A Historical Look
at the Origins of Chicago’s Theatre
BY BEN WINTERS
 The new Goodman Theatre is on the site of the old Harris/Selwyn "twin theatres". |
With all the
hoopla surrounding the "revitalization" of the downtown theatre district,
from "Broadway in Chicago" to the new Goodman, we quickly forget that
for something to be revitalized, it had to be vital in the first place.
On and off, the Loop has been a theatre hot spot since before there was
an Uptown, Boy’s Town or Bucktown. The first legitimate theatrical
production in Chicago went up in 1837, the same year the city was granted
a charter. In other words, there has literally been theatre in Chicago
as long as there has been a Chicago. Here’s a peak at the early forays
of theatre in Chicago.
The first recorded theatrical amusement was an event that took place on February 24th, 1833 at Dexter Groves Mansion House on Lake Street. The show was given by a gentlemen named Bower and reportedly included magic, ventriloquism, an "impersonation of the Fire King," and various other "stunts." Tickets went for 50 cents or a quarter for children, and the show began at "early candlelight." Alas, there were no newspapers present at the time and thus, no theatre critics, which was probably for the best given their typical disapproval of one-man shows.
Technically, however, the first production was J.S. Knowles’ The Hunchback, (there are varying reports on what the show was, but I’m going with Robert L. Sherman’s massively detailed book "Chicago Stage: It’s Records and Achievements," which includes a full cast list for the show), mounted in October 1837 in the converted dining rooms of the Sauganash Hotel located on Market Street about a hundred yards south of Lake–the same spot where in 1860 Abraham Lincoln was nominated the Republican candidate.
The producers of The Hunchback were Henry Isherwood and Alexander McKinzie, and with the success of the production, McKinzie decided to move the troupe–dubbed the Illinois Theatrical Company–to a permanent home upstairs from an auction house on the west side of Dearborn Street at South Water Street, in the west side of the Loop. Despite protests from a citizen’s council that a permanent Loop theatre would be both a fire hazard and a moral hazard, they opened the new space with The Stranger in May of 1838. Soon after, McKinzie invited his nephew, Joseph Jefferson II, to come out with his family and help establish the permanent company.
Here’s a description of the audiences, from an account written for the Chicago Historical Society’s magazine in the 1940’s: "…an interesting assortment. Half-breeds, sailors, an occasional 'wharf-rat’ and the elegantly-attired dress circle alike enjoyed the highly dramatic plays of the era." In September the producers made a public appeal for female patrons, giving assurances to Chicago’s womenfolk that a policeman was on duty at each performance to prevent indecent affronts, and further pointing out that the women of St. Louis and Springfield were regularly attending their local theatres.
After producing at least 25 plays in rotating repertory during the 1939 season, the Illinois Theatrical Company went out on tour and never came back.
That might have been the end of the road for Chicago theatre, if it wasn’t for John Blake Rice, who in 1847 constructed a theatre at Randolph and Dearborn, which folks called Rice’s Theatre, Rice’s Chicago Theatre, or, it now being the only playhouse around, simply The Theatre. Call it what you will: Rice’s building was the first to house a permanent theatre company in the city, a company that included James H. McVicker, later to open his own famous downtown playhouse.
Unlike its predecessor, which was somewhat plain and poorly lit, Rice’s emporium was nicely set up, with tiered seats, a gallery, ventilation provided by windows and heating by wood stoves. Ticket sales–50 cents for the "dress circle," 25 cents for the "parquette," 20 cents in the pit–were good enough to allow Rice to enlarge and redecorate after the 1847 season, just in time for the whole place to burn down in July.
In the 1840’s, the population of Chicago was around 16,000, and the town still possessed many of the rough and tumble qualities of a frontier outpost. Patrons en route to Rice’s theatre made their way on muddy, unpaved roads; planks were laid down on the major thoroughfares in 1849, but they kept breaking and splashing mud on people. And two cholera epidemics raged through the city in the 40s, no doubt laying the groundwork for today’s pre-curtain announcement about unwrapping any throat lozenges before the show begins.
