Ora Snyder, Chicago's Candy Queen.

Since the late 1800s, Chicago was known as the "candy capital of the world."

Chicago has many ties to the chocolate industry. Charles "Carl" Frederick Günther, known as "The Candy Man," opened his own candy factory and store at 125 South Clark Street in Chicago in 1868. He originated and introduced caramels, a staple product of most candy factories ever since.

The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 featured a chocolate pavilion, a cocoa mill, a 38-ft. chocolate statue, and German chocolate-processing machines on display and available for sale. Milton Hershey purchased one of these chocolate-making machines and used it to make chocolate back in his home state of Pennsylvania. The first Hershey bar was produced in 1900. Hershey's Kisses were developed in 1907, and the Hershey Bar with almonds was introduced in 1908.

By the early 1900s, Chicago was home to over one thousand candy companies. The National Confectionery Association and The Manufacturing Confectioner magazine were founded in Chicago.

Emil J. Brach opened “Brach's Palace of Sweets” on North Avenue and Halsted Street in Chicago in 1904 and sold mainly chocolate bars and an almond nougat confection. After World War II, Brach's had more than 1,700 product lines.

Brach’s Confections, "Brach's Palace of Sweets," Chicago.

Johnson’s Candy Company developed Turtles candy in 1918 when a traveling salesman showed a piece of candy to one of the chocolate dippers because it looked like a turtle. In 1923, the candy maker’s stores dropped the "Johnson’s" name and was renamed DeMet’s, Inc., located at 177 North Franklin Street, Chicago. DeMet’s immediately trademarked the name "Turtles."

The first Fannie May candy shop was opened at 11 North LaSalle Street in 1920 by H. Teller Archibald, a prominent Chicago racehorse owner. The business was booming—by 1935, it had grown to 48 retail shops in Illinois and surrounding Midwest states. Key to the company’s success was its collection of decades-old candy recipes that, over the years, it refused to update or modernize. In 1946, Fannie May created “Pixies,” their most popular product. Since 2017 the company is currently owned by "Ferrero SpA" in Italy.

The first Fannie May Candies store opened in 1920 at 11 North LaSalle Street in Chicago.

Ferrara Pan, a Chicago-based company’s claim to fame, was the introduction of Bit O’ Honey in 1924, a honey-flavored taffy product with bits of almond embedded throughout. 

Aurora “Ora” Henrietta Hanson was born in 1876 in Michigan City, Indiana. When she achieved renown as a businesswoman, her origin story appeared in dozens of newspaper and magazine articles: her mother died when she was 3 years old, leaving her and her siblings with their sea captain father. Not allowed to have store-bought candy, young Ora learned to make confections for the family.

Aurora “Ora” Henrietta (Hanson) Snyder.

She married William Allen Snyder in 1894 and had one daughter, Edith. In 1909, William became ill, leaving Ora to consider how she might support the family should he not survive. She got to work making candy at home to sell at a local school, and her reputation grew enough to seek out other opportunities to sell her candy in Chicago. In 1910, she rented a nine-foot-wide store in the Hamilton Club Building.

From the start, Snyder’s business model came from her personal experience: people buy what they like. She focused less on her competitors and more on who her customers were and what they wanted. She gave out free samples to entice sales.

Another keen observation was that men bought more candy than women and preferred chewier and saltier varieties. She expanded her commercial ventures by opening new shops, not in shopping districts but in male-dominated business areas such as the Board of Trade Building.

Mrs. Snyder’s Homemade Candies Brochure.

Mrs. Snyder marketed her brand to emphasize that she was a real person who cared about quality and her customers. Framed photographs of her hung in each shop with the message “Mrs. Snyder thanks you.” Early on, she recognized the benefits of pre-packaged candies and intentionally developed no-frills packaging.

Mrs. Snyder’s candy boxes bear her seal of approval and the words, “I can’t make all the candy in the world, so I just make the best of it!”

By the early 1920s, Mrs. Snyder’s had expanded to five locations, including a seven-story building at 119-21 North Wabash Avenue.

Vintage candy tin from Mrs. Snyder's Candy Shops. The tin features a Noblewoman being serenaded by the court musician.

