Biograph Theater
- Architect
- Samuel N. Corwen
- Year
- 1914
- Style
- Neoclassical
- City
- Chicago, IL
- Collection
- movie palaces
The Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue opened in 1914 as a movie house and today stages live productions. It is best known as the spot where bank robber John Dillinger was shot dead by FBI agents on July 22, 1934, moments after he left a screening of the gangster film Manhattan Melodrama.
the building
Movie-house details. Built by the Henry Ericsson Construction Company, the theater keeps the standard vocabulary of its era: a storefront-width lobby, a recessed entrance, a free-standing ticket booth, and a canopy marquee. The facade is red pressed brick trimmed in white glazed terra cotta.
The Dillinger shooting. Dillinger came to the Biograph with Anna Sage, the so-called 'Woman in Red,' and Polly Hamilton to see Manhattan Melodrama. FBI agents led by Melvin Purvis were waiting outside; when Dillinger spotted them and reached for his pistol, they shot him down on the sidewalk.
the style
Samuel N. Corwen designed the Biograph in a Neoclassical idiom in 1914, giving a working movie house the formal dress more often reserved for banks and civic buildings of the period.
More on Neoclassicalsignificance
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a Chicago Landmark on March 28, 2001, a status owed as much to the Dillinger episode as to the architecture.
nearby
- Kaufmann Store and Flats
- St. Vincent de Paul Church
- Francis J. Dewes House
- Building at 2440 N. Lakeview Avenue
- Ann Halsted House
- Theurer-Wrigley House