Rice rebuilt his theatre in 1851 around the corner on Dearborn between Randolph and Washington. The new playhouse was bigger and more elaborately decorated than before. Rice eliminated the pit, and added two "theatre saloons" and fancy new seats with sloped backs. Once again, concerned citizens waged war on Rice’s Theatre and the moral chaos it was sure to inflict on the populace. The owner tried to deflect this criticism by refusing admission to any woman unaccompanied by a male escort, by promising to maintain order in the house, and by carefully avoiding any material that could be viewed as improper.
In the face of mounting competition, Rice closed the second theatre in 1855. But not before establishing his own status as the most versatile understudy in Chicago theatre history. Rice would go in for any actor who didn’t show up for a performance, and would always throw a cloak over his head and run on stage for mob scenes. According to one observer, Rice played Othello up to the intermission one night, at which point the tardy actor arrived and finished up the evening.
Theatres began to spring up all over downtown, including the first McVicker’s Theatre erected in 1857 for $85,000 on West Madison Street. Supposedly, the actor James McVicker wanted to call his new playhouse the Washington Theatre, but he was too famous, and audiences insisted on calling the place after the owner. In the following years the Loop saw the advent of Aiken’s Theatre (soon renamed the Dearborn Theatre), the Olympic at Clark and Monroe, Colonel Wood’s Museum, Bryan’s Hall, another Aiken’s Theatre, and the Varieties Theatre, which promised "50 young ladies" dancing on opening night.
The melodramatic style popular at the time could be seen all over the Loop in plays like The Stranger and Rough Diamond, along with comedies, animal acts and copious Shakespeare. In particular, North’s Amphitheatre at Clark and LaSalle was noted "for the display of animal activity." Edwin Booth appeared at Varieties in 1867 doing Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice in daily rotation. The best seats went for an exorbitant $1.50.
In 1871, there was an enormous fire that destroyed the entire city, presenting a considerable setback for the theatrical community. The Great Chicago Fire wasn’t the first (as we’ve seen), nor would it be the last to wreak such havoc. In 1903, at the Iroquois Theatre, a popular new playhouse at Randolph and State where the Oriental now stands, a matinee blaze killed approximately 600 people.
But, says Tim Samuelson of the Historical Society, it was only in the building boom after the Great Fire that Chicago’s theatre owners began to create truly extravagant palaces for dramatic entertainment. "Many of the theatres that dated from the 1870’s and 1880’s were really quite ornate," says Samuelson. "There was almost a competition among the theatre owners to have the most elegant, beautiful theatre. They were constantly remodeling, changing them to make one better than the other."
Only one theatre, the Globe, had survived the Great Fire. But soon downtown was full of theatres again, places like the Grand Opera House, the Columbia, the Illinois, and the Great Northern.
Entering the scene at this point was Dankmar Adler, architect and partner to Louis Sullivan, who according to Samuelson was "a master of theatre design: For acoustics, for sightlines, for safe exiting, these were all considerations where Adler was thought to be the very best. He did work in creating or remodeling many of the theatres in Chicago."
Adler and Sullivan started their partnership with the remodeling of the McVicker’s Theatre. "It had reopened right after the Great Fire," explains Samuelson, "But [the owners] felt the need to remodel it again to keep up with the other theatres…in 1884 they did an extensive remodeling. Then the whole thing burned up and they had to do it again."
Anyone sensing a theme? Even after the Great Fire, the occasional conflagration was a fact of life, to the extent that theatre owners "more or less took them as a matter of course," says Samuelson.
And fires weren’t the only obstacle facing the now-bustling Chicago theatrical community; the post-Fire boom would peak in the early 1920’s, and soon the drama scene was hit by the double whammy of motion pictures and the Great Depression. By 1947, the 100-year anniversary of the debut of the first Rice’s Theatre, there were only nine "legitimate" theatres in the Loop (including the Harris and Selwyn theatres, on the corner where the Goodman is now moving in) down from 23 in 1922.
Times were tough for theatre, and patrons and producers alike spoke with one voice: We preferred the fires.