#chicago uptown

[ex-frat-man]

[kodachrome-net]

Uptown Theater, Chicago, June 1990

[federer7]

Uptown. Children at an apartment entrance. Chicago. 1965

Photo: Danny Lyon

[urbs-in-horto]

Green Mill miniature by John Sharp

[89degree]

It has been a while since I got out to take photos. Still dealing with the psychological fallout of Covid. The last few times out have been uninspiring at best. I have been reading the collected works of St Teresa of Avila Vol.2 ( just started really). She was discouraged too but for different reasons but her perseverance might have inspired me. She wanted to do big things for God but being a woman in the 16th century she had few options and she knew it. So she looked for things she could do. She could not preach but she could help and pray and teach like minded women to serve in that way. When I started taking pictures I wanted to change the world not knowing what that meant or how to do it. Little did I know that photography would become a prayer language for me. I can't travel the world, don't, have a studio. I manage to keep myself in enough gear to do art and record the happenings in my community Though I am not a prolific as I used to be. I, too, am a victim of our times. I feel the resentments from people on the street to the presence of my camera. So it gets harder. Today I almost turned around and went home because the light that got me out had quickly disappeared. I went on passed the hospital though the tent city under the viaduct and into Montose Park. I tried a few handheld IR photos at about 1.6sec. to get a feel for composing trough the EVF with suss a dark filter. Truly uninspired images. I pushed on toward the beach . Again I was about to turn back after I took more of the same. But I heard machinery clanking out on the beach went to check it out. This is the first of 3 infrared images, the only one hand held. Sometimes I tell myself that there is nothing out there for me , I want to go somewhere where the paint is old and the colors ... different , and just living is a challenge . Just living is challenge here, and expressing that reality with a side of hope is what I do. I like this image. The sidewalk through no effort of its own is not completely covered and these three trees seem stand watch over it.

Peace and Grace. ( the 14th day of advent.)

[urbanchicagoan]

Alley mural in Uptown, Chicago (12/7/2024)

Un mural en un callejón en Uptown, Chicago (7/12/2024)

[iheartvelma]

they opened a Miniso on Broadway near Argyle!

[pedestrianlens]

[northemerifuck]

[archinform]

The Riviera Theater, Uptown, Chicago

4746 N Racine Ave, Chicago, IL 60640

Opened Oct. 2, 1918

C.W. Rapp and George Rapp, architects

Balaban & Katz, original owners

Seating Capacity: 2,500

Jam Productions, current owners

Current use: Concert venue

Completed in 1917 by architects George and C.W. Rapp (Rapp & Rapp), it was built as a movie theater for the Balaban & Katz chain. Transformed into a private nightclub in 1986, the Riviera Theatre is now one of Chicago’s premier concert and special events venues.

Jam Productions website https://www.jamusa.com/venues/riviera-theatre

Broadway and Lawrence, Uptown

Two theaters: the Riviera and the Uptown

Photo on display in the Riviera lobby, showing original chandelier, now gone, and the box office, which remains

The Riviera Theatre was the largest and most ornate of the movie theatres of the Uptown neighborhood until the opening of the Uptown Theatre almost a decade later. Opened October 2, 1918 with Lina Cavalieri in “A Woman of Impulse”. Built at a cost of well over half a million dollars (delayed by almost two years due to World War I), this Rapp & Rapp-designed house located on N. Racine Avenue between Broadway and W. Lawrence Avenue, originally seated 2,600 and its building also featured eight storefronts and over 30 apartments. Initially the Riviera Theatre was to have been operated by the Jones, Linick & Schaefer chain, which operated several Loop movie houses in the 1910’s and 1920’s such as the Orpheum Theatre, the Rialto Theatre, and the McVickers Theatre. However, the Riviera Theatre ended up becoming the second major theatre of the Balaban & Katz circuit, which at the time also included the Central Park Theatre, now regarded as Chicago’s first true ‘movie palace’. Featuring movies accompanied by the orchestra of S. Leopold Kohl, the Riviera Theatre also featured “high class” musical acts on stage. It was initially equipped with a Barton theatre organ which was later replaced by a Wurlitzer organ. The theatre mainly catered to the upper-middle class residents of the Uptown area, especially women. The Riviera Theatre continued to remain one of the neighborhood’s most popular movie houses for decades, even once the almost 4,500-seat Uptown Theatre opened just down the street. By 1977 it was in its final days as a full-time movie theatre as occasional live concerts were beginning to be staged. It became first a nightclub in 1986, and a few years later, after the nightclub closed, one of Chicago’s most popular concert venues, as it remains today. It still has a feel of faded elegance to it, and in 2000 the concert hall was named one of the historically important structures making up the Uptown Square National Historic District.

