Auditorium Building and Theatre

Several blocks farther north, the Auditorium Theatre (1889) is the site of touring plays, popular concerts, and visiting orchestras and is the home of the Joffrey Ballet, which moved from New York City to Chicago in 1995. A few more blocks north is Symphony Center (formerly Orchestra Hall), home of…

…one of them, the historic Auditorium Building, not only served 24 million meals by the war’s end but also saw its magnificent stage used as a bowling alley.

… (Burnham and Root, 1882), the Auditorium Building (Adler and Sullivan, 1887–89), the Monadnock Building (Burnham and Root, 1891), and the Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store (originally the Schlesinger-Mayer department store; Sullivan, 1898–1904). Chicago, because of this informal school, has been called the “birthplace of modern architecture.”

…in 1886 to design the Auditorium Building in Chicago that marked the first period of Sullivan’s design maturity. This project was a curious combination of a hotel and office block wrapped in a U-shape around a 3,982-seat auditorium for opera. Completed in December 1889, it is a 10-story-high building of…

…has been quartered in the Auditorium Building, a national historic landmark designed by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler. A suburban branch in Schaumburg was opened in 1978. Total enrollment exceeds 7,000.