In addition to her business, Snyder helped found the Associated Retail Confectioners of the United States, serving as their President between 1930 and 1932. She was also a Chicago Business and Professional Woman’s Club member and regularly gave speeches to similar groups.

By 1932, Mrs. Snyder's Candies had eleven downtown stores:

• 2030 East 71st Street, Chicago.
• 20 South Dearborn Street, Chicago.
• 61 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago.
• 8 South LaSalle Street, Chicago.
• 331 South LaSalle Street, Chicago.
• 222 West Merchandise Mart Plaza, Chicago.
• 406 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago.
• 218 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago.
• 1813 West Montrose Avenue, Chicago, IL. (H.Q. & Kitchens)
• 65 West Randolph Street, Chicago.
• 119-21 North Wabash Avenue, Chicago.
• 130 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago.
• 79 West Washington Street, Chicago.
• 104 North Oak Park Avenue, Oak Park, IL.
• 716 Church Street, Evanston, IL.
• 1739 West Howard Street, Evanston, IL.

Ora Snyder's business instincts kicked in when she set up five shops at the Century of Progress International Exposition for the fair's second year in 1934. One was on the western approach to the 23rd Street bridge, and the four other shops were on the south of the wide promenade connecting the mainland with Northerly Island, just east of the Streets of Paris. 

Each store featured a candy kitchen in full operation, separated by large plate glass windows for visitor viewing. The favorite feature of the stores was the cutting-edge air conditioning and an ice cream machine. Air conditioning was still a novel feature in 1934, and it drew large crowds seeking relief from the summer heat, but it also kept the candy from melting and the workers from heatstroke.

Shoppers at Mrs. Snyder's Candy Shop on South Michigan Avenue, Chicago. 1927

Soon after, newspaper headlines announced, “Mrs. Snyder Decides to Air Condition all of her Stores” after her success at the World's Fair.

Ora Snyder (far right) built a candy empire earning the monicker "Chicago's Candy Queen."

Ora Snyder continued to be active in the business until 1947, when she stepped down as head of her company due to illness. She died in Chicago in 1948 at 72, leaving behind sixteen shops in the Chicagoland area and hundreds of employees.

William Snyder served as Chairman of the Board for Mrs. Snyder’s until he died in 1955. The business remained in the family with son-in-law Seymour W. Neill and grandson William J. Neill until it became part of Fannie May in 1967.  

INDEX TO MY ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO FOOD & RESTAURANT ARTICLES.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The History of the Western Electric Plant, Hawthorne Works, Cicero, Illinois.

THE HAWTHORNE WORKS

The Hawthorne Works was a large Western Electric Company factory complex in Cicero, Illinois. 

Cicero began as separate settlements that gradually expanded into one community. On June 23, 1857, a local government was organized for the district named "The Town of Cicero." Railroads, immigration, and the Civil War contributed to economic growth in the new township, which by 1867 incorporated the municipality and the Town of Cicero.

By 1889, Chicago had annexed more than half of the original Town. An 1899 referendum ceded the Austin neighborhood to Chicago, and in the following year, land containing a race track was transferred to Stickney Township. The Town of Cicero retained less than six of the 36 square miles carved out in 1849.

Cicero comprises eight neighborhoods, each with its own district names and characteristics. Two were named for businesses: Hawthorne for an 1850s quarry, the first industry in what later became Cicero, and Grant Works after an 1890 locomotive factory. The other six are Boulevard Manor, Clyde, Drezel, Morton Park, Parkholme, and Warren Park.

The grazing cow in the foreground is apparently undisturbed by the rapid expansion of Hawthorn Works nearby. This 1907 view from Cermak Road shows the first Telephone Apparatuses buildings shortly after completion, and the corner building with its distinctive water tower did not start until 1912.

1920

1925

The Hawthorne Works complex was built at Cicero Avenue and Cermak Road. The facility consisted of several buildings and contained a private railroad, "Manufacturers Junction Railroad," to move shipments through the plant to the nearby Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad freight depot. In the first decades, the factory complex was significantly expanded.

