Open house of movie museum in downtown Elmhurst

Take a look at how movie theaters used to be like at the Theatre Historical Society of America's Open House event on Saturday, Nov. 21 in downtown Elmhurst.

The free event will run from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at the American Movie Palace Museum, York Theatre building, 2nd floor, 152 N. York St., Elmhurst. The open house is in celebration of the society's 40th anniversary.

This cast metal relief sculpture once graced the Capitol Theatre in New York City, ca. 1919 and is now located at the American Movie Palace Museum in Elmhurst. The photos on the left show these sculptures decorating pillars at the top of a wide stairway. STAFF PHOTO BY BILL ACKERMAN

Theatre historian Robert Sheldon will be the special guest. Sheldon has done extensive research and has assembled some twenty “Then and Now” scrapbooks with an old and a new photo of the same Chicago area theatre building or site. He will have a selection of these remarkable photographic records on display. Sheldon, a THS member from Burnham, Ill., has also photo documented auto racing at former racetracks in Chicagoland and has published a photo book on the subject.
 
The museum's galleries will be open, and there will be screenings of the Smithsonian Institution documentary “American Picture Palaces,” narrated by Gene Kelly and featuring photo materials from the THS archives. The Smithsonian film will be shown at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. in the Society's Avalon Theatre, a highly detailed, large scale model of the original 1927 Persian themed theatre still standing on Chicago’s South side. 
 
Theatre Historical Society was founded in 1969 by Ben Hall, a writer for Time and Life who wrote the first book on movie palaces, “The Best Remaining Seats.” Its mission is to document American theatre architecture. THS has some nine hundred members, publishes a quarterly journal and maintains an extensive  theatre architecture archive, the Movie Palace Museum, and its national headquarters in the York Theatre building in Elmhurst.