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The
DeLuxe Theater, located at 1141 W. Wilson Avenue in Chicago's
then-fashionable Uptown district,
opened in February 1913. The theater was backed financially by Frank
Cuneo, a wealthy banana broker, and offered motion pictures as its
primary form of entertainment. Ten cents was the price of admission. For
its day, the DeLuxe was considered an elaborate movie theater. The
theater featured a lobby walls lined with marble, 600 upholstered seats
in the auditorium, and a large pipe organ played by Fred Sosman,
organist at Chicago's highly regarded Auditorium Theater. The elegant
decor prompted one visiting movie theater manager to remark that "if
the house fails at pictures, it could be readily changed into a church."
The lobby walls were lined with marble and the auditorium's 600 seats
were upholstered for the comfort of patrons. For many years, the DeLuxe
was one of the largest and most popular movie theaters in Uptown. The
opening of larger and even more elegant theaters in the immediate
vicinity in subsequent years diminished the DeLuxe's prominence.
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