Chestnut Station Cinemas
830 N. Clark Street,
Chicago,
IL
60610
830 N. Clark Street,
Chicago,
IL
60610
4 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 40 comments
The Chestnut Station had five screens. Four auditoriums on the main floor; and one puny little auditorium (Theatre 5) upstairs near the rest rooms.
Opening was December 9, 1983. Credit Tim O'Neill: “40 years ago today, the Essaness Chestnut Station Theatres opened on the Near North Side of Chicago. The first 5-plex theatre in this part of town didn’t actually have five screens just yet on opening night. The four main auditoriums were built and ready to go; however, the smaller 5th screen wasn’t finished; so Essaness went ahead and opened up the new venue anyway, with Theatre 5 opening up a few weeks later in 1984.
At this time, the northern downtown theatres were dying and the Near North Side theatre scene was considered underserved. There were the four Water Tower Theatres, the Carnegie, the Esquire and the McClurg Court. Yeah…..not a whole lot to choose from. With the Chestnut Station Theatres opening up, now there were five more auditoriums. Things started out great for Chestnut Station….but not for long.
The Chestnut Station was not built from the basement on up. Essaness took over an old post office station and built four 200+ seat auditoriums on the main floor and one little room (about 175 seats) upstairs. Typical 1980s shoebox theatres. However, Theatres 1 and 2 had 70mm, and overall, it was a decent place to watch a movie. Mainly Hollywood fare opened at Chestnut Station, with some arthouse fare here and there. One of its biggest attractions was AMADEUS in 70mm. The movie played there for months. I even worked at the Chestnut Station very briefly, for two months, in 1986. Everything was a-okay at Chestnut Station for about 4 years…and then……
Well, first off, Chestnut Station was an Essaness Theatre for just under 2 ½ years. In the Fall of 1985, the Toronto-based theatre chain Cineplex Odeon took over the Plitt Theatres chain. And then, Cineplex Odeon took over the Essaness Theatres chain the following spring. So, it was now Cineplex Odeon Chestnut Station Theatres. Oh boy!!!! Initially, it was a good thing. CO’s top honcho, Garth Drabinsky, was spending money like crazy, and he remodeled many of his new acquisitions, which included the Chestnut Station. He also revamped the Biograph and Lake Shore Theatre on the North Side. Cineplex Odeon was on fire. They were taking over the world….and they closed the last two big Downtown Chicago movie houses in 1988 and January 1989. This is where things started to go downhill around 1988.
Downtown Chicago was once a bustling movie theatre scene. When I was a kid in the 1970s, there were around 13 individual movie theatres still in business. They were going down the tubes and by the mid 1980s, there was about four theatres left. After the United Artists Theatre closed in early 1988 and the Woods closed in early 1989, the rowdy downtown crowd needed someplace to go for their movie fix….so they started checking out the newly-opened (December 1988) Burnham Plaza Theatres ( a 5-lex that originally was supposed to be an Essaness theatre; however after Essaness sold their Chicago area theatres to Cineplex Odeon in 1986, the construction of the new Burnham Plaza became a Cineplex Odeon project), and the former downtown moviegoers also started to patronize the Chestnut Station.
What started out as an unspectacular but still rather nice 5-screen complex on Chicago’s Near North Side, the Chestnut Station became a less desirable location. Horror movies, action movies….the type of movies that attracted the downtown crowd…started playing at the Chestnut Station. There was a tragic shooting of a young woman from Alsip in 1992 outside the Chestnut Station on the opening night of JUICE. She died and the shooter was arrested by theatre security guards. The place was getting so undesirable that by 1996, with the recent opening of Cineplex Odeon’s 600 N. Michigan Theatres, Cineplex Odeon decided to turn Chestnut Station into a 2nd Run, $2 bargain house. One year later, after Thanksgiving weekend, the Chestnut Station Theatres closed forever.
Several years later, there was talk going around that the building that housed the Chestnut Station Theatres was going to be converted into a synagogue, but it never happened, and the building was eventually demolished. Chestnut Station Theatres; 1983-1997. It’s gone."
Ran across this link with one interior photo as the Post Office and the WPA murals that were on the walls.
http://www.wpamurals.com/chiPOfoy.htm
This was opened by Essaness Theatres, which Cineplex Odeon purchased in 1986.
Site to be redeveloped with row houses. DNAInfo story here. The story doesn’t mention the theater, but the picture matches the street view.
The site is still vacant. It is a valuable piece of land, and new buildings are going up around it.
From 1987 to 1991, I went to a lot of movies with my girlfriend (once or twice a week, every week…anyone remember $3 Tuesdays?). Chestnut station was an alright place. I stopped going to the movies frequently after 1991 , when we broke-up, so I missed the decline of this Cinema.
I notice that the vacant lot on the sw corner of Clark and Chestnut has a new agent offering it for sale. It was the site of a post office and later the Chestnut Station Theater.
This opened on December 12th, 1983. Grand opening ad uploaded.
The Jewish center was never built, and the land remains vacant.
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What a horrible way for both a human being and a theatre to go down!
Wow. I remember those scaffolds going up, and getting scared that it was all doomed. I always thought a higher end thrift store would do well on that Clark Street side. Much like the one that got booted from S/W corner of Erie & Clark, then sat empty ever since.
Thanks for the link.
I believe it’s a recital hall or something at the top. No idea what they use it for now.
View link
P.S. The small S/E corner building previously housed Audio Consultants.
An Evanston based, high end audio and later home theater showroom.
