Raising the Curtain in Chicago

When Chicago's Auditorium Theater opened in 1889, Pullmans, Palmers and Fields descended on the great granite edifice on Michigan Avenue in a stream of horse-drawn carriages. Inside, men stood and cheered as Adelina Patti sang Home Sweet Home, followed up with the Swiss Echo Song as an encore. President Benjamin Harrison, seated in a special box at the side of the stage, leaned toward Vice President Levi Morton and murmured, "New York surrenders, eh?" So it seemed that night in the magnificent hall, proudly proclaimed on the program to be "the Parnassus of modern civilization."

Last week contemporary Chicago society returned to the Auditorium Theater in Cadillacs for another first night.

After almost 26 years of neglect and disuse, Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler's architectural masterpiece had been restored to its original splendor, and was open for business once again.

Hot Dogs & Bowling. Inside, only the entertainment had changed. Under the same frescoed ceiling with its soaring tiers of light-studded arches, the New York City Ballet performed A Midsummer Night's Dream. "Why don't they build like this today?" said Ballet Director George Balanchine. "Nothing could be more modern than this."

Chicagoans paid up to $250 a seat to welcome back one of the landmark buildings of U.S. architecture. The marvel of its day, the Auditorium boasted the first central air-conditioning and heating system, the first "convertible theater" (huge ceiling panels dropped down to block off balconies, reducing the house from 4,000 to 3,000 seats) and a stage that could slide out to cover two-thirds of the orchestra. The acoustics were superb. "I would rather sing in the Auditorium than in any other hall in the world," said Tenor John McCormack, and Soprano Nellie Melba wished that she could "fold it up and take it with me everywhere."

To make it financially stable, the Auditorium was contained within a 17-story combination office building and hotel. But by the 1920s, revenue" from both hotel and Auditorium began falling off. When Utility Magnate Samuel Insull decided to build a new opera house as a showcase for his actress wife and persuaded the Chicago Civic Opera to relocate with him, the Auditorium's days seemed numbered. In 1941, the final curtain went down on a production of Hellzapoppin. During World War II, the empty hall was turned over to the U.S.O.; hot-dog stands and coffee bars were set up, and seats were ripped out to make room for bowling alleys. Only a decision by the newly founded Roosevelt University to take over the dilapidated building in 1946 and use it for its home kept the Auditorium standing.

Restoring the Glow. The time for sober second thoughts came only as Chicagoans realized that while their city was rapidly growing, the number of its theaters and concert stages was actually shrinking. Sparking a drive that began in 1960 to rehabilitate the Auditorium was Mrs. John V. Spachner, a tenacious and seasoned Chicago fund raiser. Undaunted by an earlier estimate that had pegged the cost of restoration at $4,000,000, Bea Spachner enlisted the aid of an enthusiastic Louis Sullivan fan, Architect Harry Weese, 52. Weese resurveyed the building, reported that it could be brought back to mint condition for only $2,250,000, and volunteered to donate his services.

As his bible, Weese used a book printed in 1899 that told the whole history of the building, right down to the names of the plumbers. He was able to reproduce exactly the original straight-backed chairs with their wrought-iron sides and champagne-colored plush, found one of the two manufacturers in the world who still make the old carbon-filament bulbs that gave the theater its soft, golden glow. He came across a piece of the original carpet, had it copied to the last detail. Rummaging through the basement, he found crates containing six stained-glass windows thought to have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who had worked on the Auditorium as an 18-year-old apprentice, and who, to his dying day, considered the hall to be "the greatest room for music and opera in the world --bar none." Nobody in Chicago last week was about to disagree.

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