The Rainbo Building's History, 4812-4836 North Clark Street, Chicago (Uptown Community), Illinois.

An In-Depth History of the Rainbo Building Starting from 1894.

The Rainbo building (yes, 'Rainbo' is the correct spelling) on Clark Street and Lawrence Avenue (in the Uptown Community) has a long history of businesses, sports venues, nightclubs, way before the ice skating rink and the roller skating rink, we all remember.

As early as 1894, the site was occupied by a small roadside restaurant that likely enjoyed a robust business. After all, the roadhouse had a prime location. It was situated alongside what was then still the main road between Chicago and the northern suburbs, Clark Street (formerly Green Bay Road), and stood across the street from one of the city's largest cemeteries, St. Boniface. Like many other picnic groves that operated across the city's northern periphery during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Clark Street Roadhouse would have offered weary travelers and cemetery visitors a welcome place to stop and refresh themselves before continuing their journeys or returning to the city. There was a restaurant, a tavern, and a spacious picnic grove outback. Two lengthy horse sheds provided visitors a place to unhitch their horses and park their carriages.

Urban growth gradually engulfed the Clark Street roadhouse for the next twenty years. As the area grew, the roadhouse changed. By 1905, its owners had added a second floor to the restaurant and erected a two-story beer hall, a bowling alley, an outdoor dance floor, and stand-alone refreshment stands. These new amenities helped transform the old roadhouse into an urban amusement center. Whereas the old nineteenth-century roadhouse had catered to travelers and cemetery visitors whose dining options were limited by the site's remoteness, the enlarged twentieth-century eatery and outdoor pleasure ground competed with other urban amusements for the business of young, pleasure-seeking urbanites. By the summer of 1917, the pleasure spot had come to be known as the Moulin Rouge Gardens, with D'Urbano's Eccentric Italian Band heading the bill of entertainers.

After the First World War ended, Chicago restaurateurs Fred and Al Mann took over the Moulin Rouge Gardens. The pair changed the place's name to Rainbo Gardens, reportedly remembering Al's wartime service in the 42nd "Rainbow" Division of the American Expeditionary Forces. After a visit in July 1921, a Variety correspondent reported that the Rainbo Gardens was "running an easy first with the money-getters. The gardens are beautifully decorated, cool and inviting. Stunts are providing drawing cards, and a toddler contest went viral. An automobile is to be given to the winners."

But owner Fred Mann had bigger ideas. In 1921, he set about giving the old pleasure spot a million-dollar makeover. Plans called for redesigned outdoor gardens for summertime events and the construction of a two-story structure to house a cocktail bar and dining room that would remain open year-round. The rebuilt gardens opened in June 1922. 

According to a promotional pamphlet, the gardens were "surrounded by a wall with tall trees planted at intervals to provide an illusion of complete remoteness from city life." Four months later, the Rainbo Casino, housing the cocktail bar and dining room, opened for business. 

The dining room, known as the Rainbo Room, could accommodate as many as 2,000 diners at a time—plus an additional 1,500 dancers if need be. Variety said it was "probably the largest cafe in America conducted strictly on a dine and dance basis." Indirect, multi-colored lighting gave the Rainbo Room a romantic glow, and a revolving stage ensured that the entertainment—be it vaudeville, ballet, or dance music—never stopped.

Some of the biggest names in Chicago nightlife performed at Rainbo Gardens during the early twentieth century. During the late 1910s, singing sensation Ruth Etting performed there after making a name for herself as a costume designer at Chicago's Marigold Gardens. She wowed audiences at the Rainbo Gardens with her deep singing voice and eye-catching chorus-line costumes. 

Before leaving for Hollywood, many Chicagoans had come to know her as "Chicago's Sweetheart." Musicians were also an essential part of the Rainbo Gardens during these years. Renowned saxophonist Isham Jones led one of many so-called Rainbo Orchestras while performing at the Gardens during the early 1920s. Jones' Orchestra thrilled the Rainbo's dancers with snappy jazz pieces like "Dance-O-Mania" and "Jing-A-Bula-Jing-Jing-Jing," as well as more romantic tunes like "I Love You Sunday" and "Sahara Rose." Frank Westphal, Ralph Williams, and Sam Wagner were the other bandleaders performing at the Gardens during the 1920s.

Despite the top-flight entertainers, Rainbo Gardens, like many of the city's other nightspots, struggled during Prohibition. The ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages took much of the excitement out of the place. Patrons responded by smuggling their liquor flasks into the Gardens and sharing them with others. Rainbo's managers, not unlike their counterparts at other Chicago nightclubs, usually turned a blind eye to the surreptitious liquor consumption, not willing to risk driving away patrons. Federal prohibition agents, however, were not so tolerant. One of the first big raids came in October 1920, when federal agents stormed the Rainbo and the nearby Green Mill Gardens and seized an ample supply of liquor at both establishments. The raids continued, on and off, for the next eight years.

sidebar

Jack McGurn of Al Capone's Chicago Outfit became a part-owner of the Green Mill and became Capone's north-side hangout. An access hatch to the tunnels led underneath the street to a different building; this was how Capone eluded the authorities when the Green Mill was raided.

Mann looked to protect his investments against the uncertainties of Prohibition by diversifying the Rainbo's range of amusements. In 1927, he converted the outdoor gardens into an indoor sports arena with 1,726 permanent seats. Initially known as the Rainbo Fronton, the arena pushed the Manns' total investment in the property to over $2 million. At first, the Fronton was used for jai alai matches, the novelty of which attracted the interest of many Chicagoans. For a time, the sports pages of the city's daily newspapers were filled with jai alai scores and profiles of various Rainbo Fronton players. As the novelty of the sport wore off, however, the Fronton began to be used primarily for boxing and wrestling matches. The facility could accommodate as many as 2500 for the matches by setting up an additional 800 seats on the arena's main floor.

