City - Chicago IL - Nightlife at the Regal Theatre Postcard

Colorized photo from 1941 Original Title: Movie theatre, South side Chicago Location: 4719 South Parkway (now Martin Luther King Drive, Chicago, IL This is the famous Regal Theatre, it was in the Bronzeville area of Chicago, on the South Side. It was built in 1928, and it was huge and fancy. The main attraction was a movie theatre, but if you should ever get bored, they also had a ballroom, bowling alley's, a department store, drug store, billiard rooms, and as many as 50 smaller stores, along with offices. Next door was the Savoy Theatres. The building was stunning from the inside out. People visited to see the live orchestra's, and movies nightly. It became a sort of social hub for the area. It was known as the Harlem of Chicago. One interesting thing they did that was not at all common in those days, they didn't discriminate on colour. In those days, if you were black, you got a lower class job, a doorman, or a janitor. But possibly because it was in a black neighbourhood, they hired them for every position. When the great depression hit, this place was also hit hard, it almost went out of business. There was an outcry for support, and it almost closed, a lot of jobs would have been lost. But they managed to save the building. Sadly they demolished the building in 1973, and it was empty for 20 years before that.