Versailles came to the Loop in 1926, survived vaudeville's death, Cinerama, a banquet-hall conversion and heavy metal, and emerged gilded again. The Cadillac Palace Theatre at 151 West Randolph Street opened on 4 October 1926 as the New Palace Theatre, the Chicago flagship of the Orpheum vaudeville circuit, designed by the legendary theatre architects Rapp and Rapp in a French Renaissance style inspired by the palaces of Versailles and Fontainebleau, its lobby lined with marble, gold leaf and breche violette columns. Jimmy Durante, Mae West, Sophie Tucker, Jack Benny and Bob Hope are all believed to have worked its stage in the early years. Vaudeville's collapse converted the house to movies in 1931 as the RKO Palace, with wartime trivia attached: the interior was painted white in part to disguise the brass the government wanted for ammunition. The 1950s brought occasional Broadway bookings - Carol Channing in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - and a Cinerama installation; the mid-1970s brought indignity, as the connected Bismarck Hotel flattened the orchestra floor into a banquet hall; and 1984 turned the room into a rock venue as the Bismarck Theatre. Salvation arrived in 1999 with a 20-million-dollar restoration funded in part by Cadillac's naming-rights purchase. The reborn 2,344-seat house - 1,066 on the orchestra floor, with dress circle, loge and a 848-seat balcony above - reopened that November with the world premiere of Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida, inaugurating its role as Broadway In Chicago's pre-Broadway launch pad: The Producers and Mamma Mia had early runs here, and the national tour premieres of Mary Poppins, Shrek and Aladdin followed. Owned by the Van Kampen family and operated by the Nederlander Organization, the Palace anchors the Randolph Street theatre row opposite City Hall, its restored interiors ranking among the most opulent surviving Rapp and Rapp rooms in the country - a working monument to the decade when Chicago built theatres like cathedrals.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 151 W Randolph Street, Chicago, IL, United States, 60601

Website: https://www.broadwayinchicago.com

Capacity: 2344

Opening Date: 04/10/1926

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