Chicago Theater Marquee

ADDRESS: 175 North State Street, Chicago, IL ARCHITECTS: Rapp & Rapp YEAR BUILT: 1921 October 26, 1921. Take a time travel to this date. The corner of State and Randolph. The smell of the city hits you first. Then the sound of “L” trains clanking overhead. The whole Loop is buzzing with the frantic pulse of commerce and ambition. State Street is a sensory assault, but today none of it matters. Every eye on the block is turned toward one thing. Seven stories of cream-colored terra cotta rising from the sidewalk like a declaration. Above the glowing horizontal marquee, a massive vertical sign spells “CHICAGO” in a waterfall of incandescent bulbs. Not a building. A stake driven into the cultural heart of the Midwest.  This is a city making a statement. Chicago had finally traded its stockyard grit for imperial glamour, and it wanted you to see. How did that come about? Let’s roll back another 14 years. One day in 1907, young Barney Balaban took his mom, Gussie Mendeburskey, to a mov