I've given Mayor Daley lots of crap over the years for the way he's run this city, but one of the relatively few things I'll give him credit for is the Downtown Theatre District, which saved one old movie palace--The Chicago Theatre, which was very much in danger of being demolished--and revived two others--the Palace Theatre on the western end of the Loop and the Oriental, which had gone from one of the premier movie houses in the country to a rat-infested grindhouse to a shuttered ghost with a discount electronics store in what had once been its lobby. Now, it hosts Broadway-level musicals; the Addams Family had a run there before heading to New York, and Billy Elliot: The Musical is playing there now.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Every Picture Tells a Story: 4/20/10
I've given Mayor Daley lots of crap over the years for the way he's run this city, but one of the relatively few things I'll give him credit for is the Downtown Theatre District, which saved one old movie palace--The Chicago Theatre, which was very much in danger of being demolished--and revived two others--the Palace Theatre on the western end of the Loop and the Oriental, which had gone from one of the premier movie houses in the country to a rat-infested grindhouse to a shuttered ghost with a discount electronics store in what had once been its lobby. Now, it hosts Broadway-level musicals; the Addams Family had a run there before heading to New York, and Billy Elliot: The Musical is playing there now.
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Yeah, the little egomaniac does deserve credit for saving those theatres and giving Chicago a centralized theatre district. I'd forgotten about that electronics store in the lobby of the Oriental. Ah, downtown Chicago in the 80s. . . Shudder!
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