Chicago Illinois

Broadway Theater

Apparently, the friendly helpful party animals of the past still enjoy good times in the afterlife!

DESCRIPTION

The Broadway Theater, formerly the home of the National Pastime Theater, is an 85 seat facility located in what would have been the ballroom when this building was The Buena Park Hotel from the 1920s to the ’40s.

broadway-theatre-paranormal The venue has been well-developed by the National Pastime Theater, which renovated this one-time store into a viable auditorium, during the twenty years when they made the structure their home. The New National Pastime Theater Group has since moved into another space in a historic 70-year-old building in Chicago, and sold their old space to a new LGBT Pride Arts Center.

It has a nice lobby, with washrooms and water fountains, and a terrific heating and cooling system, which is so important in a place like Chicago because of its very cold winters and steamy summers.

Being one of the two theaters owned by the Gay Pride Center, The Broadway Theater showcases plays and films that deal with gay and LGBT issues, with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of LGBT theater and film for this generation and those to come.

According to their mission statement: “We aspire to be a year round facility where people from the neighborhood and from around the globe can see excellent queer centric works which are essential viewing for all.”

The main tenant for The Broadway is the non-profit group Pride Film and Plays. In the Broadway Theater, four shows are produced yearly. In this theater Pride Film and Plays also sponsors “a series of community outreach events – film fests, LezFest, cabaret or comedy shows – that generally have one or two performances.”

HISTORY

I never stop marveling at the creativeness and ingenuity of the human spirit. The period of Prohibition, with its banning of alcohol, inspired widespread innovative moves among people to foil nosy authorities and allow ordinary citizens everywhere to party, enjoying the banned liquid refreshment.

This horseshoe-shaped building which hides a ballroom turned speakeasy turned theater, was built in 1929. Known as the Buena Park Hotel, it probably offered a lucrative market for underworld figures in the black-market booze business. Its patrons were from the working-class, looking for a place to dance and enjoy themselves, and momentarily forget life’s woes, all while sticking it to the officious nannies who stomp on personal freedom!

Imagine a building with regular, run-of-the-mill business storefronts. One of them has a huge hidden and disguised back room built for party festivities featuring, “a marble-floored ballroom, terra cotta moldings, a four-foot marble clock placed over the bar area and even ornate drinking fountains mounted into the walls.” Needless to say, many a good time was had here, through dancing, drinking, and by partying hearty!

Ten escape routes from the inevitable police raids were also provided, through hidden doors. Larry Bryan (owner of The National Pastime Theater, which was here for 20 years) explains in an article by Anne Keegan, Tribune Staff Writer: “You could escape into three different storefronts, into the alley, down into the basement and then up the steps into an apartment building. And from the balcony, which is now our control booth, you could quietly ease into a hallway and head toward an elevator in the same building as if you’d never been there.”

As time marched on, the storefront gradually became home to many regular businesses one would find in the city, while the ballroom was ignored by the living, growing dusty, forgotten, no longer needed. Such was the case until theater enthusiast Larry Bryan visited its storefront, then the home to a sign shop.

After he inquired about large spaces available for a theater in this area, the proprietor of the shop, who was moving out, showed Bryan this hidden treasure!! It was love at first sight! The storefront became the lobby, decorated in the “Bohemian style,” and the ballroom was converted into a theater which offered high energy theatrical entertainment for 60 patrons at first, later for 85.

The kind of theater provided by the company complements the room’s aura of energy. Their website states: “We push ourselves to the limit, and our audiences as well. We aspire to bring people into the work, not just into the theater: we want to create terror, awe. We want to sell dreams, not just tickets.”

After twenty years in this small theater, they decided to expand into a larger space and sell the building to a non-profit, the Gay Pride Center, which thought it was the perfect space for their films and plays concerning gay and LGBT life. Before Covid, they were busy with film festivals and plays, and hope to open again soon.

HISTORY OF MANIFESTATIONS

Earthly places where people have had a great time can be candidates for afterlife haunts, who would rather stay than go on to the next world.

Natatorium, TX (This music and dancing venue is still an environmental trigger that draws spirits who loved to dance, gamble and enjoy the music here while alive).

