Vintage Movie Theaters: Portage Theater (Chicago IL)

Today's featured theater is the Portage (official site), located on Chicago's northwest side in the Portage Park neighborhood. According to Cinema Treasures, the theater opened in 1920 (91 years old!), so this would be the oldest theater in Chicago still showing motion pictures in the same building space using its original name.  How about that!

And the best part is - it shows classic films. Since 2006, it's become a great venue to see silents and talkies.  The Silent Film Society of Chicago and the Northwest Chicago Film Society both screen movies here. 

Today my friend and I went to a Universal Studios monster film fest and saw Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein. The program included a raffle in between each movie. Memorabilia dealers had tables set up in the lobby.

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In this photo from the 1970s, you can see how the theater used to have a huge vertical sign with big red letters that would shine brightly at night. Big red-letter vertical signs were almost always a part of theaters built in the 1920s and 1930s. As the sign became too expensive to maintain, it was taken down. Photo courtesy of Chicago Now-Portage Park

In this 3-minute video, I attempt to explain a little bit about its history. My apologies for the poor sound quality

Here's the cool ticket booth, and it's still being used! This is the only theater in Chicago where you can step back in time and experience this

Here's the elegant inside of the theater; renovated in the early 2000's. Seats over 1,300!

Here's what the inside looked like today for the monster film fest; lots of dealers with vintage monster/horror memorabilia, comic books, videos, etc.

Coming soon to the Portage: The classic silent Nosferatu (with organ accompaniment!) and Bride of the Monster!

I'll end this post with a quick video of fresh hot popcorn popping. Smells so good!