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The Uptown: Chicago's Endangered Movie Palace
Chicago’s Uptown Theatre, one of America’s largest and most lavish movie palaces, has sat vacant for more than 40 years. For decades, few people have been let inside—to experience its grand lobby, its sweeping staircase, or its massive theater auditorium, which once showed Marx Brothers films and played host to Bruce Springsteen concerts.
The Uptown: Chicago’s Endangered Movie Palace gathers the work of a dozen contemporary photographers with vintage blueprints, renderings, programs, and classic photographs to tell the story of one of America’s jewels—a theater built “for all time.”
Opened a century ago, the Uptown is now in limbo, its beauty hidden behind a plywood barricade. Too costly to tear down and too expensive to restore, the theater faces a precarious future.
That’s why this book was created. To document what remains and to call for the protection and preservation of one of America’s sacred places. It’s not too late, as this book shows.
Journalists Robert Loerzel and James A. Pierce have been studying the Uptown for decades. They have assembled a detailed documentation, relying on original records and first-hand accounts to tell the story of dreamers, a changing neighborhood and a nation stepping into a new world.
The Uptown: Chicago’s Endangered Movie Palace gathers the work of a dozen contemporary photographers with vintage blueprints, renderings, programs, and classic photographs to tell the story of one of America’s jewels—a theater built “for all time.”
Opened a century ago, the Uptown is now in limbo, its beauty hidden behind a plywood barricade. Too costly to tear down and too expensive to restore, the theater faces a precarious future.
That’s why this book was created. To document what remains and to call for the protection and preservation of one of America’s sacred places. It’s not too late, as this book shows.
Journalists Robert Loerzel and James A. Pierce have been studying the Uptown for decades. They have assembled a detailed documentation, relying on original records and first-hand accounts to tell the story of dreamers, a changing neighborhood and a nation stepping into a new world.
- GenresNonfiction
168 pages, Hardcover
Published August 18, 2025
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