After years in disrepair, Lyric Theater breaths life into Blue Island’s leisure district

BLUE ISLAND, Ailing — Because the 1830s, the town of Blue Island has marched to the beat of its personal drum. Simply 16 miles from Chicago’s Loop, Blue Island is an enclave for the development booms of the Calumet Sag Channel whereas changing into the “Brick Capitol of the World”.

There was a time when the Lyric Theater was the driving drive behind Blue Island’s bustling leisure middle. For many years the 12,000-square-foot theater usually supplied mainstream Hollywood movies to households, which created lifelong reminiscences for moviegoers.

The Lyric opened in 1917 adjoining to the Grand Opera Home in Blue Island’s leisure middle. The primary speaking image present was “The Terror” on April 1, 1929. Then tragedy caught.

A fireplace broke out on Feb. 14, 1960, throughout a matinee displaying of the film “Money McCall,” starring Hollywood icons James Garner and Natalie Wooden, destroyed the theater. Happily, everybody was capable of escape the blaze unhurt.

For a lot of the twenty first Century, The Lyric sat dormant, unable to draw the funding to as soon as once more change into the colourful showpiece of Blue Island’s uptown enterprise district. Due to the imaginative and prescient and funding of two longtime Blue Island households, the Garetto’s and Cantelo’s, The Lyric Theater has been reborn and reinvented.

This story doesn’t begin then, it has roots courting again in 1948 when a younger woman by the identify of Janet Fisher, a ticket-taker on the Lyric, met her future husband, Angelo Garetto, an aspiring musician who went on to begin Beggars Pizza. The remainder as they are saying, is historical past.

“When my grandma was 16 years previous, she labored on the Lyric Theater and again then the ticket sales space was in the midst of the road in a glass sales space, everybody on the town knew her,” ” Amanda Garetto-Melvin of Beggars Pizza Commissary stated. “My grandpa got here to a present in the future, purchased a ticket, needed to know who the woman was, ultimately discovered who she was, requested her guardian’s permission to exit on a date (as a result of he was just a little bit older) and two years later he requested her to marry him. The story of our household began proper right here.”

Almost each inch of the theater has been renovated, providing a contemporary however intimate expertise for guests of all ages. Visitor will take pleasure in a brand new 29-foot facet, 17-foot tall display screen, together with state-of-the-art audio and visible expertise, by no means earlier than loved on this area. Preserving that Blue Island appeal, a concession stand will present snacks and drinks, and for the adults, a full bar. After all, pizza shall be supplied and appropriately proved by Beggars Pizza.

Moviegoers have a alternative of seating in luxurious cubicles or comfy chairs and bar stools. There are additionally two personal suites on the higher stage for folk who want an area to accommodate massive teams. 

A part of the mission of the newly opened Lyric is to create an area in Blue Island for the neighborhood. Later this 12 months, the theater can even welcome stay native and nationwide touring artists to its stage. From rock to punk rock to jazz and funk and a lot extra, eclectic sounds are certain to breathe a contemporary sense in its subsequent chapter.

To study film instances and the historical past of the Lyric, click here.

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