Orpheum Theatre (Champaign, Illinois)
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New Orpheum Theatre
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(2012)
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| Location | 346-352 N. Neil St. Champaign, Illinois |
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| Coordinates | 40°7′10″N 88°14′33″W / 40.11944°N 88.24250°WCoordinates: 40°7′10″N 88°14′33″W / 40.11944°N 88.24250°W |
| Built | 1914 |
| Architect | Rapp & Rapp |
| Architectural style | Classical Revival |
| NRHP Reference # | 91000085 |
| Added to NRHP | February 28, 1991 |
The Orpheum Theater opened in Champaign, Illinois in 1914 on the site of a vaudeville theater built in 1904. Designed by the Architectural firm Rapp & Rapp, the Orpheum (also known as The New Orpheum) was built to accommodate both live vaudeville performances and the projection of film. After a series of renovations and changes of ownership, the Orpheum screened its final film in 1986.
Preserved from demolition in 1991, the Orpheum is now home to a children's museum, the Orpheum Children's Science Museum, and is undergoing restoration.
One of the earliest examples of movie theater architecture, the Orpheum is an early design by the prolific architectural firm Rapp and Rapp, a firm that would later design many famous American "Movie Palaces" in the first decades of the twentieth century.
George Leslie Rapp, an 1899 alumnus of the University of Illinois School of Architecture, with his brother Corneilus, founded the firm of Rapp &^ Rapp. They designed over 400 theaters including the Majestic Theater in Dubuque, Iowa (1910), the Chicago Theatre (1921), Bismark Hotel and Theatre (1926), Mighigan Theatre, Detroit (1926), Oriental Theater, Chicago (1926), and the Paramount Theater in New York City (1926) and Aurora (1931).
Rapp and Rapp designed the Orpheum as a scale model of the opera house at Versailles. The following year, they designed the Al. Ringling Theatre in Baraboo, Wisconsin, which was also a model of the Versailles opera house. The Ringlings, however, spent considerably more money for decorations.
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