History

Samuel Insull had made himself one of the most powerful men in America through the consolidation of electric utility companies in the midwest, and by the late 1920s he was the dominant figure in Chicago’s business world. His plan for a new opera house followed a model that had been tried in other cities: the costs of building and maintaining a large cultural institution would be subsidized by revenue from a commercial building wrapped around it. The opera house itself would occupy the base and lower floors; the office tower above would generate the income needed to keep it solvent.

Graham, Anderson, Probst & White — the successors to Daniel Burnham’s practice and among the most prolific commercial architects in the country — delivered a design that satisfied both programs simultaneously. The opera house faces Wacker Drive at the building’s base; its entrance lobby and auditorium occupy an interior volume defined by the tower above. The river elevation, where the full forty-five-story height is visible, was treated as a public façade of exceptional grandeur, with the tower’s setbacks and corner buttresses giving it a profile that contemporaries compared to a throne.

Insull’s financial empire collapsed during the Great Depression, and he fled to Europe to avoid prosecution for securities fraud; the building’s naming rights were eventually transferred and the venue passed through various institutional tenants. Since 1954 it has been the permanent home of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, which renamed the auditorium the Civic Opera House and has maintained it as one of North America’s most important opera venues. The broader building was designated a Chicago Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places for the quality of its Art Deco design.