Harris Theater (Chicago)

The Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance is a 1,499-seat theater for the performing arts. It is located along the northern edge of Millennium Park on Randolph Street in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, US. The theater, which is largely underground due to Grant Park-related height restrictions, was named for its primary benefactors, Joan and Irving Harris.

About Harris Theater (Chicago) in brief

The Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance is a 1,499-seat theater for the performing arts. It is located along the northern edge of Millennium Park on Randolph Street in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, US. The theater, which is largely underground due to Grant Park-related height restrictions, was named for its primary benefactors, Joan and Irving Harris. It provides a venue for small and medium-sized music and dance groups, which had previously been without a permanent home and were underserved by the city’s performing venue options. The Harris Theater has hosted notable national and international performers, such as the New York City Ballet’s first visit to Chicago in over 25 years. The theater began offering subscription series of traveling performers in its 2008–2009 fifth anniversary season. Performances through this series have included the San Francisco Ballet, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Stephen Sondheim. Although it is seen as a high caliber venue for its music audiences, the theater is regarded as less than ideal for jazz groups because it is more expensive and larger than most places where jazz is performed. The design has been criticized for traffic flow problems, with an elevator bottleneck, but the theater’s prominent location and its underground design to preserve Millennium Park have been praised. As of 2007, Millennium Park trails only Navy Pier as a Chicago tourist attraction. It has been Chicago’s front yard since the mid-19th century. Grant Park’s northwest corner, north of Monroe Street and the Art Institute, east of Michigan Avenue, south of Randolph Street, and west of Columbus Drive, had been Illinois Central rail yards and parking lots until 1997, when it was made available for development as Millennium Park.

In 1836, a year before Chicago was incorporated, the Board of Canal Commissioners held public auctions for the City’s first lots. Foresighted citizens, who wanted the lakefront kept as public open space, convinced the commissioners to designate the land between Randolph Street and Park Row as “Public Ground” In 1839, U.S. Secretary of War Joel Roberts declared land east of. Michigan Avenue to remain vacant of buildings. In 1900, the Illinois Supreme Court concluded that all buildings east ofMichigan Avenue was subject to landfill easements. In 1890, Aaron Montgomery Ward, who is both the inventor of Grant Park, sued the city of Chicago to force it to remove buildings and structures from Grant Park to keep it free of landfill. In 1909, he won the case and the park was declared open and free of buildings and easements on the land. The park has been protected by legislation that has been affirmed by four previous Supreme Court rulings since 1900. It was declared “forever open, clear and free” by the Illinois Secretary of State Joel Roberts in 1839. In 2010, the city began legal actions to keep the park free of new buildings, including Montgomery Ward’s buildings, when he sued the state of Illinois to force the city to remove them from building new land.

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