In 1978, Days Of Heaven premiered at the Carnegie. The accoustics were stunning; steam-powered tractors reaping fields of grain boomed across the screen with startling fidelity—scaring the wits out of me and my date. By then, the neighborhood ambience had improved. Around the corner on Walton Street reposed the Magic Pan crepe restaurant with its French countryside ambience, a charming turntable of upside down crepe pans, and a check that allowed me to retain the deed to my car. Alas, the Magic Pan and Carnegie are gone. It’s nearby sister theater, the sweet Esquire on opulent Oak Street, still stands.
The Crown’s balcony was called the “mezzanine” by the owners. No other Northwest Side theater this close to the Loop had a balcony. BZ is right, the marquis blazed with lights. It illuminated the entire intersection of Division, Milwaukee and Asland Avenue, and the Manufacturer’s Bank building across the street. Next door to the east was a neat restaurant, siding on Ashland Avenue, Palmer’s Grill, if memory serves, a hamburger place, great fries, long building, with booths and a sit-down counter. The marquis in the 1909 photo reads, “David Higgins – Last Performance.” A theater actor of that name and during that time is listed in several data bases in nearby Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Banner Theater was located at one of the busiest triple intersections on Chicago’s Near Northwest Side, in the heart of the historic Wicker Park community. The theater was just around the corner from the confluence of Damen, Milwaukee and North Avenues, in a deep and very narrow building, rather gloomy-looking, outside and in. Two doors to the north was a Chicago fire department station, a hook & ladder company, home to a long, articulated rig, the kind with an elevated rear seat and steering wheel for a tillerman, seated high above, negotiating street corners. Often after exiting the Banner, my kid friends and I would stop at the fire house for a treat of a drink of water from a garden hose attached to a hydrant on the sidewalk out in front. The H & L house was a busy station, and when an alarm came in, or a rig returned from a “run,” the long truck was forced to manuever back and forth for some time, in order to negotiate the sharp turn on narrow Damen Avenue. Firefighters stood in front of the Banner with flares, blocking foot traffic and cars, until the rig was safely in or out of the station’s bay. Around the corner, to the east on North Avenue, was about the only Chinese restaurant in the predominently Polish-American community. As a family, we often took in a week-end movie at Banner, then scooted around the corner for a treat of Chinese cuisine, a great and exotic venture, and quite a change from kapusta and kielbasa and pierogi. (Gotcha?) Both the Banner and the firehouse have been replaced with a long parking lot— Joannie Mitchell, anyone?
In the 1940s, the Round-Up Theater used a gimmick as a promotion for its western B films: any child (including me) dressed in a cowboy outfit—boots, chaps, bandana, vest, capguns shoved into holsters on a belt—was admitted at a discount. Once passed the usher at the doorway, a kid was required to check his guns at the candy counter. The outer lobby was seperated from the theater proper by saloon-type swinging doors. I recall swaggering past the ticket window, muscling my way through the swinging doors, and hoisting my gunbelt to the candy counter’s glass top, where a smiling clerk hung it on a peg on the back wall, and handed me a receipt. Then followed the ritual purchase of a box of popcorn before joining Hopalong Cassidy inside in his two-gun quest for justice in the Old West. Not a bad day’s work for a kid from Chicago’s Polonia.
Next door to Logan Square’s magnificent Harding Theater on Chicago’s Milwaukee Avenue, near Spaulding, stood a restaurant called the Harding Waffle House. It was a charming, sit-down ice cream restaurant, serving hot waffles topped with a scoop of ice cream and sprinkled with powdered sugar, with ice cream sundaes or malts to wash down the treat. As a family, in the late 1940s, we traveled there from West Town by streetcar after Sunday Mass, dressed as if we were on our way to the Chicago Theater in the Loop. I want to die and come back to a Sunday matinee at the Harding Theater and a plate of ice cream-topped waffles at the Harding Waffle House—but not at this very moment.
