Vanishing Chicago: The Nortown

A couple of Saturday mornings ago, I was in my usual neighborhood breakfast place, munching on an omelet and flipping through the Sun-Times when I ran across an article about the demolition of the Nortown Theater. It had been closed for some time, sitting on Western Avenue just south of Devon like a decaying specter of glories past. It opened in 1931. It closed 59 years later. Sometime between, I went there a few times. Not all of the times were pleasant, though.

I've told you before about my best-ever day of moviegoing. Now let me tell you about two of the worst, both involving the Nortown.

Todd was one of my best friends my freshman and sophomore years of high school, but he and his family moved out to Naperville before he started his junior year. Still, he came into town from time to time, and one of those times he suggested catching a midnight double feature at the Nortown: The World Series of Rock & Roll and Yessongs. Sounded like a good idea at the time.

It was winter. Snow had fallen (as it tends to do in winter in Chicago). The streets were a cold, damp mess. One of should have known that parking alongside the poultry processing plant at Leavitt and Grand (long since torn down and not the site of--surprise! --a condo development), with its sloping sidewalks wreathed by potholes, wasn't such a good idea. But neither of us thought a thing about any of that until we got into dark green station wagon and...went exactly nowhere. Because the station wagon was now stuck in the snow.

I got out, got behind the station wagon and pushed as hard as I could. The back wheels shot gray slush all over my jeans, but then they caught and the station wagon rolled free. Had I been even slightly sensible, I'd have gone back inside at least to change my pants, if not cancel the whole excursion. Instead, I got in the car and the trip to the Nortown got under way.

The World Series of Rock & Roll turned out to be little more than a haphazardly assembled series of music film clips, while Yessongs was a deadly dull concert film in which the members of the group barely moved onstage; I wasn't totally convinced that they were actually alive.

To sum up: I was wet, I was cold, I was aggravated, and the movies sucked. Other than that, everything went fine.

At least it wasn't the Nortown's fault (nor Todd's) that the evening turned out to be a bust. Not that time, anyway.

A few years later, another high school friend, Juan, came to town and wanted to catch a movie. After graduation, Juan had joined the navy and came back on leave. He even offered to pay. How could I refuse?

Hindsight being 20/20, we should have done something else--anything else--except go to the Nortown for a screening of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

It wasn't just that I hated Temple of Doom--labored "comedy," a screeching "performance" by Kate Capshaw (which must have made quite an impression on Steven Spielberg, since he later married her), disturbing violence (a still-beating heart is ripped out someone's chest) and abundant borderline racism. (And yet, Temple of Doom has a 7.3 rating on imdb.com--go figure.) This time, it really was the theater itself.

Since that previous trip to the Nortown, its auditorium had been split into smaller theaters, as so many older, larger theaters in Chicago were in the 1980s. The Nortown now had three screens, all with brand-new seats. And that was my problem--the seats, though new and comfortable, had been placed in rows too narrow for anyone over six feet tall. I'm six-foot-three. My knees pressed hard against the back of the seat in front of me. This was a problem.

I wound up spending the length of this movie that I wasn't enjoying in the first place with my legs stuck out into the aisle at an extreme angle that made them start cramping almost immediately. Two-plus hours later, they were stiff and sore, but that didn't stop me from getting away from the wretched movie as quickly as those stiff and sore legs could carry me. I vowed to never go back to the Nortown again.

I needn't have wasted the vow. The Nortown closed in 1990. It served briefly as a church (as so many other former Chicago movie theaters have) and a community center. For the last few years, it had been empty.

The developer who now owns the property was quoted in the Sun-Times article as having been interested in rehabbing the building, but it had deteriorated too much to be saved. For once, I don't doubt the developer's word. The last time I was up there, the Nortown looked pretty rough, though I did stop to take some pictures (including the stylized comedy/tragedy faces adorning this page). I expected it to come down sooner or later. It turned out to be later.

Even though the Nortown and I didn't have the friendliest personal history, I'm still sorry to see it come down. Our city has lost so many architecturally and historically interesting and important buildings to condo developments, so it's sad to see another structure with a unique personality and rich history reduced to dust and rubble.

At least this condo development may also include a movie theater to serve the area's large Indian and Pakistani populations. Even if the Nortown itself is gone, its cinematic tradition at that location may live on.