A parish built it; Chicago theatre never gave it back. The Athenaeum at 2936 North Southport Avenue in Lakeview opened in 1911, designed by architect Hermann J. Gaul for the Redemptorist Fathers of St. Alphonsus as a home for the intellectual, physical and social intercourse of their German-Catholic parishioners - opera, dance, orchestral and dramatic productions from day one. More than a century later it is Chicago's oldest continuously operating Off-Loop theatre, now run as the Athenaeum Cente.....

The butcher shop in the back became one of Chicago's hardest-working stages. Beat Kitchen at 2100 West Belmont Avenue has anchored the Roscoe Village corner of Belmont and Hoyne since 1990, serving live music, food and beer out of an 1889 building whose back room spent its first century as the neighbourhood butcher's before conversion into the venue's music room. Owner Robert Gomez - whose portfolio also includes Wicker Park's Subterranean - has kept the formula steady for three decades: a prope.....

Chicago's freethinker cemetery became its most transfixing concert ground. Bohemian National Cemetery at 5255 North Pulaski Road was founded in 1877 by the city's Czech community after a Catholic priest refused burial to Marie Silhanek, a Czech woman deemed insufficiently observant - an outrage that drove eight Bohemian benevolent societies to buy fifty acres in what was then Jefferson Township and create a burial ground free of religious restrictions, open within a decade to all nationalities a.....

The Moorish castle of Uptown has been Chicago's dream palace for a century. The Aragon Ballroom opened on 15 July 1926 at 1106 West Lawrence Avenue, built for 2 million dollars by brothers Andrew and William Karzas to surpass their own south-side Trianon as "the Wonder Ballroom of the World." Architects Huszagh and Hill wrapped the block in Spanish Baroque stucco while John Eberson - America's master of atmospheric movie palaces - designed the interior as the courtyard of a Moorish castle under .....

Chicago's last honky-tonk survived the neighbourhood, the taxman and two years of darkness. Carol's Pub at 4923 North Clark Street, at the corner of Clark and Leland in Uptown's Sheridan Park enclave, opened in 1972 as Pam's Playhouse under Ted Harris, an Alabama transplant who knew exactly who his customers were: the huge wave of Appalachian and southern migrants who had turned post-war Uptown into "Hillbilly Heaven," a district of honky-tonks, diners and drag-strip streets. When Ted died in 19.....

Few bars in America have a more storied address than 1059 West Addison Street, directly across from the Wrigley Field marquee in Chicago's Wrigleyville neighbourhood. The Cubby Bear has occupied the corner of Addison and Clark since 1953 and has earned Best Rock Club from the Chicago Music Awards, number-one Neighbourhood Bar in Chicago from Maxim, and a seventh-place ranking among the best sports bars in the United States from Sports Illustrated. The venue spans over 30,000 square feet and hol.....

No seat in the house is more than 45 feet from the stage - not even in the balcony. The Gary and Laura Maurer Concert Hall, at 4544 North Lincoln Avenue in Chicago's Lincoln Square, is the flagship performance room of the Old Town School of Folk Music, the storied teaching institution that has anchored the city's folk scene since 1957. The hall occupies the school's Lincoln Square West building, a handsome former public library the Old Town School converted when it moved north from its original.....

Horner Park is a Chicago Park District facility on the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois, featuring athletic fields, playgrounds, and a fieldhouse that hosts community events, outdoor concerts, and neighbourhood festivals.

A 22-year-old borrowed money from friends to book an unknown Athens band called R.E.M. - the show half-filled the room, the band told everyone, and Chicago got its defining rock club. Metro, at 3730 North Clark Street in Wrigleyville, opened as Cabaret Metro on 25 July 1982 and has run under founder Joe Shanahan ever since. The building came with history: the 1927 beaux-arts Swedish community center had become the Northside Auditorium Building and then Stages Music Hall - John Prine and Gang of.....

Union disputes got the building bombed in 1931 - Chicago's theatre wars spared no one, not even a neighbourhood movie house two years old. The Music Box Theatre, at 3733 N Southport Avenue in Lakeview, opened on 22 August 1929 and has run continuously as an art-house cinema since 1983. The house is an atmospheric gem: the 750-seat main auditorium wears a twinkling star-covered ceiling and drifting projected clouds above Italianate-meets-Moorish decor, fronted by a neon marquee whose eight lette.....