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Chicago Civic Opera House
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Chicago Civic Opera House is the permanent home of the Chicago Lyric Opera. This structure opened on November 4, 1929 and has an Art Deco and Art Nouveau interior. It is located at 20 North Wacker Drive in the Chicago Loop. Its 3,563-seat capacity makes it the second-largest opera auditorium in North America. The building is a limestone with a 45-story office tower and two 22-story wings.
Samuel Insull was the man who envisioned and hired the design team for building this new great opera house to serve as the home for the Chicago Lyric Opera. The building has been seen as being shaped like a huge chair so is sometimes referred to as "Insull's Throne."
He selected the architecture firm Graham, Anderson, Probst & White who were responsible for several other buildings in downtown Chicago. As they did on other occasions, the architects commissioned Henry Hering to produce architectural sculpture for the building.
The opera house underwent a major renovation in 1993 when it was purchased by the Chicago Lyric Opera, who has previously rented the space. The chairs were repainted and reupholstered, the carpeting replaced, and the gilt paint completely re-stenciled, finishing this massive project in 1996.
- Chappell, Sally Kitt, Transforming Tradition: Architecture and Planning of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, 1912 – 1936, University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL 1992\
- Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, Architectural Sculpture in America, unpublished manuscript
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