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| The Woods Theater at the corner of Dearborn and Randolph with about ten years of life remaining (Photo Courtesy of streetsandoul.com) |
The poem applies to great cities as well, and it fits especially well with the rise of Chicago as a world-class city. In "growing up" cities many times leave behind the buildings of their early years, tearing down innovative structures and then forgetting about them as progress sweeps the population into the future. So once in awhile I intend to blog about the great buildings that down may be forgotten as up the city has grown.
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| The Borden Block Courtesy of chuckmanchicagonostalgia |
The Borden Block was demolished in 1916 to make way for the Woods Theater, which survived for 74 years until it, too, was razed in 1990. The last two films shown in the theater before it closed in January of 1989 show how bad things had gotten in the theater district. I'm Gonna Get You Sucka and Hellraiser II entertained a scattering of moviegoers before the screen of the Woods finally went dark.
The Chicago Tribune of January 8, 1989 lamented the loss, not just of the Woods, but of all the Loop's movie palaces. "The demise of the theater where Gone with the Wind premiered on a reserved-seat basis in 1940, beginning an engagement that lasted an entire year, will make Monday the first day in more than three-quarters of a century that the city's Loop will be without a movie theater," wrote Rudolph Unger in The Trib.
According to the Cinema Treasures website The Woods was named after Colonel J. H. Wood who ran Wood's Museum at Randolph and Clark Streets until it was destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871.
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| What was left of Wood's Museum after the fire (Courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org) |
The Woods was far from the biggest movie palace in the Loop; it seated just over 1,100 customers. The United Artists Theater, for example, just across Randolph Street had seating for over 1,700. The Rialto Theater, also designed by Marshall and Fox, had seating for over 1,500 at 336 South State Street, just north of what is now the Harold Washington Library.
When the Woods opened in 1917, sound films were still nearly a decade away from production. The first primitive introduction of "talkies" occurred just as the Oriental Theater opened its doors in 1926. Back in those day folks came to the theaters for entertainment, but they also came to escape the dirty, grimy and hectic city, entering into elaborate palaces that were air-conditioned in the summertime, a particular draw since air conditioning was rarely used anywhere else.
Imagine . . . over ten thousand seats in a four-block square, all of them sold out on the weekends and nearly filled on the weekdays right up into the 1950's. People back in those days dressed up "to go to the show." It was a big deal, and anyone could look like a big spender in a nice suit or a pretty dress once he or she entered the gilded interiors of those theaters.
We've kept a few of the old palaces. The Harris and the Selwyn, just around the corner from the old Woods, have been gutted and are now part of the new Goodman Theatre complex. The Chicago on State Street was completely restored with help from the city and even got an opening serenade from Frank Sinatra in 1986 when its nine-month restoration by Daniel P. Coffey & Associates was completed.
Petterino's, on the northwest corner of Dearborn and Randolph, is a classy joint with good food and an efficient waitstaff. It's rooted in nostalgia to the point of taking its name from Arturo Petterino, the long-time maitre d' of the famed Pump Room. But somehow the appearance of a steaming plate of Pappardelle Bolognese can't make up for the loss of the grand movie house that once stood in this place.
One last word, three years before it bit the dust, The Woods made an appearance in the most memorable movie of the 1980's, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Fast forward to 1:09 in the following cut; The Woods is on the right side of the cop, Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City is on the left.
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1 comment:
This post is kind of ironic. Several places in from the Dearborn/Randolph intersection is the popular Garrett Popcorn shop. The smell is intoxicating, espcially when they are popping caramel corn. They may have lost the movie theater, but they still have the popcorn...
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