in the country. It staffed more than 130 people in its prime, including 34 orchestral musicians, a crew of firemen, and a resident nurse.

• The Uptown’s technological magnificence involved a 10,000-pipe Wurlitzer organ (yeah, 10-stinkin’-thousand), newfangled 20th-century lighting and climate control systems, and every seat was guaranteed to give its occupant “perfect vision and hearing.” At the time, the theater was Chicago’s beacon of modernity in the arts.

• The theater also doubled as a music venue, hosting everyone from historically great performers in its early days to drug-culture icons like Frank Zappa and The Grateful Dead during the theater’s brief 1970s revival.

• The interior for “Duncan’s Toy Chest” in Home Alone 2: Lost In New York was actually the Uptown Theatre lobby, festively decorated—while the outside was shot at The Rookery at 209 S. LaSalle St.