Charles M. Prchal was born in 1896 in Golcuv Jenikov, a small town southeast of Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in the Czech Republic. In August 1911, he journeyed alone to America and settled in Chicago, furthers his education at night school, finds employment at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works, and builds a lifelong career there. It’s a scenario repeated thousands of times at General Electric's Hawthorne Works, but it’s backed by fact, not legend. 

Charles M. Prchal

Prchal joined Western Electric in 1918, just as the Hawthorne Works launched another of its frequent expansion projects. He worked days while studying architectural drafting and structural engineering at night school. 

His first big assignment was the design of the seven-story tower at the northwest corner of the Works complex. The 183-foot-tall red-brick spire housed the elegant executive offices on its top floor. At its dedication in 1919, Western Electric president Charles DuBois proclaimed the structure the symbol of Hawthorne’s past and future, created by “hard work of hand and brain, and square dealing with everyone.” At the Works Silver Jubilee in 1978, Prchal agreed that the tower had “always been a symbol of the promise of sixty years ago—the promise of a great manufacturing plant and its thousands of employees producing important equipment.”

Later in his career, Prchal designed the Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove and the domed mausoleum at Chicago’s Bohemian National Cemetery. He also served for thirty-two years as the president of the American Sokol, an organization dedicated to preserving Bohemian culture and providing guidance to youth through social and athletic programs. After a forty-three-year career, Prchal retired from Western Electric but remained active as a lecturer, author, and member of many social and fraternal societies until he died in 1980.

Although his most impressive design has been gone since 1987, the image of Mr. Prchal’s tower still represents the Hawthorne Works to everyone who recalls its glory days. And his life story illustrates the accomplishments of the many humbly-born immigrants who found an outlet for their potential during America’s industrial golden age.

In 1915, Western Electric was associated with one of the worst accidents in Chicago's history. The SS Eastland, a boat filled with Hawthorne Works employees and family members attending the company's annual outing, capsized at its dock in the Chicago River, killing over 800 people.

A view of the hospital and gas plant in a garden setting.

Researchers at the Hawthorne Works pioneered new technologies such as the high-vacuum tube, the condenser microphone, and airplane radio systems during the 1910s.

By 1917, the Hawthorne Works facility employed 25,000 people, many Cicero residents of Czech and Polish descent, who produced telephone, cable, and every major telephone switching system in the country. In 1900, 676,733 Bell Telephone stations were owned and connected in the country. By 1910, three years after Hawthorne Works opened, these 25,000 employees produced 5,142,699 telephones, and by 1920, 11,795,747 Bell telephones. Over 14,000 different types of apparatus were manufactured at the plant to provide the telecommunications infrastructure for this exponential growth. During the plant's early years into the 1920s, Western Electric was also a major producer of household appliances.

During the Great Depression (1929-1933), the company laid off thousands of workers, but business recovered during World War II. During the war years, when it was subject to federal rules for government contracts, the company began to employ negroes for the first time.

On the eve of World War II (1939-1942), roughly 90% of demand for Western Electric's products came from one customer, the Bell System. By mid-1941, 85% of the demand for products came from the federal government, for which the company provided more than 30% of all electronic gear for war, including radar equipment.

When World War II (1939-1942) started, the U.S. government called on Hawthorne Works to engineer and manufacture mass quantities of the most modern and capable communications and radar equipment.

The area where lead sheaths were placed around the cord.

Employees rolling the telephone wires.

The Hawthorne Works produced a large output of telephone equipment. In addition, Western Electric produced various consumer products and electrical equipment, including refrigerators and electric fans. 

The works employed up to 45,000 employees at the height of operations in WW II. Workers regularly used bicycles for transit within the plant.

WESTERN ELECTRIC PERKS LEAD TO EMPLOYMENT LONGEVITY

Hawthorne Works benefited greatly by keeping workers happy. There were company-owned, not-for-profit restaurants and cafeterias within the complex. Employees of all statures could have quality hot breakfasts and lunches at drastically reduced prices. 

Other perks included a hospital and numerous "first-aid" rooms spread around the complex; a shoe store; eye care, glasses, and repairs; a store that carried items like men's ties, greeting cards, sundries, snacks, and even women's nylons.

