The Auditorium Theatre

207 S. Michigan Street · opened 1898 · fire December 1920 · demolished 1923

The second legitimate house in the record is the Auditorium Theatre at 207 South Michigan Street, opened in 1898 — thirteen years after the opera house, in the years when a growing city could support two downtown stages. The theatre record carries its course briefly and it prints at that size: by 1914 it was operating as a movie theatre, the silent pictures having taken the house as they took so many legitimate rooms; it suffered major damage in a fire in December 1920; repairs were carried out, but it was closed and demolished in 1923 to make way for a Robinson's department store. Its bills, its companies and its seating are not carried in any narrative source reached; the Dunkle Collection's span covers its playing years, and the particulars rest there and in the press files. What the record establishes is the shape: a legitimate house of 1898, a picture house by the middle of the next decade, gone by 1923 — the opera-house era's second room, outlived by the first.

Sources

1. Cinema Treasures, Auditorium Theatre (207 S. Michigan St.) — opened 1898; movies by 1914; fire December 1920; demolished 1923 for Robinson's Department Store.