History By Design: Two North Shore theaters with more than 100 years between them

What is more wonderful than a warm summer evening at Ravinia Festival?

Ravinia Park, with buildings designed by architect Peter J. Weber opened in 1904 as a high-class amusement park featuring a music pavilion, a carousel, a toboggan slide, an electric fountain and an elegant theater. The park was founded by Albert C. Frost, owner of the Chicago & Milwaukee Electric Railroad, which ran parallel to the Chicago & North Western Railway, just west of the entrance to the park. This pleasure resort was a moneymaking endeavor with the intent of attracting riders to Frost’s North Shore Line.

Weber was a German architect who settled in Chicago and earlier worked for D. H. Burnham & Company. He designed a lavish Baroque pavilion at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

Originally called the Ravinia Theater, the Martin Theater was located immediately opposite the entrance to the park at the rail stop. The building is a mix of Mission Style architecture (straight out of a Spanish Colonial playbook) with Arts & Crafts detailing.

The exterior is smooth stucco with a red tile roof and flanking bell towers. The interior, with a soft-colored stenciled wood ceiling enhances the experience of listening to the finest of classical chamber music. Interior restoration took place in 1992. The extensive use of opalescent and stained art glass is a particularly engaging design feature

The 2016 Writers Theatre is a delightful recent addition to the North Shore, equal in stature but very different from the Ravinia Theater. Designed by Studio Gang Architects headed by Jeanne Gang, it is a unique take on modern architecture.

The building’s raised exterior has glass walls and appears to float, even glow in the evening. The second floor contains a balcony walkway surrounded on the exterior by slender crisscrossed wood supports resembling young trees. The interior is an atrium that during performances functions as a communal space, with tables, chairs, a bar for light refreshments and a broad staircase resembling theater seating. 

To the north of the atrium there are two theaters. One seats 1,200; the other is a flexible black box. As an homage to its previous venues dating from 1992 (when the theater opened in the back of a bookstore and later played at the Woman’s Library Club) there is a wall of photos and programs — a reminder of the theater’s storied history.

Blair Kamin, retired architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, wrote: “Here, architecture doesn’t just contain performance spaces; it celebrates and enhances them, becoming a memorable part of the drama — and the suburban landscape.”

Gang, who attended the University of Illinois and Harvard School of Design, worked for Dutch architect Rem Koolhaus before opening an office in Chicago. Her firm, Studio Gang is best known for the mixed-use, 82-story Aqua Tower, 225 N. Columbus Drive, dating from 2009. It was designed to handle wind loads and provide balconies throughout the building. Its wave like shape symbolizes Chicago’s lakefront setting. Studio Gang designs buildings all over the world.

History By Design is The Record’s monthly column focusing on the North Shore’s special and influential architectural history. Local historians and authors Susan S. Benjamin and Robert A. Sideman write and research the column.

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