A walking tour: My five top entertainment venues in Chicago

The Chicago Theatre in 2012 (Daniel Schwin)

Chicago has always been a home for important entertainment venues. Some of the city's most storied entertainment hot spots can be seen in this walking tour. Click on the icons in the map below to learn more about five of the most important arts & entertainment hot-spots:



We start our walking tour on Chicago’s North Side at the Congress Theatre in the city’s Logan Square neighborhood. This movie palace, which opened in 1926, was once a premier vaudeville house, in addition to showing movies. By the late 20th century, it was a premier music venue. But now it is closed and undergoing a $65 million renovation, with plans to reopen as a 4,900 music venue. We then proceed south to the Loop, where the legendary Chicago Theatre stands the corner of State and Lake streets. This great theatre featured movies and stage shows from its opening in 1921 until early 1956. It then showed movies only from 1956 to 1985, before being repurposed as one of the nation’s premier live performance venue. After that, we head to the South Loop, where Buddy Guy’s Legends nightclub has been the one of the country’s most notable blues clubs. Bluesman Buddy Guy opened the club in 1989, and he still plays there on a regular basis, along with just about every major blues and rock artist in the U.S. After that, we head south to the Pilsen neighborhood, where Thalia Hall has been a neighborhood institution since 1892. It was first designed as an opera house, and suffered through decades of disrepair, but it’s now a live pop music venue. Finally, we head south to the Avalon Park neighborhood, to the Avalon Regal Theatre. This beautiful 1927 1,900-seat theatre, designed by John Eberson, looks like a Middle Eastern tent in its auditorium. It started as a movie-and-vaudeville house, known as the Avalon Theatre. But after closing its doors in the early 1970s, it was resurrected as the New Regal Theatre by African-American entrepreneur Edward Gardner in 1987, serving as a venue for black performers. It's been closed and needs $5 million in renovations. Kanye West has pledged $1 million in support of the theatre, although that promise has not yet been fulfilled.

Here’s a split screen image showing the Avalon Regal Theatre in 1927, shortly after its opening, and in 2019: