For nearly 120 years, the Merle Reskin Theatre has hosted everything from “Pygmalion” and “Life With Father” to “Mirror of Most Value: A Ms. Marvel Play,” which opens mid-May for a two-week run.
What’s playing after May? Darkness. And not the 2021 Andre Wright play with the same name, either.
DePaul University is closing the Reskin at the end of next month.
The university says it’s the result of a budget crisis that has been aggravated by the Trump administration’s immigration policies that has reduced the amount of tuition-paying international students attending the school.
Also part of DePaul’s budget troubles: The decision in February to close the respected DePaul Art Museum at 935 W. Fullerton Ave.
“The university is working to determine the future use of the Merle Reskin Theatre,” a DePaul spokesperson said in a statement.
But until that use is found, it’s lights out for the Reskin, 60 E. Balbo Drive. The decision places in limbo a landmarked 1,400-seat Beaux Art playhouse designed by Benjamin H. Marshall, one of Chicago’s preeminent architects.
“I’m sick about it,” Jane Lepauw, president of the nonprofit Benjamin Marshall Society, said of the Reskin’s mothballing. “I would pray and hope that some [theater] company would come along and claim it. But given the financial environment in general, I fear that it will be sitting there for a long time. It seems like it’s really up for grabs for its future.”
Reskin ‘a wonderful asset’
Built in 1910 as the Blackstone Theatre, the venue sits in the western shadow of the 21-story Blackstone Hotel, which was also designed by Marshall and completed in 1910.
Marshall and his firm Marshall & Fox designed scores of notable buildings around town, including the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. South Shore Drive, and the Drake Hotel, 140 E. Walton St.
For much of the 20th century, Marshall’s ornate Blackstone theater — with its columned entrances and mansard roof — and his elegant Second Empire-styled Blackstone Hotel were a swank brother-and-sister act that drew the best plays, conventions and events.
Legendary actors including John and Ethel Barrymore, Spencer Tracy and Helen Hayes performed at the Blackstone during the good years.
The venue closed in the mid-1980s and was bought by DePaul for its theater school.
A $2 million donation from businessman Harold Reskin and wife, Merle, who had been an actress, singer and dancer, helped refurbish what would open in 1992 as the Merle Reskin Theatre.
Merle Reskin died in 2023. Harold Reskin passed away in 1996.
The theater’s French-inspired auditorium remained intact, although it has faded somewhat in recent decades. The Reskin is home to DePaul Theatre School’s Chicago Playworks for Families and Young Audiences.
DePaul said the Chicago Playworks series will continue this fall at the Theatre School building in Lincoln Park.
“That DePaul, which is really such a great school and it’s got a great theater department, will be bereft of this wonderful asset,” Lepauw said of the Reskin, “l think it’s just so sad.”
What’s next?
Whatever the Reskin’s fate, it won’t be demolition. The theater is listed as a contributing structure in the landmark-protected 12-block long Historic Michigan Boulevard District.
For DePaul, money is tight. But tight is relative: The university managed to come up with enough scratch to start construction this year on a $42 million basketball and athletics center on its Lincoln Park campus.
It should be equally diligent in finding the funds to preserve, restore and reuse the Reskin. The city shouldn’t lose a live entertainment venue anywhere, particularly Downtown.
And Chicago certainly doesn’t need a dark, unused building glowering over Balbo Drive.
But suppose DePaul finds it no longer wants the Reskin. Then finding a new owner who can restore the theater and put it in league with Downtown’s Chicago, Nederlander and Cadillac Palace theaters becomes paramount.
Rich Gamble, interim CEO of the Chicago Loop Alliance, said his group has been talking to DePaul about the Reskin. The university is a member of the downtown organization.
“I’m not in a position to explicitly state the nature of those conversations,” Gamble said. “We’re a supporter, an advocate and a promoter of what we would like to see happen, which is a vibrant district.”