History

Samuel Insull arrived in the United States as Thomas Edison’s personal secretary and built one of the largest utility empires of the early twentieth century. By the late 1920s he had also become the financial engine behind Chicago’s cultural life, and he believed that the city deserved an opera house equal to its ambitions. His solution was characteristically hybrid: pair the auditorium with forty-five floors of rentable office space, using rents to subsidize the opera in perpetuity. The building opened on November 4, 1929 — exactly four days after the Wall Street crash, a timing Insull could not have planned for.

The building’s plan — a tall central tower with two lower wings stretching to either side — gave critics an irresistible visual: seen from above, the complex resembles a throne. Chicagoans called it “Insull’s Throne,” and the nickname stuck even as Insull’s empire collapsed in the Depression. By 1932 Insull himself was bankrupt and in exile, his utility companies in receivership. The opera house he had built, however, survived and eventually found its permanent resident when the Lyric Opera of Chicago took up the stage in 1954.

Today the Civic Opera Building is one of the great Art Deco set pieces on the Chicago River. The lobby and public spaces retain their original detailing, and the auditorium — with its grand staircase and gilded proscenium — remains one of the most important working opera stages in the United States.