Hawthorne recognized individual milestones in employment with service pins and a dinner. Retirement celebrations were quite elaborate. The entire department would be invited to a fancy dinner, a boutonnière for the retiree, and a corsage and beautiful flower arrangement for the retiree's wife.

THE HAWTHORNE CLUB

• Club Evening School offered over 60 subjects, i.e., English, Languages, First Aid, Drafting, Accounting, Telephony, and more.
• Health Appearance Personality course, free of charge for women only.
• Hawthorne Club Library est. 1940.
• Athletic Activities: Baseball, Basketball, the Albright Gymnasium, Tennis, Golf for Men and Women, Bowling for Men and Women, Horseshoe Courts, and the Rifle Club.
• The Club's services included a Notary Service, Classified Ads, Young Men's Activities, Theater Bureau, and a Travel Bureau.

As a means of providing outlets for the many Hawthorne Works employees who have interests or hobbies in common, a number of associated clubs have been formed; the Boot and Saddle Club, Camera Club, Chess and Checker Club, Coin Club, Excursion Club, Flower and Garden Club, The Forum, Players Club, Hunting Club, Fishing Club, Male Chorus, Mixed Chorus, Science Club, Stamp Club, and the Flying Club.

BOOKLET: The Hawthorne Club was founded for Fellowship. 

Western Electric Hawthorne Works Albright Gymnasium and outdoor track at Cermak & 52nd Avenue. (1930s)

But the pièce de résistance was the yearly "Hello Charley Girl" contest.

The Origin of 'Hello Charley.'

Newcomers were often confused during the Merrimack Valley Works, North Andover, Massachusetts (opened 1953), "WE Valley Girl" Contest by long term employees referring to the Queen as the "Hello Charley Girl."

Originally a vacation queen contest. The winner took the name of the greeting that Western Electric employees used when discovering a fellow "Westerner" on vacation. 

Why "Hello Charley" and not Phillip? 

 

The greeting grew from an incident involving Charley Drucker, a benefits serviceman in the old days of the Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois. A pensioner whom he had visited wrote him a letter addressed "Charley, Western Electric." Since the retiree had not remembered Charley's last name, the letter made the rounds until finding the right Charley. 

Since this letter people began addressing each other as "Charley Western." Soon the greeting spread throughout the company. Every location nationwide has its vacation queen.

The "Hello Charley Girl" being crowned the winner in 1948, posing for a formal portrait.

THE DEATH OF THE HAWTHORNE WORKS

The Hawthorne Works announced its closing in 1983 because most of its operations had been distributed to more modern facilities around the country. In 1986, the shutdown was completed. The Foundry and most Telephone Apparatus buildings were demolished between 1975 and 1983. The remaining Telephone Apparatus buildings and the Executive Tower were razed in 1986 and 1987. The rest of the Hawthorne Works was demolished in 1994.

The only survivors are the Water Tower and the Cable building at 4545 West Cermak Road.

The property was purchased in the mid-1980s by the late Donald L. Shoemaker and replaced with a shopping center.

Due to Hawthorne's significance in industrial manufacturing in the United States, the Hawthorne Works was the site of well-known industrial studies.

THE HAWTHORNE EFFECT

The Hawthorne effect is named for the Hawthorne Works. North American Quality pioneer Joseph Juran referred to the Hawthorne Works as "the seedbed of the Quality Revolution." The career arcs of other notable quality professionals, such as Walter Shewhart and Edwards Deming, also intersected at the Hawthorne Works.

The term "Hawthorne effect" refers to reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed. The industrial psychology series of experiments began in 1924. It was first observed in data from the Hawthorne Works collected by psychologist Elton Mayo and later reinterpreted by Henry A. Landsberger, who coined the term in 1958.

This well-known and remarkable effect was discovered in research conducted at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works plant. However, some scholars feel the descriptions are apocryphal (of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as accurate).

