Biograph Theater

On July 22, 1934, John Dillinger stepped out of the Biograph Theater after watching Manhattan Melodrama. FBI agents were waiting outside. The bank robber had become one of the country’s most pursued fugitives, and his death in the alley beside the theater brought a crowded Chicago block into the national news. The Biograph’s association with that night would eventually overshadow the reason the building had been there in the first place: to show movies.

Designed by Samuel N. Crowen and opened in 1914, the Biograph was one of Chicago’s early neighborhood movie houses. Its compact lobby, recessed entrance, ticket booth, and marquee reflected a new kind of entertainment architecture. Movie theaters were still establishing themselves as respectable public spaces, and the Biograph’s brick and terra-cotta façade gave the small building a distinctive presence along Lincoln Avenue.