The Petrillo Music Shell (sometimes referred to as the Petrillo Bandshell or formally as the James C. Petrillo Music Shell) is an outdoor amphitheater in Grant Park in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It serves as host to many large annual music festivals in the city such as Chicago Blues Festival, Chicago Jazz Festival, Taste of Chicago and Lollapalooza. It is also the former host of several smaller annual events that have moved to the newer Jay Pritzker Pavilion such as the Grant Park Music Festival, Chicago Gospel Music Festival, and Chicago Latin Music Festival. The name has been applied to two different structures: one that stood facing Hutchinson Field, near the south end of Grant Park, from 1931 to 1975; and a replacement structure facing Butler Field at Monroe and Columbus that opened in 1978. The original bandshell was commissioned in 1931 by Mayor Anton Cermak during the Great Depression to help lift the spirits of the citizenry with free concerts. In 1975, the music shell was named to honor James C. Petrillo, president of the Chicago Federation of Musicians from 1922 to 1962 and president of the American Federation of Musicians from 1940 to 1958, who created a free concert series in Grant Park in 1935. Petrillo was a commissioner of the Chicago Park District from 1934 to 1945.
Location and layout In 1915, the commissioners of South Park (Grant Park's predecessor) located a temporary wooden bandshell in the Park near Michigan and Congress Avenues. It hosted large events as well as band performances and remained in place for five or six years. In 1931, Cermak suggested free concerts to lift spirits of Chicagoans during the Great Depression. The Depression and the proliferation of new technological innovations such as records, radios and sound films led to a declining demand for live music and a shrinking job market for musicians. That year, as buildings were being built for the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition, the Chicago Concert Band Association offered to organize a seventy-person concert band to give free summer concerts if the park commissioners would build a band shell that had electric lighting and dressing rooms. Construction on the wood and fiber E. V. Buchsbaum design began on a budget of $12,500 ($264,633 in today's dollars), and the opening of free concerts commenced on August 24, 1931. Construction was completed in three weeks. On July 1, 1935, Petrillo oversaw the beginning of free concerts in Grant Park at the original bandshell located on the south end of the park across Lake Shore Drive from the Field Museum of Natural History. Originally referred to as the Grant Park Band Shell, the bandshell was renamed and dedicated in honor of Petrillo in 1975.
There were numerous plans and proposals to replace the original band shell beginning almost as soon as the Festival began. Among the most prominent was a post-WWII (1946) plan to have a fifteen-thousand-seat butterfly-design retractible canopy band shell on the block immediately east of the Art Institute of Chicago that eventually came to host the second incarnation of the Petrillo Music Shell. In 1953 a referendum was almost held on the November 3 Election Day ballot for a $3 million ($36.1) structure, but at the last minute a bond issue was denied. In 1963, a plan for a ten thousand seat music bowl was propounded. By the 1970s the original bandshell had deteriorated to the point where "stagehands, performers and even a grand piano had fallen through the stage floor." Amid the catastrophes, the musicians joked about the need for hard hats. Despite $77,000 ($409,102) in 1977 repair expenditures by the city, the performers were considering cancelling the 1978 season. Deed restrictions dating from the city's early history generally forbid any buildings in Grant Park between Randolph Drive and 11th Place. As the result of a series of Illinois Supreme Court rulings, Grant Park has been "forever open, clear and free" since 1836, which was a year before the city of Chicago was incorporated. In 1839, United States Secretary of War Joel Roberts Poinsett declared the land between Randolph Street and Madison Street east of Michigan Avenue "Public Ground forever to remain vacant of buildings. Aaron Montgomery Ward, who is known both as the inventor of mail order and the protector of Grant Park, twice sued the city of Chicago to force it to remove buildings and structures from Grant Park and to keep it from building new ones. As a result, the city has what are termed the Montgomery Ward height restrictions on buildings and structures in Grant Park. In 1972, plans were advanced to build a large new concrete-and-fiberglass band shell atop a new underground parking garage, but community groups defended the Ward restrictions. A compromise produced the inexpensive, staff-designed, demountable band shell at Butler Field, which opened in 1978. The "semi-permanent" designation skirted the Ward prohibitions and the new structure cost only $3 million ($14.8 million). With an official street address at 235 S. Columbus Drive, the music shell anchors the southwest corner of Butler Field, an entire block bounded by Lake Shore Drive to the east, Columbus Drive to the west, East Monroe Drive to the north and East Jackson Drive to the south. This places it a block east of the Art Institute of Chicago, a block north of Buckingham Fountain, and southeast of Millennium Park. The amphitheater and paved surface for public seating has served as one of the main stages for recent Lollapalooza celebrations.
History
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