Meanwhile, the Rainbo remained a top target of law enforcement officials. Prohibition agents intensified their efforts in 1927 and 1928. During the wee hours of the morning of February 5, 1928, agents raided the Rainbo and at least ten other Chicago nightclubs without the use of search warrants. Variety reported, "For the first time in the history of local prohibition enforcement, no search warrants were used, and every guest with a highball glass, ice, ginger ale, or charged waters at their tables were given the once over. Names and addresses were taken and verified before the people were permitted to leave." Law enforcement officials contended that night clubs functioned as public spaces and could be entered by law enforcement officials without search warrants–even though search warrants had always been used. However, Fred Mann and other Chicago nightclub owners challenged such tactics by forming a local trade association and taking prohibition officials to court. They contended that raids conducted without search warrants were unconstitutional and that local enforcement of Prohibition targeted outlying nightclubs, like the Rainbo while ignoring widespread liquor consumption at prestigious downtown hotels.

Following the February 1928 raid, federal authorities ordered Rainbo Gardens closed. Soon after that, Mann was arrested on gambling charges. Authorities alleged that Mann sponsored illegal pari-mutuel betting at the Rainbo Fronton. Mann fell into bankruptcy in February 1929 with the Rainbo still padlocked. The Rainbo reopened in November 1929, with the Charley Straight Band providing the entertainment. Shortly after reopening, a fire forced the Rainbo to close yet again. It reopened in December 1929 after a month of reconstruction and redecorating, but by then, many Chicagoans had found other places to enjoy themselves.

The Rainbo's struggles continued during the Depression. Most activities during the 1930s centered in the Rainbo Fronton, where jai alai tournaments and other sporting events continued to draw crowds. 

By contrast, the old Rainbo Casino remained relatively quiet. For a few months in 1934, the second year of the Century of Progress exposition, it reopened as the "French Casino." 

The French Casino

A few years later, in 1939, theatrical producer Michael Todd and a group of investors purchased the Rainbo Gardens complex. After spending an estimated $60,000 on repairs and new decorations, Todd reopened the old Rainbo Casino, calling it the Michael Todd Theatre Café. The new Theatre Café and its spectacular stage show proved very popular.

Michael Todd Theatre Cafe Dinner Stage Show 1939

Upsetting every nightclub tradition, he ran his establishment according to the principles of Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, aiming the entire operation for the ordinary people. Admission was 50¢, dinner 75¢ (the most popular dessert was Jello); Champagne cocktails cost a quarter, cigarettes cost exactly what they did at any tobacco store, and hat-checking was free. Chicago's hard-working people loved the Theatre Café to the tune of $65,000 a week.

sidebar

Inflation from 1939 to 2023: $65,000 x 52 = $ 3,380,000 a year in 2023.

This was too tempting for Chicago's gangsters to make their hands behave. The Nitti mob, heirs of Al Capone, began moving in and pressuring Todd's backers and several unions involved in the club's operation. A cover charge was instituted; food and drink prices soared; hat-check girls set out their saucers for tips; cigarettes cost a lot more; there was no more Jello to be had. Todd finally sold his stock and left Chicago in May 1931

Following Todd's departure, police raided the Theatre Café and discovered employees selling liquor to minors. The city subsequently revoked the nightclub's license, forcing it to close again.

After the Second World War, new operators reopened the Rainbo, holding wrestling matches in the Fronton. A bowling alley was also built on part of the property.

An ice skating rink was installed in 1957. It subsequently became a practice rink for the Chicago Blackhawks, including the year they won the 1961 Stanley Cup. 

It also became a training rink for several Olympic figure Ice Skaters and housed a pro bowling alley before it became a rock music venue.

The section of the building that became the Kinetic Playground was originally the Rainbo Gardens Ballroom (later a restaurant, casino, and bowling alley before it became a rock club). It was directly to the south of the Rainbo ice skating rink. 

Aaron Russo originally opened a nightclub called the 'Electric Theatre.' He was forced to change the name sometime in the summer of 1968, choosing "The Kinetic Playground" after a threatened lawsuit from New York City's Electric Circus. Gangsters fire-bombed the Kinetic Playground on November 7, 1969, destroying the roof and light show.

Led Zeppelin – Kinetic Playground, Chicago. 1969

The club was subsequently reopened in the early 1970s. A somewhat circular room with a manned huge projection booth hanging from the middle of the ceiling, filled with fifty automatic film and slide projectors and strobe lights for the psychedelic light show. The club featured a huge balcony, eight sound towers, a kaleidoscope of full-length mirrors, an amoeba-shaped stage, and meditation booths.

 

sidebar

There was no relationship between the Kinetic Playground at Rainbo and a new Kinetic Playground venue that operated until 2011 at 1113 West Lawrence Avenue, Chicago.

The New Kinetic Playground, 1113 West Lawrence Avenue, Chicago.

One section of the building was originally the Rainbo Fronton, then the Rainbo Ice Arena and Rainbo Roller Rink). This section was used for the sport of Jai lai (A sport involving a ball bounced off a walled space by accelerating it to high speeds with a hand-held device called a 'Cesta,' a wicker basket used to catch and throw the ball.), boxing, wrestling, a 30-lane bowling alley, and an ice skating rink.

sidebar

The Rainbo changed from ice skating to roller skating in 1980 until the Rainbo Roller Rink was  closed in 2003.

