June 28, 1847
The Rice Theatre opens on Randolph Street.
July 30, 1850
The first opera presented in Chicago, Bellini’s “La Sonnambula,” is performed in Rice’s Theatre. The night after the first performance, the theater burns to the ground, making the city’s first opera season the shortest in our history.
Oct. 24, 1850
Chicago’s first symphony orchestra, the Philharmonic Society, is formed. The orchestra disbands 18 years later.
1857
McVicker’s Theatre opens on Madison Street. In 1862, John Wilkes Booth plays “Richard III.”
1865
Opening of Crosby’s Opera House, later burned in the Great Fire of 1871 but rebuilt by 1873 to house touring companies.
1867
The Chicago Academy of Music, the city’s first important conservatory, is organized. It changed its name to the Chicago Musical College in 1872 and became part of Roosevelt University in 1954.
1872
The Apollo Club is founded by Silas G. Pratt and George P. Upton, the Tribune’s first music critic. Known today as the Apollo Chorus, the group was considered to be the nation’s leading chorus.
May 24, 1879
A group of Chicago businessmen incorporate the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts as a non-profit institution; the academy will become the Art Institute of Chicago on Dec. 23, 1882.
Dec. 10, 1889
A major stage for operatic and concert events becomes available with the opening and dedication of the 4,200-seat Auditorium Theatre. Among the opening night attractions is soprano Adelina Patti warbling “Home, Sweet Home.” The building, meanwhile, is a structural and artistic triumph.
Oct. 16, 1891
Founder and first music director Theodore Thomas leads the Chicago Orchestra, forerunner of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (so named in 1912), in its first concert, at the Auditorium.
1893
Photographer Eadweard Muybridge projects motion pictures on his Zoopraxiscope to a live audience at the World’s Columbian Exposition, two years before the Lumiere Brothers are credited with beginning the formal history of movies in Paris.
Dec. 8, 1893
The Art Institute of Chicago opens in new quarters on Michigan Avenue and Adams Street. The two bronze lions were installed at the main entrance in 1894.
Dec. 30, 1903
During a performance of “Mr. Blue Beard,” a fire strikes the Iroquois Theatre. Approximately 575 people die.
Dec. 14, 1904
Theodore Thomas moves the Chicago Orchestra to the new 2,566-seat Orchestra Hall, designed by Daniel Burnham and dedicated on this date.
1905
Frederick Stock succeeds Theodore Thomas as music director of the Chicago Orchestra, serving until his death in 1942. This made him the longest-tenured conductor in CSO history.
Aug. 10, 1907
Essanay Movie Studios opens on West Argyle Street and quickly becomes a force in filmmaking, with Charlie Chaplin as its brightest star. Essanay closed its doors in 1917, as moviemaking shifted to California.
1909
The Commercial Club of Chicago issues Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett’s Plan of Chicago. Among the improvements resulting from the plan: the Michigan Avenue Bridge, the double-decked Wacker Drive, Union Station and new lakefront parkland.
1909
Completion of the Frederick C. Robie House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for a bicycle and motorcycle manufacturer, culminates the development of the Prairie School of Architecture.
Aug. 21, 1912
Ravinia Park in Highland Park begins a series of lavishly cast summer operas, bankrolled by businessman Louis Eckstein. The series flourished until it was brought down by the Depression in 1932.
1919
Trumpeter-bandleader Joe “King” Oliver moves to Chicago, continuing a migration of New Orleans musicians to the bigger, more prosperous city to the north.
Oct. 26, 1921
Chicago Theatre opens on State Street. A stage show starring Buster Keaton was among the entertainment.
Aug. 9, 1922
Louis Armstrong moves to Chicago at the invitation of Joe “King” Oliver, and after a brief sojourn to New York returns here to establish himself as the first great soloist in jazz.
Oct. 20, 1925
The professional Repertory Company presents three short plays by Kenneth Sawyer Goodman in an invitational dedication performance onstage at the new Goodman Theatre, named for the late young Chicago playwright.
1929
The 3,500-seat, Art Deco-style Civic Opera House, built by Samuel Insull, becomes the new home of the Chicago Civic Opera.
July 1, 1935
The Chicago Symphony under Eric De Lamarter opens a new municipally sponsored series of summer orchestra concerts at a bandshell in Grant Park. The free lakefront series eventually becomes the Grant Park Music Festival.
July 3, 1936
The Ravinia Festival is reborn as the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
1945
The first Chicago-based record label, Mercury, opens its doors in the Jeweller’s Building at 35 E. Wacker Drive, and produces a string of classic blues, R&B and jazz hits by the likes of Big Bill Broonzy, Dinah Washington and Jay McShann.
