Ever since he moved to Uptown in 2006, Chicago writer Robert Loerzel was drawn to one geographical point: the corner of Lawrence and Broadway Avenues. One hundred years ago the intersection was ground zero for entertainment in Chicago: jazz at the Green Mill, dance bands at the Aragon Ballroom, vaudeville performers at the Riviera Theater and Hollywood movies at the Uptown Theatre.
“If I could take a trip and spend a night on the corner in 1925, that would be pretty fun,” he said.
His new book, “The Uptown: Chicago’s Endangered Movie Palace” (CityFiles Press), is the closest thing to a time machine. Available Aug. 18, the day the Uptown opened its doors to the public in 1925, the book features photographs — both archival dating back to its earlier days and those shot over recent years — that reveal the building’s grandeur.
The images also tell the improbability of the theater’s survival. Designed as a temple to silent films, the 46,000-square-feet palace was built for maximum audiences. Next to a wide orchestra pit, the theater featured seating for more than 4,000 people who could exit onto Lawrence Avenue or Magnolia Street while another 4,000 people could stream in after holding in the splendorous lobby.
Waiting to enter the theater from the lobby was part of the experience. There, audiences could look up and blink in the light of three giant chandeliers, and decorative elements such as colored glass windows, murals, jeweled ornaments from France and Italy, French clocks, spires and minarets. Air conditioning, a key feature at a time when such a luxury wasn’t available in apartments or houses, made the Uptown a glamorous escape for ordinary Chicagoans.
The Uptown has been shuttered since 1981, but Loerzel toured the theater three times over the course of working on the book. He said what most impressed him was its colossal scale. “The ceiling is so high, you have columns that go up and up and up,” he said. “Just how elaborately designed it was made it an incredible work of architecture.”
Anticipation for the theater was so high its opening month, three-quarters of a million people attended its first six days of programming, which besides movies, included an orchestra performance of a work by Tchaikovsky, a live performance of a play, a live opera, a demonstration of its Wurlitzer organ, newsreels, and, of course, a film.
But timing worked against the Uptown: Two years later, the blockbuster hit “The Jazz Singer” became the first “talkie,” which ushered recorded sound to the movies and, as a result, ushered out the need for live musicians. The Uptown adjusted, but two years after that, the stock market crash of 1929 announced the Great Depression. Like Covid-19 of the current era, movie palaces struggled and, nationwide, half of them shuttered by 1932. “They stopped building palaces, it no longer makes economic sense,” Loerzel said. And like online streaming today, theater owners had to contend with an emerging technology that was further convincing people to stay home: radio.
Yet, as Loerzel and James Pierce, who wrote the foreword, demonstrate, the Uptown managed to persevere. Theater owners Balaban & Katz tried stunts — “an automobile parade with girls” was one — and lowered ticket prices. They introduced Christmas shows, and, for the first time, concession stands, to bring back audiences and make up for lost revenue. And by late 1949, there were signs of an upswing: Hollywood was in a golden era, and the theater was hosting splashy live entertainment fare, from Ella Fitzgerald to Duke Ellington and his orchestra, to Henny Youngman.
The Uptown’s fate, however, was growing dim. Blight hit the neighborhood, the result of a downturned economy and slumlords who took over multi-unit buildings that previously had been rented to white Southerners who had moved to Chicago seeking work. Television, the next new technology, further convinced audiences to remain home.
Meanwhile, Chicago was joining cities across the nation in demolishing its neighborhood movie palaces to make way for new developments like supermarkets and parking lots, and multiplex theaters became the norm for moviegoing. The theater’s owner started stripping the venue of the very things that gave it grandeur decades ago: The pipe organ was dismantled in 1963, and art and other furnishings were auctioned off later that decade. The theater survived for a few years as a palace for live rock shows — Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Peter Gabriel, Frank Zappa, and the Grateful Dead were its more notable bookings — until it finally closed in 1981. By then, the heating system failed, and structural problems created liability.
Loerzel said the venue’s centennial birthday finds it in limbo. Jerry Mickelson and Arny Granat of Jam Productions in Chicago purchased the building at a public auction in 2008 for $3.2 million. Since then, public and private financing have been difficult to secure, a challenge the COVID-19 pandemic escalated. (Mickelson was not available for an interview at press time.)
At noon on Saturday, the public is invited to participate in a large group photo in front of the Uptown to celebrate its birthday. The Chicago Public Library is also hosting an event for the book, 2 p.m. Sept. 13, at the Harold Washington Library where Loerzel and Pierce will discuss the history.
“Someone needs to figure out some way to open the Uptown in a way that’s practical and achievable,” Loerzel said, adding that he hopes a billionaire will read the book and decide he or she wants to help. “Who this hypothetical billionaire is? I don’t know.”