Berwyn Theatre

My wife and I went to this Theater many times when living in Berwyn on Scoville mid 1970s. Berwyn was a great town back in those days. We also loved to eat at the Ridgeland restaurant right next door to the Berwyn. X-lent Bohemian cooking for cheap $$………….

A book called The Entrepreneurial Spirit of the Greek Immigrant in Chicago, Illinois, by Alexander Rassogianis, says that the Gregory Brothers theater circuit opened the Parthenon Theatre at Berwyn in 1924. The Gregorys were also in the construction business and built the Parthenon, as well as other houses in their circuit, and houses for other Greek theater operators in the region.

Worked at this theatre had a lot of fun. I was 16 my mother got me the job.

In the 40s and 50s, this was a second round house, that is, movies played in downtown Chicago, (1st run) then to places like the Berwyn and Olympic. Eventually they made the 3rd run shows. To compete,Berwyn, like others,had low prices until 5pm when they were increased..hey…a family of 4 could save a dollar just by going early.

The Woolwoth’s like store between Ridgeland and Culyer avenues was Neisner’s 5&10 cent store.

Douglas Deuchler’s book Berwyn has a larger black-and-white version of the picture of the Parthenon Theatre at the top of this page, and identifies it as a 1924 postcard. That’s probably correct.

Another Arcadia Publishing Company book, Czechs of Chicagoland by Malynne Sternstein, identifies another view of the Parthenon as one of a series of photos depicting Czech communities around Chicago published by photographer by E.F. Macha in 1925.

The architectural style of the building would have been retardataire for the late 1920s. I’d guess that the Parthenon opened in the early twenties, or maybe even the later 1910s.

From the early 1920s a picture postcard view of the Parthenon Theatre before it became the Berwyn in Berwin IL.

Cool theatre.

I guess they won’t let me download pictures at this time. Any interested drop me a line.

GREAT SHOTS OUT OF BERWYN. IT SEEMS LIKE ONLY YESTERDAY. DO YOU HAVE MORE?

reply to Michael Kuecker :
The mayor’s idea to turn the bulding into a mini-mall – a cluster of retail stores in order to save Cermak Road as a retail center – was dead on arrival. The city had no money to do it and there were no business establishments willing to put money into it.(They all had gone already into the Riverside Mall)
And the cinema? Well, once there were cinemas in the Harlem/Cermak Plaza with all the free parking the Berwyn cinema was doomed also. So the LaSalle Bank seemed like a feasable ventureat the time.

My mum seems to think it was called Carmel Corn or something. It was a little black & white design sign, but she remembers it well. :) She thinks it may have been a chain of stores. Ah the fire that destroyed ONLY the apartments above the theatre and a few of the shops below. All the same prevented it from being declared a landmark. The then mayor gave into the almighty greenback of ABN AMRO now known as LaSalle Bank. :( The theatre itself suffered no more than minor smoke damage. Nothing a fresh coat of Highland Rose colour paint couldn’t have cared for.

The caramel popcorn shop near the Berwyn theatre? That one goes back many many years ago, much farther back than the fire that destroyed the theater. It was sometime in the early sixties, if I recall correctly, it was forced to close simply by the law of competition – the theater opened its own caramel popcorn stand in its vestibul that became frequented by people passing by. And that put the old shop out of business.
By the way, the owner of the popcorn shop was an old Greek who died and it may also have been the reason for the shop’s closing.