The original research involved workers who made electrical relays at the Hawthorne Works. Between 1924 and 1927, a famous lighting study was conducted. Workers experienced a series of lighting changes in which productivity was said to increase with almost any change in the lighting. This turned out not to be true. In the study associated with Elton Mayo, which ran from 1928 to 1932, five women implemented work structure changes (i.e., rest periods). However, this methodologically poor, uncontrolled study did not permit any firm conclusions.

One of the later interpretations by Landsberger suggested that the novelty of being research subjects and the increased attention from such could lead to temporary increases in workers' productivity. This interpretation was dubbed "the Hawthorne effect."

RELAY ASSEMBLY EXPERIMENTS

In one of the studies, researchers chose two women as test subjects and asked them to choose four other workers to join the test group. The women assembled telephone relays in a separate room for over five years (1927-1932).

Output was measured mechanically by counting how many finished relays each worker dropped down a chute. This measuring began in secret two weeks before moving the women to an experiment room and continued throughout the study. In the experiment room, they had a supervisor who discussed changes in their productivity. Some of the variables were:

• Given two 5-minute breaks (after discussing the best length of time), then changed to two 10-minute breaks (not their preference). Productivity increased, but they disliked it and reduced output when they received six 5-minute rests.
• Providing food during the breaks.
• Shortening the day by 30 minutes (output went up); trimming it more (output per hour went up, but overall production decreased); returning to the first condition (where output peaked).

Changing a variable usually increases productivity, even if the variable was just a change to the original condition. However, it is said that this is the natural process of the human being adapting to the environment without knowing the objective of the experiment. Researchers concluded that the workers worked harder because they thought they were being monitored individually.

Researchers hypothesized that choosing one's coworkers, working as a group, being treated as unique (as evidenced by working in a separate room), and having a sympathetic supervisor were the real reasons for the productivity increase. One interpretation, mainly due to Elton Mayo, was that "the six individuals became a team, and the team gave itself wholeheartedly and spontaneously to cooperation in the experiment." (There was a second relay assembly test room study with less significant results than the first experiment.)

BANK WIRING ROOM EXPERIMENTS

The purpose of the following study was to find out how payment incentives would affect productivity. The surprising result was that productivity decreased, and workers apparently had become suspicious that their productivity may have been boosted to justify firing some workers later. 

The study was conducted by Elton Mayo and W. Lloyd Warner between 1931 and 1932 on a group of fourteen men who put together telephone switching equipment. The researchers found that although the workers were paid according to individual productivity, productivity decreased because the men feared the company would lower the base rate.

Detailed observation of the men revealed the existence of informal groups or "cliques" within the formal groups. These cliques developed relaxed rules of behavior and mechanisms to enforce them. The cliques served to control group members and manage bosses. Clique members gave the same responses when bosses asked questions, even if they were untrue. These results show that workers were more responsive to the social force of their peer groups than to the control and incentives of management.

INTERPRETATIONS

Possible explanations for the Hawthorne effect include the impact of feedback and motivation toward the experimenter. Receiving feedback on their performance may improve their skills when an experiment provides this feedback for the first time. Research on the demand effect also suggests that people may be motivated to please the experimenter if it does not conflict with any other motive. They may also be suspicious of the purpose of the experimenter. Therefore, the Hawthorne effect may only occur when there is useable feedback or a change in motivation.

Elton Mayo contended that the effect was due to the workers reacting to the sympathy and interest of the observers. He did discuss the study as demonstrating an experimenter effect but as a management effect: how management can make workers perform differently because they feel differently. He suggested that much of the Hawthorne effect concerned the workers feeling free and in control as a group rather than as being supervised. The experimental manipulations were influential in convincing the workers to feel this way, that conditions in the particular five-person workgroup were really different from the conditions on the shop floor. 

Harry Braverman pointed out that the Hawthorne tests were based on industrial psychology, and the researchers involved were investigating whether workers' performance could be predicted by pre-hire testing. The Hawthorne study showed "that workers' performance had little relation to their ability and, in fact, often bore an inverse relation to test scores." Braverman argued that the studies showed that the workplace was not "a system of a formal bureaucratic organization on the Weberian model, nor a system of informal group relations, as in the interpretation of Elton Mayo and his followers, but rather a system of power and antagonisms." This discovery was a blow to those hoping to apply the behavioral sciences to manipulate workers in management's interest.

