A 1926 movie palace, now a Broadway house
West Randolph Street in Chicago's Loop is the site of the Iroquois Theatre fire of December 30, 1903, which killed more than 600 people, and later the Oriental Theatre, a 1926 movie palace built on the same ground. Restored in 1998, the building now operates as the Nederlander Theatre, a working Broadway venue.
The Iroquois Theatre fire killed over 600 people here
The Nederlander Theatre is a Broadway venue in downtown Chicago, dressed up with turbaned ushers and plaster elephants, but the ground under it holds a darker story first. On November 23, 1903, a theater called the Iroquois opened on this same spot, billed as fireproof. It was not. On December 30, 1903, during a packed matinee of Mr. Blue Beard, an arc light backstage ignited a muslin curtain. The safety curtain jammed halfway down. Exit doors were locked or hidden, and the only stairway serving all three levels became a crush of bodies. At least 600 people died, most of them women and children, making it the deadliest single-building fire in American history. The Iroquois Theatre fire forced Chicago to rewrite its fire codes. Every theater in the city was shut down and inspected. Exit signs, outward-opening doors and fireproofed scenery became law, not just here but across the country.
The burned theater reopened, was renamed, then demolished
The burned-out shell reopened within a year as Hyde & Behman's Music Hall, then was renamed the Colonial Theatre in 1905. It was torn down in 1925.
The Oriental Theatre opened as a lavish movie palace
Architects George L. Rapp and Cornelius W. Rapp built the Oriental Theatre on the cleared lot, opening it on May 8, 1926, inside the new Masonic office building. It was a deluxe movie palace, decorated with griffins, peacocks and gilded Buddhas, meant to feel like a dream of India. The owners, Balaban and Katz, ran it as their flagship Loop house, seating over 3,200 people for films and vaudeville acts. In 1930, during a single week showing the film Flight, nearly 125,000 people walked through its doors.
Major stars filled the Oriental's stage for decades
Through the following decades, the Oriental drew some of the biggest names in American entertainment. Duke Ellington brought his orchestra back again and again. Al Jolson, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra all played the stage. So did The Three Stooges and Cab Calloway. For a stretch of thirty years, it was one of the places to be seen in Chicago.
A vaudeville bill renamed Frances Gumm's sister act
A vaudeville bill that fall brought twelve-year-old Frances Gumm and her sisters to the stage. Emcee George Jessel introduced them as "The Gumm Sisters," and the crowd laughed at the name. Jessel suggested they change it. They became the Garland Sisters, and Frances later renamed herself again. Frances Gumm became Judy Garland.
The Oriental slid from premiere house to exploitation films
The crowds thinned through the 1960s. Downtown Chicago's entertainment district, once centered on Randolph Street, began to empty out. By the late 1970s, the Oriental had slid from premiere movie palace to a house running exploitation films just to stay open.
The theater closed and sat dark for years
The theater closed to the public in 1981. A TV and radio store moved into the lobby. Behind it, the auditorium sat dark and empty for more than a decade, its gilded plaster elephants and peacocks gathering dust above empty seats.
A restoration reopened the theater with fewer seats
In January 1996, the company Livent announced it had bought the building and would restore it. The city of Chicago put in $13.5 million. Ford Motor Company signed on as a sponsor, and architect Daniel P. Coffey drew up plans that gutted the building next door to expand the backstage. The restored theater reopened on October 18, 1998, with 2,253 seats, about a thousand fewer than in 1926. Livent filed for bankruptcy weeks later, and the venue passed through new owners, first SFX Entertainment, then Live Nation.
The Nederlander Organization bought the theater
The Nederlander Organization bought the theater in 2007. The company had been bringing Broadway shows to Chicago since 1954.
A sealed Masonic hall was found next door
A developer bought the 22-story office tower next door in 2015, planning apartments, then switched to a 198-room hotel that opened in 2017. Workers stripping a false ceiling on the fourteenth floor found a long-forgotten Masonic meeting hall underneath, sealed up and untouched for decades. It became a spiegeltent in 2019.
The Oriental name was retired from the marquee
On February 8, 2019, Broadway In Chicago renamed the venue the James M. Nederlander Theatre, honoring the Broadway producer and theater owner who died in 2016. The theater's illuminated marquee, which had lit up Randolph Street for 93 years under the name Oriental, came down days earlier. The company called the renaming, which also dropped a name considered outdated, "the right thing to do."
Broadway tours and premieres still fill the house
A sit-down run of Wicked played the theater from 2005 to 2009, becoming one of the most popular stage productions in Chicago's history. The Nederlander still runs Broadway tours today. Pretty Woman had its world premiere here in 2018 before moving to New York. Mr. Saturday Night opened at a Nederlander theater on Broadway in 2022, a different building carrying the same family name.
One detail about the building's past does not fully hold up. Some sources describe the Oriental as built on the same footprint as the Iroquois, even reusing its façade. Others say nothing of the original structure survived the 1925 demolition at all.
The Nederlander Theatre still stages touring Broadway shows beneath the same gilded, elephant-carved ceiling it opened with in 1926.
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