The Paramount Theatre, Aurora, Illinois

For an edge city, Aurora, Illinois, has a fairly busy downtown on a Saturday night, at least during the time I was there last weekend. Then again, classifying it as merely an edge city does town no justice, since it has long been a distinct place at some distance from Chicago. At one time, in fact, it was two distinct places, one on either side of the Fox River. They ultimately grew together like Buda and Pest, but in a much shorter period, as befitting its hurry-up-and-get-things-done Chicago-area location.

According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago: "In 1854 a second town incorporated west of the river, and three years later, the separate municipalities united. To ease political tensions between the two, civic offices were located on an island in the river; ward boundaries ended at the river, and the mayor was elected from alternate sides until 1913. While initially the east side was much larger both geographically and in population than the west side, the river now divides the town through its general geographic center."

The island in the river goes by the attractive name of Stolp Island, and these days it's crossed by several city streets and is also the focus of a good many of Aurora's downtown attractions, such as the Hollywood Casino. In fact, the casino's probably the main draw. The connecting footpath between a large parking garage and the casino complex was active last Saturday, as it probably is most weekend nights. Yuriko and I parked in the garage, but we hadn't come for the casino.

We'd come to visit the Paramount Theatre. The linked video doesn't even mention that the Paramount was a Rapp and Rapp-designed movie palace -- Cornelius and George L. Rapp, that is, who created so many movie palaces once upon a time, including the renowned Chicago Theatre, but also a slew of others in Chicago and elsewhere. The brothers Rapp evidently took Venice as their inspiration for this particular palace in Aurora, gilding the place with golds and reds, using strong art deco touches in the light fixtures especially, and capturing that Venetian mood through paintings that evoked tapestry scenes. It was worth part of the admission price to the show just to get in and look around.