Maybe you’re feeling blue at the Jimmy John’s at Clark and Diversey, thinking about how after graduating high school in Elgin, Illinois, Jimmy John Liautaud was given an ultimatum by his father to either join the military or start a business, and how Jimmy (now a billionaire and significant donor to Donald Trump) wanted to open a hot dog stand but found the enterprise far too demanding.
Abandon your pallid sandwich. Go outside, turn left, and look up. At 2828 North Clark, an ornate terra-cotta façade bristles with whirligig columns and cherubs in contrapposto stance. The flaxen frontage sits beneath an anonymous block filler, making the overall effect wry and ridiculous. This arresting architectural tableau originally belonged to the Diversey Theatre, a vaudeville palace with over three thousand seats. It opened in 1925 and was designed by Edward Eichenbaum of Levy & Klein in his signature Spanish Baroque Revival style. With the tragic and unnecessary demolition of the Granada Theatre in 1990, the Diversey’s façade stands as the only remaining visible evidence of …