Greenwood, Bolton, and Greenwood (1983) interviewed some of the employees in the experiments and found that the participants were paid significantly better.

Over 800 Western Electric Hawthorne Works Employees Died in the SS Eastland Disaster on the Chicago River on July 24, 1915.

Additional reading about the Hawthorne Effect (PDF):

Was there Really a Hawthorne Effect at the Hawthorne Plant? 

Rethinking the Hawthorne Studies: The Western Electric research in its social, political and historical context.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Monroe City One-room Schoolhouse, Valmeyer, Illinois.

The one-room Monroe City Schoolhouse that stood for nearly 100 years in Monroe City, Illinois, was moved to a new location in the new Valmeyer, Illinois (on the bluffs). 

The Monroe City School was built in 1918 and closed in 1955.

Monroe City School Postcard.

Property owner Melvin Allscheid donated the 1,200-square-foot schoolhouse to the Valmeyer Community Heritage Society. They moved the structure 10 miles from KK Road just east of Bluff Road to a new concrete foundation on a village-owned property at 321 South Cedar Bluff Drive and Empson Drive, just across the street from the current Valmeyer school campus, in April of 2011.

Today the one-room schoolhouse is home to the Valmeyer Community Heritage Society.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Janda's Drive-In, 8030 Ogden Avenue and Barrypoint Road, Lyons, Illinois.

A linen postcard from the 1940s showing the Janda Drive-in near the Hoffman Tower along the Desplaines River.

Janda's Drive-In was popular for their Bar-B-Q and  ice cream creations. Patrons enjoyed their open-air picnic Pavillion. 

Today, the 8030 Ogden Avenue address in Lyons is the Riverwalk Condominiums.

Municipal Restaurant & Luncheonette, Southeast Corner of 63rd Street and Cicero Avenue, Chicago. June, 29, 1934

We are at the southeast corner of the airport property, the northwest corner of 63rd Street and Cicero Avenue. We are looking northwest.
The Municipal Restaurant & Luncheonette is on the Southeast Corner of the airport property. See Map.

Note the airplane on the south side (left) of the restaurant at the Chicago Municipal Airport.

Municipal Restaurant & Luncheonette, Southeast Corner of 63rd Street and Cicero Avenue, Chicago.

Originally named Chicago Air Park, Midway Airport was built on a 320-acre plot in 1923 with one cinder runway mainly for airmail flights. In 1926 the city leased the airport and named it Chicago Municipal Airport on December 12, 1927. By 1928, the airport had twelve hangars and four lighted runways for night operations.

A major early morning fire on June 25, 1930, destroyed two hangars and 27 aircraft, "12 of them tri-motor passenger planes." The loss was estimated at more than two million dollars. The hangars destroyed were of Universal Air Lines, Inc., and Grey Goose Airlines, the latter under lease to Stout Air Lines. The fire followed an explosion of undetermined cause in the Universal hangar.

In 1931 a new passenger terminal opened at 62nd Street. The following year the airport claimed to be the "World's Busiest," with over 100,846 passengers on 60,947 flights. More construction was funded in part by $1 million from the Works Progress Administration; the airport expanded to fill the square mile in 1938–41 after a court ordered the Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad to reroute tracks that had crossed the square along the northern edge of the older field. 

In the 1940s, the Trivic Airport Pines Restaurant was at 55th Street and Cicero Avenue, at the Northeast corner of Midway.

In July 1949, the airport was renamed Chicago Midway International Airport after the Battle of Midway. In 2002 Midway welcomed the return of international service after a 40-year absence with the opening of the new Federal Inspection Service facility in Concourse A.

Today, Midway has 5 runways and 43 gates in three concourses; Concourse A has 19 gates, Concourse B has 26 gates, and Concourse C has 3 gates.

Additional Reading:

Marshall Field & Company, Cloud Room Restaurant in the Chicago Municipal Airport (Midway).

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The History of the Monroe Theater, 57 West Monroe Street, Chicago, IL.