In 1980, the new Rainbo Roller Rink surface was laid atop the space that, for the previous 22 years, had been maintained for ice skating. Skating patrons entered the building from Clark Street, then walked down a 100-foot hallway, passing the Rainbo Skate Pro-Shop on the way. The shop moved to Skokie and is now located in Northbrook, IL.

Before it was demolished, the Rainbo Roller Rink was still open to the public. It was primarily a late-night roller skating rink but also hosted some concerts in the rink as well. The last event held in the building was on March 30, 2003, and it was demolished in November 2003.

Why Couldn't the Rainbo Building be Saved?

The Rainbo building was not saved because the owners, United Skates of America[1], were no longer making a profit from the Rainbo Roller Rink and their other leases, so they sold the property. The building had been up for sale for several years before it was purchased by the current owners. Even though the Social Security Administration office had originally planned to lease part of the building, they backed out of the lease due to the lack of maintenance. The building had been up for sale for several years before it was finally purchased, and preservationists did not attempt to buy or save it.

The New Complex.
There is a new condominium complex where the great Rainbo building once stood. The latest and unique condominium complex honors the original Rainbo building named the Rainbo Village, Condos & Townhomes, 4812-4846 North Clark Street, Chicago.

Rainbo Village, Condos & Townhomes, 4812-4846 North Clark Street, Chicago.

BUILDING HISTORY

1894 - Roadside Saloon & Restaurant.

1905 - Additions to the restaurant include a 2nd floor, a two-story beer hall, a bowling alley, an outdoor dance floor, and several stand-alone refreshment stands.

1917 - Became known as "Moulin Rouge Gardens."

1922 - Name changed to 'Rainbo Gardens.' The Rainbo Casino and Rainbo Room were added in a significant renovation.

1927 - Outdoor gardens were converted into an indoor sports arena called the 'Rainbo Fronton' and 'Rainbo Arena' (used for jai-alai, boxing, and wrestling matches).

1934 - During the 1934 Chicago World's Fair, it was known as the 'French Casino'.

1939 - Michael Todd reopened the old Rainbo Casino and renamed it the 'Michael Todd's Theatre Cafe.' It was closed after a short period when Todd fell out of favor with the Chicago Outfit.

1940s - A bowling alley was added to the complex.

1957 - An ice skating rink was added to the facility.

1968 - The Electric Theatre opened.

1968-73 - The name was changed to Kinetic Playground due to a threatened lawsuit.

1980 - Rainbo Roller Rink opened.

2003 - The building was demolished for condominiums.

sidebar

Chicago Tribune, December 3, 2003: Construction crews discovered bones (reportedly from two different people) in the rink's basement and a couple of sneakers. It was thought they died in the early 1900s.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

---

[1] The United Skates of America is a nationwide chain of family-friendly roller skating rinks that began in Columbus, Ohio, around 1972. Rainbo Roller Rink was the location in Chicago in the 1970s. Today, In Chicago, it's the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Park & Family Entertainment Center, 1219 West 76th Street, Chicago, Illinois. 

---

The Rainbo Fades Away.
By Kevin Adair | Lerner News-Star - April 9, 2003
Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Uptown residents will soon hear the sounds of wrecking balls and construction once a time, claiming the historic Rainbo Roller Rink, 4812 N. Clark Street , to make way for a condo complex. 

The last group of skaters left the rink around 2:40 AM. Monday, March 31. Within 24 hours, all 12 of the rink's huge mirror balls were lowered in preparation for the wall-to-wall sale of the building's contents on April 2 and 3. 

In the end, the historical and social value of the rink was exceeded by the property's real-estate value. 

Rainbo and its parking lot sit on two acres that have seen many entertainment uses over the past 130 years. In the 1870s, a beer garden was built there. Rainbo's current building dates back to 1922, featuring a theater/restaurant and an outdoor garden with lavish stage shows. 

Michael Ross, a former security employee, said that in the 1920s, the building included a tunnel up Lawrence Avenue toward the Green Mill on Broadway, allowing gangsters and other patrons to escape Prohibition-era police raids. 

In addition, the building has hosted wrestling, boxing, dog shows, bowling lanes, an ice-skating rink, and various performance uses, from rock concerts to Big Band ballroom dancing. 

In 1980, the Rainbo Roller Rink surface was laid atop the space that for the previous 22 years had been maintained for ice skating. Skating patrons entered the building from Clark Street, then walked down a 100-foot hallway, passing the Rainbo Skate Shop on the way. The skate shop has since moved to Oakton Avenue in Skokie (now relocated to Northbrook, Illinois).

As they entered, many didn't realize that to their left was a colossal, vacant, crumbling neoclassic ornate plasterwork juxtaposed with an Art Deco ceiling of extended and retracted circular platforms. Surrounding the chamber on three sides, 20 feet above floor level, is an abroade and deep balcony that suffered fire and water damage. 

In the 1960s, the forward space of the building was the Kinetic Playground concert venue, hosting such acts as the Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead. By the late '80s, the former Kinetic Playground space had become one of the area's first skate parks, where skateboarders could navigate obstacles and display their skills on half-pipe-shaped ramps that propelled them nearly as high as the 40-foot ceiling. 

But, skate park installation park came the destruction and removal of the original bar and lower-wall paneling, both made of fine imported wood. The skate park was only used for a few years before it was closed down due to liability concerns. 