Down Clark St. at Chicago Avenue is a massive building that has has empty storefronts on the Clark elevation for over 15 years. On the top it appears to have some type of huge ballroom space or something.
Would be neat to check out someday.
I happened to catch an e-mail the other day from the new Alderman’s office.
It stated that the proposed project at Chesnut & Clark, a 370 foot, 28 story, 49 unit condo building with 83 parking spots, has been scaled back to a two story building.
There is currently a two or three story building on the S/E corner, but it can’t possibly have the amount of land to accomodate that size building.
So it must be refering to the former site of the Chestnut Station Theaters. Which has remained empty since it was demolished.
P.S. I do remember the Miami Vice color scheme inside the theater lobby. It actually knid of fit with the building’s low profile.
I just wanted to add that the Salvation Army had a massive headquarters building kitty corner from Chestnut Station and across from the Newberry Theatre.
It literally took up the entire block as does the condo building that replaced it. Bordering Dearborn, Chestnut, Clark & Delaware Streets. (Tooker Place was an actual street name for the alley that runs Eastbound from Dearborn between Chestnut & Delaware. Next to the Hazelton Rehab. Facility)
A small parking lot was on the Clark Street side. My father attempted projecting giant still photos on the Dearborn side marble like walls from our living room picture window at 863 N. Dearborn. He had a unique overhead projector from his days at a short lived creative agency called Image Makers. On Wabash across from Medinah Temple.
The condo building that replaced the Salvation Army was being built around 1994/
95. There was a huge debate about it's prosposed new height. Experts were tapped to discuss the potential loss of sunlight on the park. Washington Square/Bughouse is also obviously famous for the soap box oratories in the20’s. And again for the dog leashflare-ups where Ald. Natarus got in a disagreement with a cop and supposedly he was transferred.
I stand corrected. Thanks Bryan.
That would put the actual Newberry Theatre across from the park. Which really didn’t need any more night life action than it had in the late
60's &70’s.The city ultimately removed the run down covered structure in the center of the park, where the fountain is now.
Even with the CPD 18th District only a block away, Bughouse was a hotbed of vagrants, drugs & illicit activity back then. All across from my grade school.
Even though I lived only 2 blocks away in the `90’s, I only saw a few things at Chestnut Station. “Dangerous Minds” was the last.
We did use it as our Post Office though prior to that. As we lived at 863 N. Dearborn in 1969 & `70. Fittingly that is now Hazelton.
The address of Chestnut Station is correct. However that of the Newberry Theatre on it’s link I believe is off by one block.
The Newberry was later called the Image Theatre and was still a gay porno house when it closed. It was South of Chicago Avenue, not North. Next to Stop & Drink.
I can find no listing for The Image Theatre on Cinema Treasures. So I assume they are one in the same. Just a block off.
In the block North of Chestnut Station on Clark across from Washington (Bughouse) Square, was a rather large auto dealer, Jocke Buick. Which took up most of the block. It had a rotating colored, pointy spire. Next to that was a small manufacturing building which only came down a few years back.
And then the massive Henrotin Hospital on the corner of Clark & Oak. That was there until 1985 or so, torn down and replaced by townhomes. This is why I think the Newberry was actually further South of Chicago Ave. There wasn’t really room for it in the 800+ block North on Clark St. There definately was an Image Theatre on Clark between Superior & Chicago. A guy we knew leased it to build a second Lamere Vipere. Famous punk bar on Halsted.
Since punk bar O'Banion’s was still at Erie & clark, this seemed a natural spot. However Natarus got alienated quick, and that was the end of Lamere 2.
Here’s a mini article from the Chicago Tribune, 12/9/83
“Curtain rises for Chestnut Theatres' ‘return to opulence'
By Sid Smith
THE CHESTNUT Stations Theatres, latest entry in the sweepstakes for the trendy North Sider’s movie dollar, are scheduled to open at 5:15pm Friday with “Yentl” and “Sudden Impact”. Plans are for the theater complex, housed in an 80 year old post office at the corner of Clark and Chestnut streets, to have five screens operating and seat 1,300. For the first week, “Yentl” will occupy two screens and “Sudden Impact” two others. Next Friday, “To Be or Not to Be” and “Uncommon Valor” take over two of those screens; a fith is slated to open in January.
Essaness Theatres Corp, which owns the complex, spent $1.5 million restructuring the building’s interior to create what executive vice president Jack Belasco called “a return to opulence”. The building’s Art Deco exterior was scarcely altered.
THE FINISHED product is to include chandeliers bought at auction from a defunct movie palace in San Francisco, silver colored wall tiles imported from Belgium and a pink-and-green Art Deco carpet. Attendants behind a sleek black counter will dispense the traditional vending items; a direct line for calling cabs will be in the lobby. One of the theater’s five comfortably large screens can handle 70MM film, and the other four are for 35MM pictures. Admission will be $5."
There was no picture with the article, and I got this from the microfilm department at HW library center.
Here is a picture from the Lincoln Village. I assume it was a similar setup at Chestnut.
Neon lights on a doorframe? Ha! That sounds like a nightclub.
I wonder if that place in Elmhurst would have interior pictures? Every time I look at an old Essaness/Cineplex Odeon ad, I get curious about this place.
View link Here is an old article about thr Jewish Center.
I attended the Chestnut Station theater only once. I don’t recall what movie I went in to see due to the fact that I asked for refund because of the distraction. Who in their right mind decorates the doorframe to an auditorium with neon lights? Very bright neon lights!