“Before the Uptown Theatre opened its doors to the public on Aug. 18, 1925, advertisements in the Chicago Daily Tribune overflowed with hype for the city’s newest and biggest movie palace.
“‘It will hush and thrill you,’ one ad promised. ‘It throbs with beauty.’
“It is one of the great art buildings of the world,’ the Uptown’s owners, Balaban & Katz, asserted in another ad. ‘You have never seen such dignified luxury, such exquisite elegance as lives in its towering pillars, its mountainous ceilings, glowing colors, stately promenades, lounges, cosmetic rooms and smoking rooms.’ The grand opening was touted as ‘an event you will remember all your life.’
“It wasn’t mere hyperbole. This was one of the largest and most elaborately decorated movie theaters ever constructed.
“The morning after the Uptown opened at 4816 N. Broadway, a Tribune movie critic reported that the 4,320-seat Uptown was even grander than downtown’s 3,861-seat Chicago Theatre, which Balaban & Katz had opened four years earlier.
“‘It’s a splendiferous palace of a place — the Chicago’s dressy sister,’ wrote Mae Tinée (a jokey pseudonym used at the time by Tribune critics). ‘Don’t ask me about the architecture because I don’t know anything about architecture. But I do know that Sister Uptown … is lavish of space, decoration and comfort, is sumptuously furnished and is beautifully and softly lighted inside.’
“The North Side’s Uptown neighborhood held a festival to celebrate. Bands played on street corners, trapeze artists twirled overhead, and a daredevil set himself on fire before diving into a pool of water. Over six days, more than 500,000 people flocked to the streets around Broadway and Lawrence Avenue, according to the Tribune. (Another publication pegged the attendance at 750,000.) Those crowds included an estimated 150,000 people who went inside the movie palace that week.
“Balaban & Katz, a chain owned by two families from Chicago’s West Side, had been building bigger and bigger theaters as Americans spent an increasing amount of their leisure time at the movies. After constructing the Central Park Theatre on the West Side in 1917, B&K had opened the Riviera on the North Side, the Tivoli on the South Side and the Chicago Theatre in the Loop.
“Then the company spent $4 million (roughly $73 million in today’s money) creating the mammoth Uptown right across the street from the Riviera — motivated, apparently, by the desire to open an even bigger theater.
“The Chicago architectural firm Rapp & Rapp designed all of the movie palaces for B&K. As architect George Leslie Rapp explained, the ornate buildings gave everyone a chance to experience what it was like to step inside a European castle.”
“As the Uptown’s 100th birthday approached, Mickelson said he’s seeking the city’s commitment to support renovations with tax increment financing or other funding and incentives.
“‘The Uptown Theatre must be saved because it’s one of the most extraordinary and historically significant movie palaces ever built — not just in Chicago, but anywhere in the United States,’ Mickelson said in a July 31 email. ‘Saving the Uptown is about more than saving bricks, plaster and history. It’s about creating jobs and opportunities at the theatre for our youth. … It’s about honoring Chicago’s place as a birthplace of movie palaces. And it’s about choosing hope over cynicism. Letting it rot would be easy. Bringing it back to life will be bold — and deeply worth it.'”(Loerzel, Chicago Tribune, 8/10/25)
Read the full story (with many historic photos) at Chicago Tribune
- Uptown Theatre: 100 years of glory and decay; The shuttered Uptown Theatre, a ‘splendiferous palace’ of cinema and live entertainment, awaits its resurrection, Robert Loerzel, Chicago Tribune, 8/10/25
- Chicago Tribune Op-ed: It’s time to get the band back together for the Uptown Theatre, Andy Pierce, Chicago Tribune, 12/16/21