110 North State Street
Built 1921
Architects: C. Howard Crane & H. Kenneth Franzheim
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The Roosevelt Theater was one of about a dozen major movie houses that
helped make the Loop a center of Midwest movie-going during the 1920s
and 1930s. Within a block of the Roosevelt were the likes of the Chicago,
the State-Lake, the Oriental, the
Woods, and the United Artists theaters.
Like its counterparts, the Roosevelt drew customers from near and far,
including many out-of-towners who might be spending the weekend in the city,
on stop-over from a cross-country train trip, or, for many men during
the Second World War, taking in the sights on a weekend pass.
The Roosevelt opened for business in April of 1921 with Constance Talmadge
in Lessons of Love. The theater was situated on the west side of
State Street, about midway between Randolph and Washington. Located just
one block to the north was the Chicago
Theater, another prominent Loop movie palace, which opened just six
months after the Roosevelt in late October of 1921. Directly across from
theater's lobby was the main entrance of the
Marshall Field and Company department store.
Designed with a neo-classical façade, the Roosevelt seated just under 1,600.
In 1923, the theater was purchased by the renowned Balaban and Katz theater
circuit as the company expanded its dominance in the Chicago movie market.
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Roosevelt
Theater, ca. 1973 |
By the 1970s, the Roosevelt, like the other Loop movie palaces, began to
languish from the combined effects of inadequate marketing, declining
capital investment, substandard upkeep, the nationwide drop in movie
attendance, and the increasing (and sometimes unfounded) undesirability
of the Loop as an entertainment destination. Theater management, in order
to keep revenues up, presented shows geared toward a primarily African-
American audience.
Despite its difficulties, the Roosevelt continued to show a modest
operating profit throughout the 1970s. Its closure in September of 1979
was due primarily to the forces of City Hall and real estate speculation.
The city had long sought to redevelop the one-block parcel of land on part
of which the Roosevelt stood. Known by city planners as "Block 37," it was
hoped that construction of a large office building and retail center would
help revitalize the Loop's then-stagnant retail and theater trade. In the
early 1980s, the Roosevelt, along with the
United Artists Theater and virtually the rest of Block 37, was razed.
Redevelopment of Block 37, however, faltered due in part to misguided city planning
and the collapse of the real estate market later in the decade.
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Suggested Reading
· George D. Bushnell, "Chicago's Magnificent
Movie Palaces," Chicago History 6 (Summer 1977),
99-106.
· Ben Hall, Best Remaining Seats: The Story of the
Golden Age of the Movie Palace (DaCapo Press, 1988).
· Lary May,
Screening
Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture
Industry (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983).
· Michael Putnam,
Silent
Screens: The Decline and Transformation of the American Movie
Theater (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000).
· Robert Sklar,
Movie-Made
America: A Cultural History of American Movies
(Vintage, 1994).
· Maggie Valentine,
The
Show Starts on the Sidewalk: An Architectural History of the
Movie Theater (Yale Univ. Press, 1996).
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Illustrations: "Roosevelt Theater," undated, Historic
Architectural/Archeological Resources Geographic Information System,
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency
[http://gis.hpa.state.il.us/hargis/Reports/photos/Cook/66114.jpg]
(7 November 2003), cropped.
Sources: Ross Miller, Here's the Deal: The Buying and Selling
of a Great American City (New York: Knopf, 1996).
Page authored: 24 March 1997
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