In the 1990s, the U.S. General Services Administration contracted to use the forward space of the Rainbo building for a new Social Security office. But then it halted in mid-construction, leaving the current gravel floor. General Manager Mark Stern said a fire in the neighboring Crafty Beaver Home Improvement store contributed further to the building's structural problems. 

The Rainbo's patrons, staff, and management gave different reasons for the club's recent demi. Still, several things are clear: Columbus, Ohio-based United Skates of America, which had owned the building and the business for 22 years, sold the building to a developer in early 2001 but continued to operate the business as Rainbo under their lease agreement. Patrons were notified at the beginning of March 2001 that their beloved rink would remain open for less than 30 more. 

Many of the over 500 patrons who skated on the club's closing night shared stories of growing up and making close friendships inside the Rainbo. 

"This should have been the last rink of all the rinks to close," patron Jesse Woolfolk said. "I've been skating for 42 years, and we had nothing (else) on the North Side as far as skating. So I was here the day it opened. I used to work as a Redi-Mix truck driver. If I was here around lunchtime, I'd jump out of my truck, run in here real quickly, skate and jump back into my truck and go." 

"Skating is one thing my wife and I have always had in common, and she's skating here with me tonight." 

Employees who had just completed their last shift at the Rainbo, including bartender Darnell Harris, blamed poor management for causing the North Side's only roller skating rink to go out of business. 

"I started DJ-ing here when they first opened, and I left, then I came back here in 1984, and I've been here ever since," Harris said. "This (closing) is about bad management. The Social Security Administration would move its headquarters entrance to the other side of this building. They reneged on the contract, but they still had to pay. That money didn't come back to keep this place open." 

sidebar

Following community protests over plans to move the Social Security office from Lincoln Square to the Rainbo building, the U.S. General Services Administration agreed to place it at its current location at Lawrence and Leavitt.

Stern confirmed that United Skates' financial benefit from the Social Security contract still needs to be reinvesting into improvements at the Rainbo site. Stern also confirmed that the profits from the Rainbo had been used by United Skates to expand into additional rinks around the country. But few of the corporation's profits had come back to improve the Rainbo facility, except that a new game room, party room, and bathrooms had been added on the south side of the building. 

But the Rainbo didn't simply close because the company needed to redevelop the property further. Stern emphasized that while profits had increased under his management, the roller rink business was required to provide its owners with more profit. 

Stern said they notified the public as soon as they knew their lease was terminating, which forced them to cancel already contracted events tracked, including Monday night hockey, spring break programming, and concerts. 

Stern dismisses the likelihood of any last-hour preservation attempts, noting that Rainbo had the building for sale for several years before it was purchased by the current owners, who left the rink untouched for over a year. Preservationists could have stepped in at any point, he said. 

"Where were they three years ago when the building was for sale?" Stern asked. 

Jim Dvorak, United Skates President, pointed out that the monies generated from the Social Security Administration's pull-out were on the real-estate side of the ledger and were never intended to go to skating rink coffers. Had the U.S. government had agency not abruptly changed its plans, Dvorak said, its use of the other half of the building could have helped keep the Rainbo open. 

Dvorak encourages Chicago skaters to visit the company's newer rink located at 79th and Racine, which was opened about two years ago. 

But adults, kids, teenagers, and entire families will unlikely trek over 20 miles to the nearest open rink. Young people from Uptown and neighboring communities will no longer have that venue as a constructive outlet for their energy. 

Those present at the Rainbo on the night of its last hurrah will likely remember the fantastic moves of men, women, and children who were dancing, gliding, spinning and leaping backward and forwards, including moves reminiscent of singer James Brown, creating a Broadway-worthy performance that Chicago's North Side may not see repeated for many years to come.

Learner Newspapers

Forum Cafeteria (1911-1973) at 64 W. Madison St. was the Biggest Restaurant in Chicago, Illinois.

After World War II, Chicago's Forum cafeteria served every day appetites hungry for prosperity.
DON'T MISS THE ARTICLE "3 FIREMAN KILLED, 24 INJURED IN CHICAGO FIRE" AT THE END OF THIS STORY.

Perhaps some malevolent god passed a death sentence on the Forum Cafeteria long before it went up in flames, January 6, 1973. Three firefighters lost their lives—and 28 others were injured—when the roof of the Forum Cafeteria on West Madison Street collapsed during a fire.

The old building on Madison Street with the double serving line, the mirrors, murals, and wide overhead lights was, more than anything else, the symbol of an era, a petrified relic that stood its ground for 15 years while the people who used to frequent it gradually disappeared.

Forum diners line up two-by-two for the noon-hour rush on Madison Street. Not the most elegant eatery in post-WWII Chicago, the Forum was nevertheless a landmark on the culinary landscape until it was destroyed by fire in 1973.

Few remembered, in the end, that the Forum was once the biggest restaurant in Chicago and that in its heyday it dominated Madison Street. Conceived in the last year of the Depression, it reached maturity in the '40s and '50s, declined in the '60s, and died in the '70s of an inexplicable midnight fire and premature old age.

The Forum had tropical murals on the wall, a mezzanine level,
and served 11,000 meals in a fifteen-hour day.

I got to know the Forum in the late 1950s because I would go there with my grandfather. He ate there regularly and found it difficult to understand why anyone would want to eat anyplace else. Since he regarded restaurants and cafeterias as primary places to eat, the fact that the Forum offered good food at low prices tended to compensate in his mind for the fact that it offered very little else and, he even grew attached to the second-floor mezzanine where people sat twelve to a table in an open hall that afforded the intimacy of the waiting room at Union Station.