In 1978, Days Of Heaven premiered at the Carnegie. The accoustics were stunning; steam-powered tractors reaping fields of grain boomed across the screen with startling fidelity—scaring the wits out of me and my date. By then, the neighborhood ambience had improved. Around the corner on Walton Street reposed the Magic Pan crepe restaurant with its French countryside ambience, a charming turntable of upside down crepe pans, and a check that allowed me to retain the deed to my car. Alas, the Magic Pan and Carnegie are gone. It’s nearby sister theater, the sweet Esquire on opulent Oak Street, still stands.
The Crown’s balcony was called the “mezzanine” by the owners. No other Northwest Side theater this close to the Loop had a balcony. BZ is right, the marquis blazed with lights. It illuminated the entire intersection of Division, Milwaukee and Asland Avenue, and the Manufacturer’s Bank building across the street. Next door to the east was a neat restaurant, siding on Ashland Avenue, Palmer’s Grill, if memory serves, a hamburger place, great fries, long building, with booths and a sit-down counter. The marquis in the 1909 photo reads, “David Higgins – Last Performance.” A theater actor of that name and during that time is listed in several data bases in nearby Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Banner Theater was located at one of the busiest triple intersections on Chicago’s Near Northwest Side, in the heart of the historic Wicker Park community. The theater was just around the corner from the confluence of Damen, Milwaukee and North Avenues, in a deep and very narrow building, rather gloomy-looking, outside and in. Two doors to the north was a Chicago fire department station, a hook & ladder company, home to a long, articulated rig, the kind with an elevated rear seat and steering wheel for a tillerman, seated high above, negotiating street corners. Often after exiting the Banner, my kid friends and I would stop at the fire house for a treat of a drink of water from a garden hose attached to a hydrant on the sidewalk out in front. The H & L house was a busy station, and when an alarm came in, or a rig returned from a “run,” the long truck was forced to manuever back and forth for some time, in order to negotiate the sharp turn on narrow Damen Avenue. Firefighters stood in front of the Banner with flares, blocking foot traffic and cars, until the rig was safely in or out of the station’s bay. Around the corner, to the east on North Avenue, was about the only Chinese restaurant in the predominently Polish-American community. As a family, we often took in a week-end movie at Banner, then scooted around the corner for a treat of Chinese cuisine, a great and exotic venture, and quite a change from kapusta and kielbasa and pierogi. (Gotcha?) Both the Banner and the firehouse have been replaced with a long parking lot— Joannie Mitchell, anyone?
In the 1940s, the Round-Up Theater used a gimmick as a promotion for its western B films: any child (including me) dressed in a cowboy outfit—boots, chaps, bandana, vest, capguns shoved into holsters on a belt—was admitted at a discount. Once passed the usher at the doorway, a kid was required to check his guns at the candy counter. The outer lobby was seperated from the theater proper by saloon-type swinging doors. I recall swaggering past the ticket window, muscling my way through the swinging doors, and hoisting my gunbelt to the candy counter’s glass top, where a smiling clerk hung it on a peg on the back wall, and handed me a receipt. Then followed the ritual purchase of a box of popcorn before joining Hopalong Cassidy inside in his two-gun quest for justice in the Old West. Not a bad day’s work for a kid from Chicago’s Polonia.
Next door to Logan Square’s magnificent Harding Theater on Chicago’s Milwaukee Avenue, near Spaulding, stood a restaurant called the Harding Waffle House. It was a charming, sit-down ice cream restaurant, serving hot waffles topped with a scoop of ice cream and sprinkled with powdered sugar, with ice cream sundaes or malts to wash down the treat. As a family, in the late 1940s, we traveled there from West Town by streetcar after Sunday Mass, dressed as if we were on our way to the Chicago Theater in the Loop. I want to die and come back to a Sunday matinee at the Harding Theater and a plate of ice cream-topped waffles at the Harding Waffle House—but not at this very moment.