One of the more modestly-sized Loop theaters, seating 950, the Monroe Theater’s history goes back to 1900 when the Inter-Ocean Building was constructed on the site of the Columbia Theater, which had been destroyed in a fire. In 1919.

The Inter-Ocean Building was converted into a theater that opened on April 10th, 1920. It was originally operated by showman William S. Barbee and called Barbee’s Loop Theater, aka Barbee’s Theater.

Before Barbee's Theater, the Ascher Brothers had intended to build a 3000-seat theater in the Inter-Ocean building in June 1918. It would have been the first large multi-purpose theater and movie house in the Loop. This obviously fell through.

In 1922, Barbee sought to install a stage so that the theater could present vaudeville, but his plans were blocked by Chicago city officials due to the lack of sufficient emergency exits. The theater closed in May 1923, reportedly due to a lack of business. 

On September 1, 1923, the theater was reopened under new management with a new name Monroe Theater. 

The theater’s former owner, William S. Barbee filed for bankruptcy in October 1923, having incurred over $230,000 ($3,867,000 today) in debt with the theater.

In the 1930s or 40s, the entrance and interior to the building were given an Art Deco makeover. By the 1950s, they were showing sci-fi and horror films B-movies. In the early-1960s, the theater started showing adult films.

The Monroe Theatre closed in May 1977 and was demolished in July 1977. Part of the Xerox Center (today known as 55 West Monroe Building) is located on the site of the Monroe Theatre today.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Chez Paree Theater Restaurant and Key Club, Chicago, Illinois.

The Chez Paree was a Chicago Dinner Theater and a Key Club best known for its stellar cuisine and top entertainment.

A CLUB KEY

The Chez Paree opened in 1932 at 610 North Fairbanks Court, in The Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago. The fully air-conditioned club was a thriving example of golden age entertainment. They hosted famous musical groups, comedians, big band talent, famous dance bands, and some vaudeville.[1] 

There were casino games played in the Key Club.

Popular entertainers included Jimmy Durante, Martin & Lewis, Sophie Tucker, Tony Martin, Danny Thomas, and Sammy Davis and Sammy Davis Jr. This is where Chicagoans took business people, politicians, and out-of-town family and friends to impress them when showing off our city. 

The floor was crowded with tables. There was a large dance floor in front of the stage. The Cocktail Lounge had a circular and glamourous bar.

The Chez Paree closed in 1960.

VISIT OUR SOUVENIR SHOP

A Friday or Saturday night crowd at The Chez Paree.

Chez Paree, Liberace in The Key Club.

Mae West with Chez Paree co-owner Jay 'Jack' Schatz in the mid-1950s after a night of performances.

Louis 'Satchmo' Armstrong in The Key Club at The Chez Paree.

Bob Hope, Mike Wallace, and his wife Buffy broadcast a radio show from The Chez Paree.

Jimmy Durante with The Chez Paree co-owners Jay 'Jack' Schatz and Donjo Medlevine in The Key Club.

Pearl Bailey and husband Louie Bellson (far right) in The Key Club.

Lena Horne in The Chez Paree Key Club.

Nat King Cole with co-owners Jay 'Jack' Schatz and Donjo Medlevine in The Key Club at The Chez Paree early-1950s.

The Will Mastin Trio, comprised of Will Mastin (2nd from left), Sammy Davis Jr (far left), and Sammy Davis Sr. (2nd from right) have some laughs with Chez Paree co-owners Jay "Jack" Schatz and Donjo Medlevine.

VISIT OUR CHEZ PAREE SOUVENIR SHOP

INDEX TO MY ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO FOOD & RESTAURANT ARTICLES.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. In the United States, the term connotes a light entertainment popular in the states from the mid-1890s until the early 1930s. Vaudeville, more so than any other mass entertainment, grew out of the culture of incorporation that defined American life after the Civil War (1861-1865). The development of vaudeville marked the beginning of popular entertainment as big business, dependent on the organizational efforts of a growing number of white-collar workers and an increase in leisure time, spending power, and changing tastes of an urban middle-class audience. Shows usually consisted of 10 to 15 individual, unrelated acts, featuring magicians, acrobats, comedians, trained animals, jugglers, singers, dancers, and other odd acts.