Founded in 1925, the Goodman Theater is Chicago's oldest active nonprofit theater company. It is named for Chicago playwright Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, who died at age 35 in the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918. The theater was funded by his parents, who donated $250,000 to the Art Institute of Chicago to establish a professional repertory company and drama school. The first theater was designed by architect Howard Van Doren Shaw in the footprint now occupied by the Art Institute's Modern Wing. By the 1980s, that aging facility was growing inadequate, and the company was persuaded by the city to reinvest in a pair of historic North Loop theaters in need of renewal. The Selwyn and Harris Theaters were renovated into modern auditoriums for the Goodman Theater, which opened in its new home in 2000.
