Supertramp christened its second life, and half a century of rock history followed. The Riviera Theatre at 4746 North Racine Avenue, at the Lawrence-Broadway-Racine junction in Chicago's Uptown, opened on 2 October 1918 as a 2,600-seat Balaban and Katz movie palace - advertised that night as Chicago's newest and America's finest theatre. Rapp and Rapp designed the French Renaissance Revival house for the brothers Balaban and Sam Katz while simultaneously drawing the Central Park Theater, the building generally credited as the world's first movie palace; the Riviera's 585,000-dollar construction was rushed open unfinished as the chain's North Side flagship. The movie decades gave way to a stranger middle age - including a mid-1980s stint as a private nightclub - before Jam Productions, which had promoted its first concert in the room with Supertramp in 1975, made it a full-time concert venue and bought the building outright in 2006. As The Riv, the 2,500-capacity hall became one of the anchors of the Uptown entertainment district, two blocks from the Aragon Ballroom and the Green Mill, hosting the touring mainstream of every era from Prince and Pearl Jam club shows to current indie headliners. Jam's ongoing restoration has been returning the century-old interior to its original grandeur, capped by a modern L-Acoustics sound system hung to respect the repaired plasterwork - old palace, new lungs. The Lawrence Red Line stop sits directly outside, making the Riv, the Aragon and the neighbourhood's smaller rooms one of the most concentrated - and most transit-friendly - live music corridors in the country. The building was originally developer Tom Chamales's project - Rapp and Rapp drew it alongside their prototype palaces - and its three-storey block still carries the original storefronts and bachelor apartments above, a complete 1917 streetscape wrapped around a working concert hall.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 4746 North Racine Avenue, Chicago, IL, United States, 60640

Website: https://www.jamusa.com/venues/riviera-theatre

Cover Charge: 1

Capacity: 2500

Opening Date: 02/10/1918