GOLD STANDARD Sullivan’s house shines.
Photo: James Steinkamp
Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler’s 120-year-old Auditorium Theatre served as the first home of the CSO and is the current host of the Joffrey Ballet. This week, the Auditorium temporarily abandons its 3,929-seat house, constructing a 200-seat black-box theater on its stage to house a remount of Apple Tree Theatre’s 2007 production of The Mistress Cycle. It’s just the latest footnote in the theater’s storied history, as we learned on a recent exclusive tour.
Forced entry
As we enter the theater, executive director Brett Batterson points out the molding around the windowpane in a lobby door. “These doors have never had handles,” he explains. The theater’s staff has always done exactly what he’s doing now, grappling with the molding to pry the door open. The result: a set of finger-shaped depressions in the wood, a collective handprint marking the building’s living history.
Peck and call
Amid unrest following the Haymarket riot, Chicago’s business leaders gather at the Commercial Club to consider the best response to the threat of anarchy and worker demands such as the eight-hour day. They hear a novel proposal by real-estate magnate Ferdinand Peck, who argues for a new project to bring enlightening culture to a mass audience. Chicago needs a great civic hall—one that could also turn a profit.
Breaking the ice
The Auditorium Building is dedicated on December 9, 1889, by President Benjamin Harrison. Chicago’s then-tallest building and the heaviest structure in the world, it’s also the first major multipurpose building, combining a theater with a hotel and tower of business offices. And it features cutting-edge technology: Air-conditioning vents blow out air cooled by blocks of ice.
Frank’s home
Sullivan was assisted by a young draftsman, Frank Lloyd Wright. According to legend, Wright returned to the theater many years later. Indicating one of the theater’s slim, cleanly designed pillars, he claimed: “That’s mine—I designed that, not Louis.” Pause. “Oh, hell, maybe Louis did design that.” Another pause. “To tell the truth, I can’t even see the damn thing.”
Rock the bloat
The theater spends the 1940s as a servicemen’s bowling alley, and the 1950s falling into ruin. It reopens in 1967 after a heralded renovation effort, and showcases theater, dance and live music. But when Jimi Hendrix plays the Auditorium in August 1968, the Tribune’s Robb Baker is unimpressed: “Perhaps the Auditorium’s famed acoustics are just too good for rock.”
Hats off
Batterson and I are standing six stories up, in the theater’s top balcony. He tells me some patrons can’t sit here due to vertigo. I step back from the railing. “These are the original seats,” he says, “with one modification: They took out the hat holders. If you watch Public Enemies [filmed partly on location], you’ll see the theater seats all had wire holders underneath for men’s hats.”
Intents and purposes
As Batterson and I descend, we see equipment used by Willow Creek Church for its Sunday services here. The lobby has been transformed into a lively cafeteria; 45 campers from the theater’s summer program for children who have lost a parent fill the room. Work begins inside on the Mistress set, a narrow thrust with audience on three sides, curtained off from the larger house. It’s one more configuration in the Auditorium’s long list of guises.
The Mistress Cycle is running now.
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