There was a memorial service held a few weeks ago for a man named M.W. Newman. He was a newspaper writer of eloquence and a gentleman in the truest sense of that word.
The service was held in the Auditorium Theatre, a fitting place, given Newman’s lifelong love affair with Chicago architecture and the building’s stature as the city’s “leading lady.”
So some 200 people sat on the stage and listened to a few speakers share their memories of Bill and read from some of his work.
One of those listening was Bart Swindall. He never met Newman but he knew him. They had talked many times on the phone, whenever Swindall wanted to check some fact or legend about the Auditorium.
“He would always know,” said Swindall, who holds the enviable, if relatively low-paying, job of tour coordinator/archivist at the theater. “I always enjoyed our talks and he wrote many beautiful words about this building.”
A graduate of Bradley University, Swindall worked for 13 years as an engineer for Illinois Bell. To make ends meet while later studying interior design at the Harrington Institute, he worked in the Auditorium’s ticket office. One day in 1992, he was asked to give a tour to the famous artist Helen Frankenthaler. At the time, there were no organized tours; board members or senior staff people usually handled the chores in a very informal manner.
“We had such a great time,” he says. “In a sense that’s how I discovered what I wanted to do. I virtually created my job, and if they ever want to get rid of me they are going to have to drag me out of here.”
Named “Best Tour Guide” by the weekly arts-and-culture paper New City, Swindall eagerly conducts one-hour tours for groups and individuals (call 312-431-2354).
On these tours he will tell you of the night the theater opened in 1889, part of a larger complex that included offices and a 400-room hotel; how, during hard times, the theater’s stage was turned into bowling lanes for servicemen in World War II; was saved from the wrecking ball primarily by a woman named Beatrice Spachner, who in 1960 started raising the $3.5 million it would eventually take for the restoration effort carried out by the late architect Harry Weese; about the grand reopening in 1967; about operas, musicals and rock shows that have played the Auditorium; and about ongoing renovations that continue to polish this gem.
“What I do is fun disguised as research,” he says, though he is a demon for documentation.
On the evening of Newman’s service, Swindall took me into what he calls his office but is a room only slightly larger than a closet and packed with books about the building; its architects, Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler; photos and posters of bygone performers; paintings, postcards, soap and cold cream (from the hotel, which now houses Roosevelt University).
“This place was the Sears Tower of 100 years ago,” he says. “It was featured or celebrated on all sorts of things,” including the memorabilia pictured here. Since there is no budget for accumulating such items, Swindall buys them himself, mostly from eBay. His affection for the building, for its history and beauty, is that passionate.
M.W. Newman would understand.
He called the Auditorium an “urban masterpiece” and “Chicago’s most revered architectural landmark.” And, as in everything he ever wrote, he was right on the mark.
