Marina City's theatrical flourish

Marina City’s theatrical flourish
May 1963

Early design of theater building interior at Marina City by Branham for Bertrand Goldberg Associates.

(Above) Early design of the theater building at Marina City, now House of Blues Chicago. Drawn for Bertrand Goldberg Associates, the artist has signed his or her name as “Branham.” Image provided by The Art Institute of Chicago.

Bertrand Goldberg was a fan of the arts. He would sometimes fly to New York for an opening night and then fly back to Chicago. He had high hopes for his theater building on the Dearborn side of Marina City. It would be designed for live, modern theater “for the next generation,” he said in an interview, and have a state-of-the-art sound system. He was hoping the Goodman Theatre, a prominent regional theater company in Chicago, could be lured to Marina City.

He compared the building to the physical structure of an arm. “Where the exterior concrete frame of the theatre touches the ground, we have the elbow. At the extreme cantilevered reaching end, we have the hand. And high up, we have the shoulder. The roof is slung by means of catenary [curved] cables between the hand and the shoulder. The seats – the gallery – is supported along the concrete arm itself.”

Goldberg imagined stages within the stage, overhead stages, sloping stages, and stages behind the audience. “I don’t think it is wrong to make people turn their seat to see something as they would turn on the street. At Marina City we are in need of spectacle theater.”

The saddle-shaped building was constructed between 1963 and 1968 using space frames, arched beams, and sprayed concrete. It was covered in lead sheathing that acted as a sound deadening material.

(Left) Early concept of Marina City Theater. (Click on images to view larger versions.)

Besides the main entrance on the east side, there was an entrance, no longer there, on the west side near the Dearborn Street Bridge. It led to an exhibition space named McFetridge Hall in honor of William L. McFetridge, whose labor union financed the development of Marina City.


(Above) Construction of theater building in May 1963 from northwest corner of property. West tower at right.	Workers install lead roof in 1965.


(Above) Main entrance to theater building, circa 1967. A directory printed on the lobby windows left and right of the entrance points to McFetridge Hall, a restaurant, “towers,” parking cashier, and television station WFLD.	Closer view of theater building lobby from northeast corner of building. In lower left frame, an escalator is visible, inside the lobby, which led to the lower level of the commercial platform. The parking cashier station can be seen at right. Also visible are three paintings, commissioned by Goldberg, by Victor Vasarely (1906-1997), a Hungarian-French artist.

(Above) Marina City’s House of Blues in 2009 from west side of North Dearborn Street. (Right) HOB in 2007 from the private driveway near State Street.

Last updated 06-Jul-14

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