Located in the Marquette Park neighborhood of Chicago on 59th Street at Kedzie Avenue, the Colony Theater originally opened in 1926 after a year-long construction for the Ascher Brothers circuit.
The firm which designed the theater was Lowenberg & Lowenberg, in Italian Renaissance style, complete with cream-colored terra cotta decor on its red-brick facade and a row of arched windows over the main entrance.
The Colony not only featured movies in its early years, but live entertainment as well. However, it later moved to a film-only format, and remained so through the 70s. During the late 70s and into the 80s, the Colony was used for rock concerts. Later in the 80s, it was briefly used for religious stage shows. In the early 90s, the theater housed a flea market for a short time, and by the latter part of that decade, the Colony was used for storage.
Since then, the theater has been vacant. It did very briefly come to life for a few days in the late 90s when the former CBS series, “Early Edition”, which filmed on location in Chicago, used the Colony’s lobby and exterior for a scene.
forgottenchicago.com/columns/theaters/save-these-theatres/
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