'Yes, it was special': New Lombard apartment development pays homage to DuPage Theatre

Audiences ushered into the DuPage Theatre could find themselves transported to another world.

The auditorium ceiling was painted dark blue and dotted with twinkling electric stars. Drifting clouds appeared to float overhead. Stucco arches and bell-shaped light fixtures made the interior look more like a Spanish mission-style patio. It set the scene for swashbuckling adventures or Bogie's film noirs.

“It was just a really exciting place, even in disarray,” said Laura Fitzpatrick, a Lombard resident who especially admired “all the pieces of architecture that were put in that tiny theater.”

Preservationists fought in vain to stop the village from demolishing the Jazz Age theater more than 15 years ago. The loss still lingers with those who remember its former glory.

But some artifacts from “the Dupe,” as locals affectionately call it, have found a new home in an apartment development built on the old theater site in downtown Lombard.

The developer, Holladay Properties, had the theater's 1,600-pound ticket booth, with its marble base, spiral columns and decorative cornice, brought out of storage and restored to its original luster.

The free-standing ticket booth and a movie poster for “The Yellow Lily” have been given a place of honor behind draped curtains near the lobby of Lilac Station, a new four-story residential building on Main Street. The silent drama - starring Billie Dove, a one-time Ziegfeld Follies performer - was screened on the opening night of the theater in 1928 and accompanied by pipe organ music.

In another nod to the past, a row of medallions runs along the top of the apartment complex. Those were cast and reproduced from an original medallion taken off the theater's facade and later kept in the Lombard Historical Society collection.

Many Lombardians have given positive reviews to the neon-lit “EAT” sign above a ground-floor corner restaurant space. It's a nearly exact replica of the navy blue sign that beckoned customers to Art & Vi's Blue Plate Café, a diner that served meatloaf and corned beef in an old soda fountain on the same block as the theater.

The developer's design team also duplicated the diamond pattern above the theater's marquee with tile installed over a fireplace in the lobby of Lilac Station.

“Yes, it was special. No, we weren't the ones who tore down the theater, but we will celebrate it with you,” said T. Drew Mitchell, partner and senior vice president of development at Holladay. “And it's a way that we can also help the community understand that there's some real authenticity behind what we're doing here.”

Theater's rise and fall

The single-screen DuPage Theatre opened at the dawning of talkies. It was a smaller, distant cousin to the grand “atmospheric theaters” of the 1920s and '30s. Austrian-born architect John Eberson, who conceived of Chicago's old Avalon Theater as a mosaic-filled Persian temple, sparked the trend of building movie palaces with exotic flourishes.

The Lombard landmark stood out for its terra cotta facade. The ticket lobby had a terrazzo-checkered floor. Amber stained glass lanterns cast a golden glow in the 1,400-seat auditorium.

The theater provided escapism during the Great Depression and survived the advent of television, but it began to fall into decay and became a second-run movie house. The original Spanish-terrace motif was covered in the mid-1980s when the theater was divided into three viewing rooms.

In the late 1990s, Big Idea Productions, the maker of the “VeggieTales” animation series, abandoned plans to put its corporate headquarters at the DuPage Theatre site. Instead, Big Ideas donated the theater, the land on which the building stood and $100,000 to the village.

A grass-roots group tried for years to save the theater, to no avail. Demolition crews tore down the lifeless building in 2007.

“For a lot of Lombard residents, it's very much a wound that's never quite healed, and as a historian, I hate that we can't save everything,” said Alison Costanzo, the executive director of the Lombard Historical Society. “But that's just sometimes the reality.”

The ticket booth was saved from the wrecking ball but had been sitting in storage. When the storage company changed hands, the historical society had to figure out what to do with the theater relic.

“It is large. It is tall. It is heavy. And it wasn't in the best shape,” board President George Seagraves said.

Costanzo reached out to Mitchell and turned over the ticket booth to the real estate developer.

“You don't see that all the time. You don't see developers that come in who care about history,” Costanzo said. “They just build the building and call it a day. But there's been a lot of very thoughtful things.”

'Good memories'

The developer plans to open Lilac Station, a 118-unit, $33 million complex, to residents on June 1. Multiple restaurant groups have expressed interest in the space at the corner of Main Street and Parkside Avenue.

“He's going to help rejuvenate the downtown,” said Fitzpatrick, a former village trustee.

The developer commissioned Elevate Sign Group, a Lombard business, to re-create the exterior “EAT” sign using the dimensions of the original on exhibit in the historical society's Carriage House.

Elevate also has been restoring the theater's ticket booth since last fall. The painstaking work involved sanding down layers of worn paint and having a Chicago company make plaster molding.

Nicolette DiPiazza, a graphic designer, climbed a ladder to hand-paint the intricate details. The accent color has a metallic gold tint.

“Already we're getting people celebrating it and how it looks,” DiPiazza said. “It just brings back good memories for people.”

Crews finished installing the refurbished ticket booth - two people can fit comfortably inside - last week. It will be featured in Lilac Station as part of a dedication to the theater's 79-year history in Lombard.

“Everybody can go build apartments, but I've got one life. We have one life, and we really do want it to be special and meaningful,” Mitchell said. “And that's where ultimately we get tremendous gratification from what we do by being able to sort of elevate the history of the site.”