Vintage Chicago Tribune: Medinah Temple — from Shriners to circus, couches to casino — through the decades
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The copper-covered onion domes and colorful terra cotta on the exterior of Medinah Temple are eye-catching, Chicago, and enough to make you wonder what the heck goes on inside a building that looks like that.
The easy answer — a lot through the years.
The four-story Moorish revival fortress at 600 N. Wabash Ave in River North was designed by architecture firm Huehl & Schmid and built in 1912. It hosted elaborate ceremonies of the Chicago chapter of Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine for North America, a Masonic fraternal organization for men that’s met locally since the late 1800s.
The club also built Medinah Country Club in 1925 and Shriners Children’s Chicago hospital in 1926. Known as Shriners International today, the group used Medinah Temple, the building clad in bricks the color of murky clay, for its headquarters until the late 1990s.
The venue has been the site of circuses, political rallies, conventions and other gatherings. It has hosted ice skating demonstrations, dance performances, telethons, do-it-yourself singalongs of Handel’s “Messiah,” a 1997 tribute to songwriter Steve Goodman hosted by Studs Terkel, Bozo the Clown’s 25th anniversary show and a touring production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” starring Jack Palance as Ebenezer Scrooge.
The next tenant for what the Tribune once called an “oasis of Chicago in the desert of Illinois” — a temporary casino.
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‘Who are these guys?’ Nobody much understands what Shriners do.
They drive tricycles and motor bikes and motorized magic carpets and generally make fools of themselves for Founders Day and Arbor Day and any other occasion that requires high school marching bands and the blocking off of streets. Read more here.
Oct. 13, 1911: Cornerstone laid ‘at the mystic hour of midnight’
Nearly 5,000 fez-topped Shriners — half of Medinah’s membership at the time — witnessed the start of construction on what was said to be the largest auditorium in the world erected by a social organization. When opened on Oct. 30, 1912, the Tribune called it the “finest temple of order in the world.” Read more here.
Oct. 18, 1915: ‘Brilliant instrument’ debuted
Composer Felix Borowski, accompanied by more than 50 members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, premiered his composition dedicated to Medinah’s order and specifically written to showcase the power of the facility’s new 5,120-pipe organ. Read more here.
Medinah Temple hosted its first Shrine circus in 1943. The tradition continued into the late 1990s.
More than 2,500 students attended the first Shrine circus in Medinah Temple, which featured performances by equestrian Poodles Hanneford, Emil Pallenberg’s motorcycle-riding bears, clowns Frank and Ernie Black, Harry E. Pickard’s trumpet-playing seals and the “Great Gregoresco” of whom the Tribune said, “defies gravity and risks death by hanging himself.” Read more here.
July 19, 1949: Almost 60,000 Shriners — including member President Harry Truman — arrived for group’s 75th anniversary convention
Just three years after a previous visit to Soldier Field, President Harry Truman spoke at the Shriners convention, which was one of the first televised events at Soldier Field. The public was then invited for the first time to observe the organization’s private rituals at Medinah Temple. Read more here.
April 1970: CSO conductor Georg Solti said recording results were ‘on the negative side’
Though Chicago Symphony Orchestra had previously taped performances at the facility, its new music director found Medinah Temple’s acoustics to be terrible and was anxious to find a new venue. “If I can’t record here, there is not much for me here,” Solti told the Tribune. Read more here.
Sept. 9, 1976: ‘We are going to win in Illinois in November because of the unity we’ve created’
Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter stumped for Illinois Gov. Dan Walker’s reelection campaign. Carter became the 39th president of the United States. Walker lost the Democratic primary to the Mayor Richard J. Daley-backed Illinois Secretary of State Michael Howlett, who went on to lose the general election to Republican James Thompson by a wide margin. Read more here.
Sept. 23, 1981: Mayor Jane Byrne walks the runway
The Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Fashion Show was, for decades, the oldest continuous event of its kind in the United States. Read more here.
Feb. 18, 1983: Richard M. Daley declared, ‘As long as I am mayor, this city never again will be offered for sale.’
During the final weekend before the Democratic mayoral race, Illinois state attorney Richard M. Daley held an old-fashioned political rally at Medinah Temple with 4,500 people screaming “Daley, Daley, Daley!” Harold Washington won the election. Daley finished third, but became mayor in 1989. Read more here.
Jan. 15, 1985: Daylong celebration of MLK’s life
Stevie Wonder, who wrote a 1980 tribute to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “Happy Birthday,” performed and counseled teens against street gang violence in observance of the birthday of the slain civil rights leader. Read more here.
July 28, 1996: Dalai Lama advised, ‘Be a nice person. Be a good person.’
Actor Richard Gere and composer Philip Glass accompanied the Tibetan spiritual leader, who was visiting Chicago for the second time, during his presentation before a sold-out audience of 4,200 people. Read more here.
1999: ‘But (what’s there) is a very special building. ... Sometimes you need an oasis in big cities’
Though Shriners planned to sell the property to developer Steven Fifield, Mayor Daley said he didn’t want to replace Medinah Temple with a skyscraper. Earlier the same year, Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois placed the building on its endangered list. Ultimately, Fifield walked away from the project. Read more here.
Feb. 6, 2003: A splendid survivor
The city pledged $12.5 million, and the state another $1.5 million, to fix up Medinah Temple. Friedman Properties redeveloped it into the first standalone Bloomingdale’s home furnishings store, which opened about two years after the then-vacant building, which was facing demolition, was designated a Chicago landmark. Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin called the update, “delightfully exotic, from the copper-clad onion domes atop its Moorish palazzo facade to the Arabic letters that garnish its exterior like vanilla icing on a chocolate cake.” Read more here.
August 2018: Macy’s put up ‘for sale’ sign
Cincinnati-based Macy’s marketed the 130,000-square-foot building at 600 N. Wabash Ave. to potential buyers, with plans to move the Bloomingdale’s home furnishings store into the nearby 900 North Michigan Shops mall. It was scooped up in June 2019 by developer Al Friedman, who led the building’s renovation in the early 2000s, for about $25 million, the Tribune reported. The block also includes the landmark Tree Studios property, a longtime enclave for artists. Read more here.
February 2023: Temporary casino set to occupy vacant building
State gambling regulators signed off on the initial steps toward the opening of a long-debated Chicago casino, voting in favor of licenses for Medinah Temple to serve as the home of a temporary gambling hall that developer Bally’s hopes to open by June. Read more here.
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