The Paradise Theatre was a
movie palace located in Chicago's
West Garfield Park
West Garfield Park on the West Side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of 77 officially designated Chicago community areas. It is directly west of Garfield Park.
Neighborhood boundaries
The boundaries of West Garfield Park are NORTH: W. Kinzie St. ...
neighborhood. Its address was 231 N. Crawford Avenue,
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, coordinates =
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. Located near the intersection of West
Madison Street and Crawford (now
Pulaski Road) in the
West Garfield Park
West Garfield Park on the West Side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of 77 officially designated Chicago community areas. It is directly west of Garfield Park.
Neighborhood boundaries
The boundaries of West Garfield Park are NORTH: W. Kinzie St. ...
area of Chicago's West Side.
History
The Paradise Theatre was built by the
Balaban and Katz
Balaban and Katz Theater Corporation, or B&K, was a theatre corporation which owned a chain of motion picture theaters in Chicago and surrounding areas. It was founded by Barney Balaban (later long-time President of Paramount Pictures), his six ...
chain of movie theaters and opened on September 14, 1928. It was promoted as the world's most beautiful theater for its stunning interior and exterior beauty. It is regarded as one of the finest designs by architect
John Eberson
John Adolph Emil Eberson (January 2, 1875 – March 5, 1954) was an Austrian-American architect best known for the development and promotion of movie palace designs in the atmospheric theatre style. He designed over 500 theatres in his lifetime, ea ...
, as the sheer opulence and intricate craftsmanship that went into the theater made it a showpiece in and of itself. Unfortunately, flaws in the design (blamed on the vast domed ceiling in the over 3,500-seat auditorium) were exposed with the advent of talking pictures. Poor acoustics eventually cost the theater its attendance as neighborhood movie-goers would eventually turn to the nearby Mark Brothers showplace, the
Marbro Theatre. As a result, business at the Paradise never recovered.
The Paradise Theatre's demise came in 1956, when Balaban and Katz closed the theater, demolished the building and sold the land to be developed as a supermarket. The theater that was "built to stand forever" almost lived up to that claim: what was estimated to have been a six-month demolition job ended up taking two years.
Organ
The Paradise Theatre was home to a large
Wurlitzer
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...
theatre organ
A theatre organ (also known as a theater organ, or, especially in the United Kingdom, a cinema organ) is a type of pipe organ developed to accompany silent films, from the 1900s to the 1920s.
Theatre organs have horseshoe-shaped arrangements ...
, catalog number Opus 1942. The organ console contained five
manuals (keyboards), one of only three such instruments ever made by the Wurlitzer company. The organ, which had 21 ranks of pipes, was removed from the theater in 1948. It was installed in the Los Angeles home studio of Richard Vaughn, an executive at the
Hi-Fi Records label. The organ was utilized by Hi-Fi to record a series of noted stereo record albums in the 1950s featuring organist
George Wright George Wright may refer to:
Politics, law and government
* George Wright (MP) (died 1557), MP for Bedford and Wallingford
* George Wright (governor) (1779–1842), Canadian politician, lieutenant governor of Prince Edward Island
* George Wright ...
. In 1969 the instrument was reinstalled in the Phoenix, Arizona home of William Brown. Brown enlarged the organ to 34 ranks. Since 2007, the organ has been in storage in Phoenix.
Styx album
Despite its financial issues, the Paradise Theatre remains a part of popular culture. Much of its notability is due to the Chicago-based rock band
Styx's highly successful 1980 album ''
Paradise Theatre''.
Lead singer and keyboardist
Dennis DeYoung
Dennis DeYoung (born February 18, 1947) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer. He was a founding member of the rock band Styx, and served as its primary lead vocalist and keyboardist from 1972 until 1999. DeYoung was th ...
described the concept album as a fictional account of Chicago's Paradise Theatre from its opening to closing (and eventual abandonment), serving as a metaphor for changing times in America from the late 1970s into the 1980s.
The theater on the album's cover art doesn't resemble the real Paradise Theatre, appearing closer to another 1920s Chicago movie palace, the
Granada Theatre.
External links
Paradise Theater, Jazz Age ChicagoParadise Theatreat
Cinema Treasures
Cinema Treasures is a website launched in 2000 in the United States documenting theaters both extant and no longer in existence. It was created by Ross Melnick and Patrick Crowley. Melnick co-authored a book by the same name.
The book explores the ...
database
References
{{coord, 41, 53, 3.9, N, 87, 43, 32.0, W, region:US-IL_type:landmark, display=title
Former buildings and structures in Chicago
Demolished theatres in Illinois
Cinemas and movie theaters in Chicago
Former cinemas in the United States