Built in 1921, this French Renaissance Revival-style building was designed by Rapp and Rapp to house the Chicago Theatre, part of the Balaban and Katz chain to serve as their flagship theater, hosting movie screenings and live performances. The building originally housed a 3,880-seat auditorium, and was among the first movie palaces to be built in the United States, and is the oldest surviving example of a French Renaissance Revival or Neo-Baroque theater building in Chicago designed by Rapp and Rapp. The building hosted many notable live stage shows during its early history, with jazz performances being particularly popular in the early years.

The building’s large auditorium fills up the entire middle half of the block the building stands on, with a separate commercial building to the rear, along Wabash Street, and the historic Page Building, which was built to house offices on the upper floors and retail space on the ground floor, on the north side of the lobby wing along State Street. The exterior of the auditorium is rather plain, and is clad in brick with terra cotta trim at the bays that contain doors at street level, with a large vaulted roof over the auditorium and a separate, smaller, low-slope roof high above the stage house in the rear. The most ornate portion of the exterior is the facade of the lobby along State Street, which is clad in terra cotta with decorative reliefs, a large arched window with a circular panel containing stained glass, sculptures, cartouches, broken pediments, windows on the upper portion flanked by reliefs below an intricate cornice with dentist and rosettes, windows at the top of the facade with arched pediments and cartouches above them, stone panels at the base, a large and intricate marquee over the street, and a tall blade sign mounted in front of the north bay of the facade. The Page Building, which stands north of the lobby, features a brick facade with a curtain wall facade at the base with Chicago windows, paired one-over-one double-hung windows on the upper floors, cartouches above the end window bays and pilasters between the intermediate bays, and a cornice with modillions. Inside, the theater lobby is richly decorated with a grand staircase featuring a decorative metal balustrade, broken pediments richly trimmed with sculptural reliefs, cartouches, and garlands, paneled walls, decorative cornice trim on the ceilings, decorative columns, a vaulted ceiling, chandeliers, marble and carpet floors, marble cladding on the walls and columns immediately inside the front entrance, brass torchiere light fixtures on the balcony over the front entrance, and coffered ceilings over the balconies. The interior of the auditorium features a ceiling with a domed central section, decorative trim work on the ceiling, murals by artist Louis Grell around the edges of the ceiling, decorative sculptural reliefs, cartouches, and pediments on the walls, a Wurlitzer organ, box seats with half-domed hoods, engaged fluted corinthian columns, decorative balustrades and semi-circular balconies, arched bays on the walls ringing the balcony, a decorative and ornate proscenium arch that terminates in a mural at the top, decorative chandeliers, box seats beneath the balcony, and a vaulted ceiling under the main balcony.