The Forum in the 1950s was a vast, noisy, friendly, and by the standard of Loop restaurants, exceedingly Spartan. The lines formed at 6 a.m. when the doors of the cafeteria opened and they often didn't let up until the closing time at 9 p.m. At peak periods, lines extended in both directions down Madison Street, with one line going all the way to the corner of Madison and Clark, the other stretching well past the Today theatre, which then showed newsreels. Only Elvis Presley could draw that kind of crowd in the Loop of the 1950s and, although the Forum was not the most elegant eatery in Chicago, it was probably the best known.

The Forum attracted people from every walk of life. In its long lines, LaSalle Street lawyers talked with politicians, secretaries with servicemen, conventioneers with pensioners, and Skid Row derelicts socialized with churchgoers who had just gotten out of Mass.

In the hall of the restaurant itself, patrons moved through a glass-enclosed corridor that led to the base of the double serving line. There they took their trays and carefully wrapped silverware and moved into one of the two identical cafeteria lines, past rows of salad and Jello by the vegetables, including such country favorites as squash and greens, past the selection of seven or eight main courses and the array of puddings, cakes, and pies, then stopped at the cashier, who would add everything up and present them with a bill.

From the second-floor balcony, customers seemed like parts on an assembly line as they entered the serving area through the glass-enclosed corridor. If anything it resembled a grand hall. Stained glass murals were set at intervals in the cafeteria's green Vitrolite (Vitrolite was an opaque pigmented glass used as tiles) wall, and were reflected in the mirrors on the opposite side.

The painstakingly arranged murals, which were mosaics made of colored glass, depicted women harvesting tea in Ceylon, people hacking down stalks of bananas in the West Indies, and natives gathering coconuts in the South Sea Islands. They suggested material prosperity and the view, borne of the Depression, that abundance would cure all ills. The men standing patiently in line beneath them seemed to be waiting, not just for food but what they considered to be social due, a generous share of well-earned prosperity.

As it happened, this notion was not far from the mind of C. M. Hayman, who founded the Forum. He chose the name because it reminded him of "For-'em," i.e., for the everyday man in the street. Hayman started his career as a cook and bottle washer in Kansas City in the 1890s and got his first break when he managed to scrape together a meal of hot biscuits and mince pie for Col. William R. Nelson, the founder of the Kansas City Star. Nelson was impressed by the young man's ingenuity ─ and his cooking ─ and decided to make Hayman his assistant butler.

Nelson also taught him what he needed to know in order to open a restaurant on his own, which Hayman did in 1911. In 1927, he established the first permanent Forum cafeteria in Kansas City, and the Chicago cafeteria was opened 12 years later, in 1939.

Perhaps it was optimism that led Hayman to open the Loop Forum because the Depression was still going on in the summer of '39, and there was no guarantee the new cafeteria could be a success. It also involved an enormous initial investment because it was intended to be a showplace from the start. In addition to the murals and wall of mirrors, there was etched glass in a three-foot-wide strip down the center of the ceiling between the overhead lights and along the corridor leading to the serving lines, and there was also expensive crockery and genuine silver. The day the cafeteria opened there were displays of flowers along the balcony and telegrams of encouragement from well-wishers. And, as luck would have it, the Forum made good on Hayman's investment by becoming an overnight success.

The former assistant manager of the Forum, George Havlik, recalled that the long lines began forming almost immediately and there were still people eating at the Forum in the early 1970s who could remember what it was like on that first hectic afternoon. As the Depression ended and the country went to war, the cafeteria's combination of good, inexpensive food and hospitable surroundings suited the city's mood and the crowds continued to grow. By the end of the war, with thousands of demobilized servicemen coming back to Chicago, the Forum had established itself as a Loop landmark and by far the biggest eating place in town. Streams of customers filled its tables and with the arrival of each new convention, the cafeteria seemed to fill to even greater capacity until in the summer of 1948, during a Shriner's convention, the Forum set its own record by serving over 12,000 meals for each of three consecutive days. Havlik recalled that during that week the cafeteria was so choked with people, customers with trays in hand had to wait for ten or even fifteen minutes to find an available seat. In the July heat, lines stretched around the block and there was virtually no letup in the crowds from 6 o'clock in the morning to well past ten o'clock at night.

In many ways, the Forum reigned as queen of the post-war Loop. No restaurant was bigger and few could attract quite the variety of people who would turn up in its long cafeteria lines. It was located midway between the shopping area on State St. and the office buildings on LaSalle, directly across from the old Morrison Hotel, the former headquarters of the Chicago Democratic Party and in the heart of the old entertainment district.

A graying bartender, who in his younger days sold advertising space for an entertainment magazine called "This Week in Chicago," recalled that in the 1940s and early 1950s in the area around the Forum there were bars almost every ten feet and every little place had its own dance band and entertainment. People used to come downtown to listen to jazz or shoot dice, drink or see a show, go bowling or just walk. Because the Forum was both inexpensive and in the middle of all of the activity, it was a natural place to have dinner on a Saturday night and young couples, often in evening dress, used to eat there before going out on the town.

There was little tension then and not much sophistication either. Conventioneers in the area used to drop paper bags full of water on passer-by and pull off other endearing stunts that would earn them a few broken heads if they tried them today. Still, the shenanigans had no harmful effect on the Forum, which continued to draw crowds of customers day and night, averaging as many as 11,000 in a 15-hour period when the Loop was busy and the weather was good. The cafeteria became a kind of a tradition for many people, including my grandfather, who went there every day at exactly the same time. Gradually, Forum patrons became accustomed to a regular cast of characters, many of whom prove difficult to forget.