Flanders Hotel, NJ (The spirit of a female still enjoys the social events in the ballroom here, and participates in the festivities, feeling free to crash events).

Goodman/Legrand House and Museum, TX (The former owners still have a great time entertaining their friends and family, and have even invited the curator of the museum to join them!).

The Broadway, IL (The spirits of people who really enjoyed drinking, dancing and the music still may come to encourage and have parties after the theater is closed).

MANIFESTATIONS

Some haunted dwellings radiate various feelings. Franklin Castle in Cleveland radiates an evil aura, even felt from the sidewalk outside! Other places like the Mead Hotel in Bannack, Montana, give one the feeling of uneasiness, especially on the second floor. However, the aura and feeling inside the Broadway Theater is one which radiates energy, joy, enthusiasm and acceptance, the perfect encouragement for the arts!

While most of the activity mentioned below happened during The National Pastime Theater’s stay here, similar things may still occur, caused by the merry crew of spirits who still stay.

Merry Spirits

Described as “Merry Spirits,” the ghosts that haunt the ballroom are good natured entities.

They enjoy the theater productions, and approve of the living’s efforts.

They also have their own parties when the living close up the room and the place is otherwise empty of life.

The Spirits’ Aura of Energy

Outside theater groups who sometimes rent the theater for their productions, The Broadway’s own performers, and their audiences, are pumped by an exciting energy here.

Larry Bryan explains: “You walk into the room and you feel that there is a magic here. It has the smell of notorious about it. There is a life to this room that embraces you. The actors feel it. The audience feels it.”

Helpful!

This activity described below happened when The Pastime Theater organization first began to set up the building as a Theater twenty years ago.

After moving heavy seating around one evening during a construction project, Larry and crew went out to dinner late one night, leaving just one section of seating on the floor, which they planned to move back later. Each section took four men to move.

When they came back to the theater around 2 am, to finish moving the seating, they were surprised to see that the heavy seating had been moved back where it belonged, again clearing the ballroom floor. Larry was the only one with a key to the place.

Perhaps the entities wanted to help the living in moving the remaining seating, or perhaps they wanted room to dance at one of their after-hours parties.

Spirits Play!

The spirits who haunt this room enjoy playing with electricity, especially the stage lights.

After working one night alone in the theater, Larry turned off all the lights and stepped out for a time.

When he returned, all the stage lights were again blazing.

After-Show Spectral Parties

After a show or a late night work detail, with the room empty and locked, the ghosts can be heard laughing, perhaps discussing the newest production, and singing jazz tunes.

“We hear them very often late at night after we have closed up at 2 or 3 in the morning. The doors of the theater will be closed. I will be in the lobby. You hear people laughing. We hear a woman that sings all the time. Beautiful jazz,” said Larry Bryan.

PARANORMAL FINDINGS

The owners, the staff, the performers and the patrons have felt the wonderful energy, the positive aura, and perhaps hear and even see see them as well.

I could find no hard evidence of this that has been shared online. However, Ursula Bielski is a paranormal investigator who may have investigated here because she wrote about it in her book, CHICAGO HAUNTS, Ghostlore of the Windy City.

STILL HAUNTED?

Probably So!

Though a new theater with very different goals has moved inside, some of the spirits may be open enough to appreciate the LGBT content, and some may have been LGBT. LGLT people were sometimes afraid to show their true selves in past eras when they were alive.

These open-minded, fun-loving entities may welcome this new form of entertainment in their ballroom. They may still find the living entertaining, worthy of their encouragement and positive energy! When the living leave for the night, these spirits once again have the place to themselves, to relive their good times, sing a few tunes and perhaps laugh at the comedies presented, or discuss the serious film or show they just saw.

LOCATION

The Broadway Theater
4139 North Broadway Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60613.

The Broadway; A Pride Arts Center Theater … One can find The Broadway Theater in northern Chicago, in the Uptown/Buena Park neighborhood. The Broadway Theater sits on N. Broadway Street, west of N. Clarendon Avenue & Hwy 41, east of Graceland Cemetery and N. Sheridan Road, and north of W. Irving Park Road.