International studio (43.1911)

The Fine Arts Building, Chicago


PART OF THE LAKE FRONT, CHICAGO. THE FINE ARTS BUILDING IS THE SECOND FROM THE LEFT,
THE ART INSTITUTE ON THE EXTREME RIGHT

The fine arts building in
CHICAGO
BY ELIA W. PEATTIE
The Fine Arts Building in Chicago is
remarkable among such enterprises as housing
within its walls so great a proportion of the artistic,
intellectual, literary and educational interests of a
great city. The building is occupied by sculptors,
painters, actors, musicians, writers, illustrators,
etchers, gold and silversmiths, carvers, decorators,
publishers of special editions, teachers of elocution
and expression, the drama and the cognate arts;
dealers in the antique and the curious, sellers of pic-
tures, prints, pianos, books, porcelains, fine furni-
ture, laces, linens. To some extent the various arts
and crafts have grouped themselves. The musi-
cians congregate on certain floors; the smiths and
decorators show themselves to be neighborly; the
educational interests are to be found together, and
the artists, making for the skylights, take themselves
to the tenth floor. Here is to be found a congenial
confraternity. The painters have united in placing
original mural decorations upon the walls, and on
the occasions—and they are many—when social
affairs are given the studios are used in common.
Here the Little Room, that insouciant, vagrant
academy of folk “who do things” in a literary or
artistic way, has its twilight meetings in the studio
of a well-known portrait painter, and here it holds
its satiric theatricals, its masques and banquets.
In respect to its centralization of interests the
building, which was opened in 1898, has few coun-
terparts, and locally it has, of course, outdone its
predecessors. The hall, built by Thomas B. Bryan
where the first art exhibition was seen in 1859, was a

studio building. Uranus H. Crosby’s million-dollar
opera house drew the artists of the city together in
its studios and attracted the public by its exhibition
rooms and galleries, where the founder’s collections
might be seen. Before the fire of ’71 the Ayer
Building at Monroe and State streets showed an
innovation in excluding the musicians. Readers of
E. P. Roe may remember a scene in this building in
“Barriers Burned Away.” Judge Lambert Tree
ventured a studio building, but on the north side of
the river, and for such an enterprise position is all-
important. In short, the Fine Arts Building,
though it stands in a line of succession in the growth
of the city’s artistic life, does not so much borrow
importance from that fact as lend importance to it.
Of course, it can hardly be said that the realization
of the founders of the building, the Studebaker
brothers, and Mr. Charles C. Curtis, with whom
the scheme originated, was accomplished—in so far
as it has been accomplished—at once. Although a
generous response was made, with promptitude,
upon the opening of the building, it has taken years
of patience, persistence, elimination, selection and
sustained enthusiasm to bring about the success
which has now undeniably been achieved.
In addition to the space allotted to studios and
shops there are no less than three auditoriums in the
building. One of these, originally intended for
musicales or illustrated lectures, was, early in its
history, converted into the Studebaker Theatre.
As such it was opened in 1899 by Mr. Henry W.
Savage’s Grand Opera in English, and for two
years the Castle Square Opera Company played to
audiences which, to the last, demonstrated their
appreciation of the educational opportunity afforded
by the fine artistic presentations of the best operas

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