There was "the duchess," so named for her slightly imperial manner and the fact that she dressed in gay '90s fashion with a long dress, a flowered hat, a long fur around her neck, and a face covered with powder and rouge. She had once been an actress but when she stood in line or sat at one of the Forum's communal tables she managed to keep very much to herself. She was noticed for the style and color of her clothes ─ she favored purples and reds ─ and because she came into the Forum almost every afternoon at exactly the same time. But one afternoon in the early 1960s she stopped coming and was never seen again.

Another Forum regular was an elderly city employee who came in for breakfast and paid for his meal out of a wallet that struck cashiers as unusually thick. Since the Forum was a busy place, no one paid much attention to him or his wallet until the day he made the front pages of all four Chicago papers. It seems he had never trusted banks and had been carrying over $30,000 in cash in his wallet every day for years until he lost the wallet one morning while inspecting a city street repair crew.

Apparently, a passer-by found the wallet and began spending its contents. This aroused the suspicions of his friends who reported him to the police. The wallet was recovered and its original owner returned to the Forum breakfast line until he too, just one day ceased to appear.

There were others too; an eighty-year-old woman who wore several diamond rings and was escorted by her 40-year-old boyfriend, a Frenchwoman who sang in the line, and even a Shriner who was dressed in full Regalia and almost ejected ─ a difficult thing to arrange ─ by letting out full-throated hog calls in the middle of a crowded lunch hour.

The most distinctive feature of the Forum and in the end the thing that was most appealing about it was the fact that although it was designed to handle great numbers of people, the Forum still managed to conceive of each of its customers as an individual worthy of a modicum of respect.

The food, for example, was good. Sides of beef were purchased according to exacting specifications and the cutting of steaks was done on the premises. The Forum prepared its own puddings, donuts, and pies; the dressings, salads, and Jello molds were also made on the premises. There were little extras too. Silver covers were provided for cups of coffee and silver-plated teapots were given to those who ordered tea. The silverware was also made of genuine silver until the late '60s when people started stealing so much of it that the cafeteria had to change over to stainless steel.

The Forum managed to survive, not because it scrimped on either the quality of its service or its food but rather because it was ingeniously organized. Every aspect of the Forum's operation had a pattern, from the preparation of food in the middle of the night to the counterclockwise method used by the cashier in adding up the items on a customer's tray. All of this added up to a savings of hours, which translated into extremely low prices.

In the 1950s it was possible to fill your tray at the Forum for under a dollar; a three-course meal went for something like $.75. The prices increased gradually but just before the Forum burned down it was still possible to get a dinner of T-bone steak with potatoes and salad for $3.00, a dinner of hamburger, perch, chicken, or pork for $1.25, or a special lunch of franks, beans, fried potatoes, and squash for $.79. The prices never stopped being among the lowest in the Loop but the crowds of people who used to pay them slowly melted away.

The crowds held up through the '50s but began to gradually decrease in the '60s, completely disappearing by the end of the decade. The Forum had served around 8,000 meals a day in 1960 and was down to 4,000 a day in 1968.

There were reasons, of course, including the abandonment of the downtown area, which took place at an accelerating rate with the growth of suburban shopping centers. But in the case of the Forum, there was something else as well. With the coming of the 1970s, the cafeteria that had once seemed willing to feed the entire city, that was equipped to serve 800 meals an hour but was now serving fewer than 3,000 meals in a 15-hour day, fed mostly old-time customers who still came in regularly. They were people like a former bantam-weight boxing champion, the father of a well-known Hollywood actor, a few aging politicians, and retirees from all over the city, who remembered the old days when the Loop was a community and the Forum was its heart.

"You know," Havlik said one day last December, referring to a shabbily dressed customer, "you can't tell from outward appearances what these people are or who they were."

They had changed too. The 1940s and '50s were in many cases the most memorable years of their lives. Returning to the Forum was like reliving those days when it seemed that prosperity was here to stay and their problems were behind them.

Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way. A society that suddenly found it had more than enough to meet its needs invented new needs to be fulfilled. Food, when it stopped being scarce, became a form of entertainment. As consumption blossomed into America's number one indoor sport, restaurants such as the Forum were transformed into obsolete reminders of a forgotten mentality and a bygone era.

Standing one afternoon near the Forum's double serving line, Havlik remarked: "You know it's funny, the way at this stage a lot of our customers seem to be dying off. I'll remark to someone that I haven't seen so and so here in some time, a regular customer who had been eating here for years, and he'll say, 'Oh yeah, he passed away.'"

It was a week before the fire and Havlik was feeling nostalgic about the place. "You wouldn't believe what a showplace this once was," he said. "Yes," he continued, nodding, "it was the real center of town."

By David Satter

INDEX TO MY ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO FOOD & RESTAURANT ARTICLES.

---

3 Firemen Killed, 24 Injured In Chicago Fire.
January 6, 1973, CHICAGO (UPI)

The roof of a burning Loop cafeteria collapsed early today, showering firemen with smoldering debris and pinning dozens of them in the rubble of heavy beams, plaster, and bricks. 

At least three firemen were killed and 24 others were i injured, some seriously. More than 30 firemen were inside the building when, without warning, the roof caved in. Fire Commissioner Robert Quinn said the firemen had just been told to leave the building when the roof suddenly gave way, pinning the helpless firefighters.

Firemen continued fighting the blaze while others sifted through the charred rubble in search of their lost comrades or worked with axes, crowbars, and power saws to free men pinned beneath the rubble.