1947
Aristocrat Records, later known as Chess Records, opens for business and goes on to become a major outlet for urban blues and early rock ‘n’ roll with hits by Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Howlin’ Wolf.
1951
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s structurally expressive apartment buildings at 860 and 800 North Lake Shore Drive are completed. Their clean-lined, glass-box look influenced skylines around the world.
Nov. 14, 1953
Fritz Reiner conducts his first concert as Chicago Symphony music director, launching the CSO into an auspicious new era.
Feb. 5, 1954
Lyric Theatre of Chicago (later known as Lyric Opera) is launched, ending the city’s seven-year operatic drought with its “calling card” production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”
February 1958
Chuck Berry cuts his rock ‘n’ roll classic “Johnny B. Goode” and “Reelin’ and Rockin’ ” at Chess Studios.
Dec. 16, 1959
The Second City, a new cabaret with a revue of topical satire and improvisational comedy, opens at 1842 N. Wells St.
Sept. 11, 1961
WGN-Ch. 9’s “Bozo’s Circus” is on the air.
Sept. 5, 1964
Beatlemania dawns in Chicago as the Fab Four play the International Amphitheatre. They run off 11 songs in 34 minutes for 13,000 screaming fans.
Aug. 15, 1967
An untitled monumental sculpture by Pablo Picasso is dedicated on the Civic Center Plaza; initially controversial, it eventually became as much a symbol of the city as the Water Tower.
Oct. 24, 1967
The Museum of Contemporary Art opens in a former bakery at 237 E. Ontario St.
Oct. 23, 1969
The Goodman Theatre, after 38 years of student productions, returns to its status as a professional resident company with its inaugural production of “Soldiers,” by Rolf Hochhuth.
Nov. 27, 1969
Georg Solti directs his first concert as the Chicago Symphony’s eighth music director, beginning a 22-year tenure.
Aug. 25, 1970
The band formerly called Chicago Transit Authority, now known as Chicago after pressure was applied by the city, scores its first hit with “Smile.”
Feb. 11, 1971
“Grease, ” a new musical by local boys Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, opens in the Kingston Mines Theater.
June 24, 1971
A young conductor from Cincinnati named James Levine makes his Ravinia Festival debut, taking over the Mahler “Resurrection” Symphony on a week’s notice at the season-opening gala. He so impresses everyone that he is named Ravinia music director the following year.
May 3, 1973
Rising 1,450 feet above the sidewalk, Sears Tower, designed by architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur Khan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, officially becomes the world’s tallest office building.
Aug. 26, 1974
Geraldine de Haas organizes a jazz concert in Grant Park to celebrate the music of Duke Ellington, who died in May of ’74. The event laid the groundwork for the Chicago Jazz Festival that would debut in 1979.
July 22, 1976
Steppenwolf Theatre opens its first production in the basement of a Roman Catholic grammar school in Highland Park, a double bill of Harold Pinter’s “Lover” and Israel Horovitz’s “The Indian Wants the Bronx.” Featured players are Gary Sinise and Terry Kinney.
1977
A transplanted New York deejay, Frankie Knuckles, takes up residency at the Warehouse club on the South Side, where he would become one of the prime movers in the birth of house music.
July 7, 1978
The Hubbard Street Dance Company gives its first public performance at noon before a small audience in the theater of the Chicago Public Library (now the Chicago Cultural Center).
June 6, 1980
John Denver opens Poplar Creek Music Theatre in Hoffman Estates.
Jan. 9, 1981
Administrative assistant Ardis Krainik succeeds her boss, deposed Lyric Opera of Chicago co-founder Carol Fox, as general manager of the company. Within one season the new director and her team rescue the company from bankruptcy.
Sept. 8, 1986
Oprah Winfrey’s first syndicated show airs.
April 15, 1989
Nine art galleries perish in a fire that leveled nearly an entire block of historic buildings in the River North gallery district.
June 2, 1990
Cher opens the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park.
September 1991
The Daniel Barenboim era at the Chicago Symphony begins on a discordant note as the first three weeks of his first season as music director are canceled because of a labor dispute. The 101st season opened on Oct. 1, three weeks late.
July 4, 1993
Police estimate the crowd at Grant Park for Matthew Sweet, Belly and the Jayhawks as the biggest since the Pope visited in 1979.
Feb. 19, 1994
When “Bump N’ Grind” hits No. 1, South Sider R. Kelly affirms that he has become the dominant rhythm and blues performer of the decade.
June 21, 1996
On the summer solstice the Museum of Contemporary Art has a 24-hour preview of its new building designed by Berlin architect Josef Paul Kleihues on the site of the former U.S. National Guard Armory at 220 E. Chicago Ave.