www.cinematreasures.org

In a scene still from the American drama film A Woman of Impulse (1918), Leonora, the opera singer known as "La Vecci" (played by Lina Cavalieri) sits in her backstage dressing room receiving visitors.

The Riviera Theater was open to the public on the weekend of October 14-15, as part of the Open House Chicago weekend sponsored by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. It was my first time inside the theater.

Jam Productions thoughtfully provided a booklet with a history of the Riviera and reproductions of archival photos. A couple of the images are scanned below.

Theater lobby

Such stage sets were often inserted for the performance of "prologues" or musical numbers before the movie screen would be lowered for the film showing.

As usual, interior photography is difficult without a tripod, and though some of these images are blurry, they give a good impression of what remains a stunning interior.

Sometimes thought of as a "companion" to the much larger Uptown theater just across Lawrence on Broadway, the Riviera was built first, and inspired the slightly later Chicago Theater in the Loop.

The purple wall color is not original, but there are no current plans to change it to the muted tones of the original scheme. A couple of original stencil designs have been uncovered in the lobbies, which will eventually be reproduced. The murals in the auditorium are faded and covered by grime and nicotine, but being backed by heavy paper rather than canvas, their restoration will prove tricky, and there is no current timeline for this process.

I was a bit mystified by the lack of theater seats on the main floor, which resembles a large concrete-floored nightclub rather than a theater. Never having been to a concert in this venue, I imagined what a standing-room crowd would experience here. the balcony level, however, has recently-installed theater seats, and seems a comfortable place from which to enjoy music.

The lobby features one of the original chandeliers from the Granada Theater in Rogers Park; somewhere there is a companion piece, which Jam hopes to acquire eventually for the outer lobby. The huge light fixture isn't exactly elegant; seen from the upper lobby, its design seems rather awkward. That, in my opinion, is one of the weaknesses of early movie palaces, which strove for an overall "wow" effect rather than architectural refinement or historical accuracy of detail.

Here are my photographs from my visit to the theater on October 14:

The Granada chandelier in the Riviera lobby

That's Chrissie Hynde

One of the depictions of the four seasons in the auditorium. The painting isn't nearly this clear or colorful; it's been Photoshopped. It appears muddy as in the next photo.

The six side light fixtures were later additions, and were simply hung from the center of the oval paintings.

[the-city-in-mind]

This is exciting. As a side effect of the CTA’s Red-Purple Modernization program there’s land open for redevelopment and they’re looking at upzoning and designating parts as pedestrian-focused, which would bar car-centric businesses (no curb cuts).

You can view the preliminary zoning proposals here (PDF)

[sidewalkdatestamps]

[kodachrome-net]

Uptown Theater, Chicago, June 1990

[utilitygraffiti]

[urbs-in-horto]

Views of Rainbo Gardens at Clark Street and Lawrence Avenue in the 1920's. Outdoor entertainment venues were to be found all over the northside. The Green Mill was a short stumble down Lawrence, The Bismarck Gardens further south at Broadway and Grace. More info on Rainbo's long history here

[89degree]

Perfect as they are. Children’s chalk art from the side yard June 3, 2024