The search for bodies was centered in the fire-ravaged Forum Cafeteria on West Madison Street. Two of the dead firemen were identified as Timothy Moran, about 35, and Richard Kowalzyk, 31. During the search, firemen found the body of a third fireman. His body was cut out from under a crossbeam in the debris. He was not immediately identified.

The cafeteria was closed when the blaze broke out early this morning but seven employees were in the building. They fled to safety. "Christ, we're lucky we're here," an exhausted, ice-laden fireman said when he learned of the numerous injuries. "These damn fires, these ceiling fires. They're the worst. It can go at any minute, just boom, that's all she wrote," he said.

The cause of the blaze was not immediately determined, but fire officials said the blaze apparently started in a storage loft above the second floor, which housed exhaust fans to cool the building.

INDEX TO MY ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO FOOD & RESTAURANT ARTICLES.

Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903 was the deadliest theatre and single-structure fire in the United States history, claiming over 602 lives in Chicago, Illinois.

On Wednesday, December 30,1903, the deadliest theatre and single-structure fires in United States history occurred at Chicago's new "Iroquois Theatre," at the northeast corner of Randolph and Dearborn Streets 79-83 Randolph (after the 1911 Loop Renumbering; 36 West Randolph Street), during the standing-room-only matinée performance starring the famous comedian Eddie Foy.

Regular "Iroquois" Prices: $1.50, $1.00, 75¢, 50¢

The fire claimed the lives of more than 602 people, including scores of children, who were packed into the place for the afternoon show.

The Iroquois Theatre was much acclaimed, even before it opened. In addition to being "absolutely fireproof," it was a beautiful place with an ornate lobby, grand staircases, and a front facade that resembled a Greek temple with massive columns. The theatre was designed to be safe, and it had 25 exits that, it was claimed, could empty the building in less than five minutes. The stage had also been fitted with an asbestos curtain that could be quickly lowered to protect the audience. It would have been impressive if it had been installed and the staff had any idea how to use the existing safety devices.

A view of the stage from the balcony shows the devastation of the fire.

And those were not even the worst problems. Seats in the theatre were wooden and stuffed with hemp. "Unattractive" safety doors were hidden from sight, and gates were locked across the entrance to the balcony during the show so that those in the "cheap seats" wouldn't sneak into the main theatre.

The building had no fire alarms, and many other safety equipment had been forgotten or ignored, leading to the ever-popular "Chicago pay-offs" to officials who allowed the new theatre to open on schedule anyway.

A photograph was taken from the stage of the fire-blackened theatre. 

As crowds filled the theatre on that cold December day in 1903, they had no idea how close their way was to meet their deaths. The horrific events began soon after the holiday crowd had packed into the theatre on Wednesday afternoon to see a matinee performance of the hit comedy Mr. Bluebeard. The main floor and balcony were packed; dozens more were given "standing-room-only" tickets, and they lined the rear and walls of the theatre.

The balcony of the theatre had the greatest loss of life. Theatre patrons were trapped there by gates that were locked across the stairways and then abandoned by theatre staff after the fire began. Others raced for the fire escapes—only to find that they had never been installed. Many in the balcony burned to death or plunged to their death outside the alleyway.

At the beginning of the second act, stagehands noticed a spark descend from an overhead light and watched some scraps of burning paper fall onto the stage. In moments, flames began licking at the red velvet curtain, and while a collective gasp went up from the audience, no one rushed for the exits. It's believed the audience merely thought the fire was part of the show.

A few moments later, a flaming set crashed onto the stage, leaving little doubt that something had gone wrong. A stagehand attempted to lower the asbestos curtain that would protect the audience, and it snagged halfway down, sending a wall of flame out into the audience.

Actors on stage panicked and ran for the doors. Chaos filled the auditorium as the audience rushed for the theatre's Randolph Street entrance. With children in tow, the audience members immediately clogged the gallery and the upper balconies. The aisles had become impassable, and as the lights went out, the crowd milled about in blind terror. The auditorium began to fill with heat and smoke, and screams echoed off the walls and ceilings. Through it all, the mass continued to move forward, but when the crowd reached the doors, they could not open them. The doors had been designed to swing inward rather than outward.

The crush of people prevented those in the front from opening the doors. Many of those who died burned and suffocated from the smoke and the crush of bodies. Later, as the police removed the charred remains from the theatre, they discovered several victims had been trampled in the panic. One dead woman's face even bore the mark of a shoe heel.

Backstage, theatre employees and cast members opened a rear set of double doors, which sucked the wind inside and caused flames to fan out under the asbestos curtain and into the auditorium. A second gust of wind created a fireball that shot out into the galleries and balconies filled with people. All of the stage drops were now on fire, and as they burned, they engulfed the supposedly noncombustible asbestos curtain, and when it collapsed, it plunged into the seats of the theatre.

The fire burned for almost 15 minutes before an alarm was raised at a box down the street. There appeared to be nothing wrong from the outside, and it was so quiet that the first firefighters thought it was a false alarm.

This changed when they tried to open the auditorium doors and found they could not—too many bodies stacked against them. They were only able to gain access by actually pulling the bodies out of the way with pike poles, peeling them off one another, and then climbing over the stacks of corpses. It took only 10 minutes to put out the blaze, as the intense heat inside had already eaten up anything that would still burn. The firefighters made their way into the blackened auditorium and were met with only silence and the smell of death. They called out for survivors, but no one answered their cry.

