rare glimpse of interior orpheum theater (1907) plaster ornament during demolition of neighboring building

a peek inside the construction being done at 112 south state street yielded a surprising glimpse into the building's former life as a luxurious vaudeville theater. to say the current architecture is unassuming is a vast understatement, as its facade effectively conceals over a century of history. stripping back the layers of interior, however, a richer story is unveiled that opens up a fleeting "portal" to the early twentieth century.

the orpheum opened in 1907 as one of the largest vaudeville houses in the loop, seating nearly 800 audience members and featuring allover elaborate ornamentation. this beaux-arts style building was designed by holabird & roche for the jones, linnick and schaefer circuit. its impressive facade was magnetized by a two-story archway, topped with a female figure and illuminated by curved electric lights spelling out the theater name.

set against white terra cotta, the inner archway exhibited a seashell pattern radiating out from a terra cotta peacock, the words "continuous vaudeville" inscribed in gilded lettering around the edge. accordingly, vaudeville shows ran from 9 in the morning until 11 at night, with 15 shows per day, sometimes peaking over 10,000 daily in attendance.

c. 1910

the theater sat near the corner of state and monroe -- its original address being 174-176 south state street, and now (post-1909 address conversion) 110-112 south state street. the current structure houses the men's warehouse, and along with its neighbors confers an unremarkable facade bearing no resemblance to the grand exterior that once existed there. to its left, the building housing ulta cosmetics, likewise bears no resemblance to its former incarnations. both structures in fact date as far back as 1872 and share a richly intertwined history of business use.

in 1872, the occupants at 174-176 s. state street appear to be jewelers, a.h. miller, and cone & strong jewelers, as well as j.j. mcgrath paper hangings. in 1884-1885 adler & sullivan had a hand in rehabbing and expanding the existing structure for the bee hive dry goods store, which would come to be known as morgenthau, bauland & company within several years.

the building successively hosted a candy store, an optical business, and the washington cloak company before being remodeled in 1907, transformed into the orpheum theater.

the orpheum would become kitty kelly shoe store in 1955, the same year the building was remodeled. after this point it would house burger king, and then the men's warehouse.

view from the corner of monroe and state streets. orpheum theater visible at left.it seems that the neighboring building (108-114 s. state street) is connected by at least two occupants or proprietors. the beehive ostensibly utilized both addresses, as research indicates the firm of adler & sullivan connected two post-fire buildings in the 1884 rehab, extending existing components of the facade to facilitate the expansion of the dry goods store. additionally, in 1905, this building became the bijou dream theater, which for a number of years coexisted with the orpheum.the bijou's nickelodeon occupied the second story above an arcade, and showed silent films with live piano scoring. both the bijou and orpheum theaters were part of the jones, linick & schaefer circuit. in 1921 the bijou dream theater became a candy company operated by rapp & rapp.

these were effaced when remodeling took place in 1929 for the richman brothers, a chicago clothing store that remained a fixture for sixty years before it went under in the 1980's.

c. 1950's

before the ornament disappeared from the former richman bros. building, urban remains managed to salvage the late 1920's terra cotta from the cornice (removed as a result of structural instability or severe corrosion of steel support members). glazed polychrome enameled terra cotta figures were carefully removed and documented before entering the bldg. 51 collection.

as an aside, archives of the chicago tribune reveal this stretch of state street to be quite eventful, the site of multiple violent incidents. most notably a 1916 article details an occasion when a bomb ripped through the rear of the orpheum theater, "shredding a thick corrugated iron door into small ribbons" and causing almost every window in the buildings at either side to shatter to slivers. though jones, linick and schaefer denied having labor troubles, the bomb was attributed to a union rivalry, the seventh in a series of bombs that had been set off in the wars of "the chauffeurs' and the moving picture operators' unions." forty years later, in 1957, newspapers record that a clerk at the kitty kelly shoe store was shot and killed by police when both mistook each other for burglars. even later, in 1971 a news brief documents a bandit who held-up the harem hosiery, inc. at 110 s. state street multiple times.