The Civic Opera Building is a 45-story office tower (plus two 22-story wings) located at 20 North

Wacker Drive Wacker Drive is a major multilevel street in Chicago, Illinois, running along the south side of the main branch and the east side of the south branch of the Chicago River in the Loop.Hayner, Don and Tom McNamee, ''Streetwise Chicago'', "Wacke ...

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. The building opened November 4, 1929, and has an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

interior. It contains a 3,563-seat

opera house An opera house is a theater building used for performances of opera. Like many theaters, it usually includes a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, backstage facilities for costumes and building sets, as well as offices for the institut ...

, the

Civic Opera House The Civic Opera House, also called Lyric Opera House is an opera house located at 20 North Wacker Drive in Chicago. The Civic's main performance space, named for Ardis Krainik, seats 3,276, making it the second-largest opera auditorium in North ...

, which is the second-largest opera auditorium in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

. The opera house is the permanent home of the

Lyric Opera of Chicago Lyric Opera of Chicago is an American opera company based in Chicago, Illinois. The company was founded in Chicago in 1954, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox (Chicago opera), Carol Fox, Nicola Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, w ...

, and the home of the

Joffrey Ballet The Joffrey Ballet is an American dance company and training institution in Chicago, Illinois. The Joffrey regularly performs classical and contemporary ballets during its annual performance season at the Civic Opera House, including its annual ...

since 2021.

Samuel Insull Samuel Insull (November 11, 1859 – July 16, 1938) was a British American business magnate. He was an innovator and investor based in Chicago who helped create an integrated electrical infrastructure in the United States. Insull created hold ...

envisioned and hired the design team for building a new opera house to serve as the home for the Chicago Civic Opera, as the company was called. The building is shaped like a huge chair, sometimes referred to as "Insull's Throne." Insull directed the chair should face west to signify turning his back on New York. Insull had left a vice presidency at General Electric in New York in 1892, after he was not named its president. Subsequently, he moved to Chicago and became president of Chicago Edison (

Commonwealth Edison Commonwealth Edison, commonly known by syllabic abbreviation as ComEd, is the largest electric utility in Illinois, and the primary electric provider in Chicago and much of Northern Illinois. Its service territory stretches roughly from Iroquoi ...

). Insull selected the architecture firm

Graham, Anderson, Probst & White Graham, Anderson, Probst & White (GAP&W) was a Chicago architectural firm that was founded in 1912 as Graham, Burnham & Co. This firm was the successor to D. H. Burnham & Co. through Daniel Burnham's surviving partner, Ernest R. Graham, and Burnh ...

who were responsible for several other buildings in the downtown

Chicago Loop The Loop is Chicago's central business district and one of the city's 77 municipally recognized Community areas in Chicago, community areas. Located at the center of downtown Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan, it is the second-largest busi ...

. As they did on other occasions, the architects commissioned Henry Hering to produce architectural sculpture for the building. Mary Garden of the Chicago Civic Opera announced on July 15, 1929, that the opera's inaugural season would include the commissioned work of Hamilton Forrest entitled Camille. During the 1950s and 1960s the building was identified by a large "Kemper Insurance" sign, although it was not that company's headquarters. In 1993, the Lyric Opera of Chicago purchased the opera house facilities in the building it had rented for 64 years. In 2012,

Tishman Speyer Tishman Speyer is an American multinational corporation based at 45 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan. The conglomerate invests in high-profile real estate properties, has developed multiple buildings around the world, and has owned famou ...

Properties L.P. sold the office tower portion of the building for $125.8 million to an affiliate of Nanuet, N.Y.-based Berkley Properties LLC.

Tenants

* Cassiday Schade *

National Automatic Merchandising Association The National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) is the American national trade association of the convenience services industry, including vending, micro markets, office coffee service, and foodservice management. Headquartered in Arlingto ...

* Himes Consulting Group * TechNexus Venture Collaborative
12five Capital, LLC
* Hybris *

Surplus Record Machinery & Equipment Directory Surplus Record is a business directory of surplus, new, and used machine tools, machinery, and industrial equipment in the United States. It was founded in 1924 by Thomas P. Scanlan. The monthly directory, which is hundreds of pages long, has be ...

* Clarity Consulting * Perficient Consulting *

Natural Resources Defense Council The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a United States–based 501(c)(3) non-profit international environmental advocacy group, with its headquarters in New York City and offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicag ...

https://www.nrdc.org/our-offices (accessed 24 September 2022)

References

Notes Sources *Chappell, Sally Kitt, ''Transforming Tradition: Architecture and Planning of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, 1912–1936'', Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press, 1992 *Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, ''Architectural Sculpture in America'', unpublished manuscript

External links

"The Magic Wand of the Opera" ''Popular Mechanics'', February 1930, pp 202-205
technical details of the 1929 advances Civic Opera House over other opera houses of that era - i.e. curtains, back-drops, movable stages, lighting, etc
Lyric Opera website
{{Chicago skyscrapers Central Chicago Skyscraper office buildings in Chicago 1929 establishments in Illinois Office buildings completed in 1929 Art Deco architecture in Illinois