The former Blackstone Theatre has a lot in common with its neighbor, the Blackstone Hotel: architects, Beaux-Arts style, developers and even, until 1992, a name. The six-story building houses a tall, ornate auditorium with an original capacity of 1,325. It mainly presented touring productions from New York for its first few decades--with some of the best-known actors of the time gracing the stage. After the difficult years of the Great Depression and World War II, the New York-based Shubert Organization operated the theater. They gradually scaled back productions as television diminished audiences and many of the great Loop theaters declined. The Theatre School at DePaul University--founded as the Goodman School of Drama in 1925--acquired and renovated the theater in 1988. It is now a main performance venue for one of the oldest and best-known theater conservatory programs in the region.