The gallery and upper balconies sustained the greatest loss of life as the patrons had been trapped by locked doors at the top of the stairways. The firefighters found 200 bodies stacked there, as many as 10 deep. Those who escaped had literally ripped the metal bars from the front of the balcony and had jumped onto the crowds below. Even then, most of these met their deaths at a lower level.

Bodies of the dead lined up in the alley behind the theatre. Newspaper reporters dubbed this alleyway, officially known as Couch Place, "Death Alley" after the fire, and it still remains one of the most haunted spots in Chicago.

A few who reached the fire escape door behind the top balcony found the iron staircase missing. In its place was a platform that plunged about 100 feet to the cobblestone alley below. Across the alley, behind the theatre, painters were working on a building occupied by Northwestern University's dental school. When they realized what was happening at the theatre, they quickly erected a makeshift bridge using ladders and wooden planks, extending across the alley to the fire escape platform. Reports vary regarding how many they saved, but several people climbed across the bridge.

Several plunged to their deaths as they tried to escape across the ladder, but many times, that number jumped from the ledge or was pushed by the milling crowd that pressed through the doors behind them. The passageway behind the theatre is still called "Death Alley" today after nearly 150 victims were found here.

When it was over, 572 people died in the fire, and more died later, bringing the eventual death toll up to 602, including 212 children. For nearly five hours, police officers, firemen, and even newspaper reporters carried out the dead. Anxious relatives sifted through the remains, searching for loved ones. Other bodies were taken away by police wagons and ambulances and transported to a temporary morgue at Marshall Field's on State Street. Medical examiners and investigators worked all through the night.

Two of Frank Lloyd Wright's sons, John, eleven, and Frank Jr., thirteen years old, escaped from the Iroquois Theatre with Flora Tobin, their grandmother. Catherine Lee Tobin Wright was Frank Lloyd Wright's first wife, and Flora Tobin was Catherine's mother. Catherine and Frank were married in 1890 and were divorced in 1923. [NOTE: "Flora was known in the family as "Blue Gramma," given the name by color-blind Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., who saw her red hair as blue."]

This view of the Iroquois Theatre outside was taken after 4:00 PM on December 30, 1903.

The city went into mourning. Newspapers carried lists and photographs of the dead, and the mayor banned all New Year's celebrations. An investigation into the fire brought to light several troubling facts. The investigation discovered that the supposedly "fireproof" asbestos curtain was made from cotton and other combustible materials and would have never saved anyone. In addition to not having any fire alarms in the building, the owners had decided that sprinklers were too unsightly and too costly and had never had them installed.

To make matters worse, the management also established a policy to keep non-paying customers from slipping into the theatre during a performance—they quietly bolted nine pairs of iron panels over the rear doors and installed padlocked, accordion-style gates at the top of the interior second—and third-floor stairway landings. Just as tragic was the idea they came up with to keep the audience from being distracted during a show: They ordered all of the exit lights to be turned off.

The investigation led to a cover-up by officials from the city and the fire department, who denied all knowledge of fire code violations. They blamed the inspectors, who had overlooked the problems in exchange for free theatre passes. A grand jury indicted several individuals, including the theatre owners, fire officials, and even the mayor. No one was ever charged with a criminal act. Families of the dead filed nearly 275 civil lawsuits against the theatre, but no money was ever collected.

The Iroquois Fire still ranks today as one of the deadliest in history. Nevertheless, the building was repaired and reopened briefly in 1904 as Hyde and Behmann's Music Hall and then in 1905 as the Colonial Theatre.

In 1924, the building was razed to make room for a new theatre, the Oriental, but the facade of the Iroquois was used in its construction. The Oriental operated at what is now 24 West Randolph Street until the middle part of 1981 when it fell into disrepair and was closed down. It opened again as the home to a wholesale electronics dealer for a time and then went dark again. The restored theatre is now part of the Civic Tower Building and is next to the restored Delaware Building. 

It reopened as the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre in 1998; however, it is commonly called simply the Oriental Theatre.

But this has not stopped the tales of the old Iroquois Theatre from being told, especially in light of more recent -- and more ghostly events. According to recent accounts from people who live and work in this area, "Death Alley" is not as empty as it appears. The narrow passageway, which runs behind the Oriental Theatre, is rarely used today, except for the occasional delivery truck or a pedestrian hurrying to get somewhere else. It is largely deserted, but why? The stories say that those few who do pass through the alley often find themselves very uncomfortable and unsettled here. They say that faint cries are sometimes heard in the shadows and that some have reported being touched by unseen hands and by eerie cold spots that seem to come from nowhere and vanish just as quickly.

Panoramic view into Couch Place Alley (Death Alley) and the Chicago Theatre used to be adjacent to the Iroquois Theatre. This alley in downtown Chicago held a six-foot-high pile of bodies of over 600 dead people after the Iroquois Theatre fire.

Could the alleyway and the surrounding area actually be haunted? And do the spirits of those who met their tragic end inside the burning theatre still linger here? Perhaps the strange sensations experienced here are "ghosts of the past" of another kind. A chilling remembrance of a terrifying event that will never be forgotten entirely.

Iroquois Theatre Memorial at the Montrose Cemetery, 5400 North Pulaski Road, Chicago, Illinois.

 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Contributor, Troy Taylor

---

The Original Iroquois Theatre Matinée Playbill for the December 30, 1903. (pdf)

Couch Place, an Infamous Alley in Chicago's Loop.

Free PDF Book: The Great Chicago Theatre Disaster, the Complete Story Told by the Survivors, by Marshall Everett, published in 1904.