Pigs, presidents and pop heroes have all preened within the walls of the South Side’s International Amphitheatre, for 65 turbulent years the host of livestock shows, political conventions and rock extravaganzas.
Once the site of the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention as well as the Beatles’ Chicago debut several years earlier, the Amphitheatre was for decades the site of some of the city’s most colorful spectacles–from Evel Knievel’s botched jump over a shark tank to a stormy 1975 convention of the Communist Party.
After a rocky stint in its latest incarnation as a center of Latin entertainment, the Amphitheatre is slated to host its final booking at 7 a.m. Tuesday–this one with a wrecking crew.
The old barn is being demolished, with the property likely to become an industrial park, city planners say.
To historians, the sprawling arena at 4220 S. Halsted St. forever will be tied most closely to 1968, when a divided Democratic Party barricaded itself inside, while anti-war protesters clashed with police on the city’s streets.
But to the people who grew up or grew old with it, the International Amphitheatre is a symbol of a Chicago that is fading into legend.
When the city announced in May that the brick and concrete behemoth would be demolished, it tapped a well of nostalgia that is as much about names like Elvis and Nixon, as it is about the evolution of the city itself.
Indeed, the most vivid history of the arena resides in the minds of thousands of Chicago residents with whose memories the Amphitheatre is inexorably entwined.
A pungent beginning
“Good God almighty, was there an odor to that place,” said lifelong South Sider John O’Brien, 68, shaking his head in nostalgic disbelief.
And he’s right.
Built in 1934 as a showcase for the South Side’s Union Stock Yards, the arena was, for more than 40 years, the site of the prestigious International Live Stock Exposition. Untold millions of sheep, cattle and hogs traipsed through it over that time, leaving an indelible–if pungent–legacy.
Still, it seems, one man’s nuisance is another’s inspiration.
“Oh, was it something to see for a young man,” said Walter Mander, who for 38 years ran the Lincoln Meat Company at 3800 S. Halsted St. “Many young men were inspired to go into agriculture by that great show–by the glamour and by the greatness. And it really changed their lives.”
Mander, 76, first laid eyes on the arena when he settled in Chicago from Germany in 1940. Filled to capacity and echoing with a chorus of bleats and snorts, the Amphitheatre became, for him at least, a symbol of his new home.
“Ladies came all dressed up in their fur coats and their finery,” Mander said of the shows, which attracted many of the city’s elite. “When I walked in there and I saw that, I said, `That’s terrific, I want to be a part of that.’ “
More Top Picks Hammock
The stockyards closed in 1971 and the Amphitheatre soon lost its grip on the livestock show, which moved to Louisville, Ky., in 1975.
“I was so disappointed I never went to another show again,” Mander said.
Pols add flair and fights
Not everyone was sad to see the livestock go. For many years, critics complained that the arena’s stink made it inhospitable to its other top act: the pols.
Prior to its most infamous booking in 1968, the Amphitheatre hosted four other national conventions.
At the Republican convention in 1952, with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower as the presidential nominee, an intense young Californian named Richard Nixon made his debut on the national ticket as the vice presidential candidate. The GOP returned in 1960 to nominate Nixon for president.
Democrats also held sway at the Amphitheatre. In 1952 and in ’56, they chose Illinois’ own Adlai Stevenson II for two failed presidential bids against Eisenhower.
The last convention to take place at the Amphitheatre was its most notable–and notorious.
With tension high against the Vietnam War in August 1968 and rumors swirling that as many as 100,000 demonstrators would try to sabotage the Democrats’ show, Mayor Richard J. Daley loaded the city’s streets with police. As delegates debated behind 7-foot-high barbed wire, demonstrators camped out in city parks and clashed with police. The violence reached a crescendo on Aug. 28 in a melee that would later be called a “police riot.”
The debacle of ’68 left both major parties with an aversion to the Amphitheatre and its city. Democrats wouldn’t return to Chicago for a convention for 28 years.
Prizefights and sideshows
Between the cattle shows and political fests, the Amphitheatre housed an array of events, including the city’s top trade shows for cars, flowers, tools and boats.
As the city’s most celebrated venue, the arena also drew top musical acts: The Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, the Who and Tom Jones, among them.
For 18 years, the arena served as the site of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, until it left in 1979 for the Rosemont Horizon.
The Amphitheatre offered grittier entertainment as well.
From 1972 to 1975 the arena served as home ice for the Chicago Cougars, of the now-defunct World Hockey Association. The team could pack 9,300 people into its games but had to trim 20 feet off the end of the rink.
“Anybody see Reggie Fleming (then of the Cougars) beat the spit out of Bobby Hull (then of the Winnipeg Jets)?” asked bartender Jay Schaller, from behind the bar at Schaller’s Pump, a longtime Bridgeport tavern a few blocks north of the arena. “That was something else.”
Chicago’s venerable boxing promoter Ben Bentley recalled the days when the Amphitheatre held the best prizefights, before the big names moved to other venues.
“There was nothing like the old place,” Bentley said.
`Glory, greatness were gone’
By the early ’80s, the arena showed clear signs of trouble.
Fist fights, shootings and other unsavory incidents were frequent fare at the arena, providing a steady stream of poor press.
The arena hit a low point in December 1981 when an 18-year-old Cicero woman was sexually assaulted in plain view of the stage, where a rhythm and blues band was playing.
Incidents like that made many promoters think that the aging arena, six miles from the Loop, wasn’t worth the trouble.
Despite additions, the arena found itself struggling to compete against larger, sleeker venues to the north, such as McCormick Place and the Rosemont Horizon, which lured many of the trade shows and entertainment acts.
Even the circus left.
With its reputation tarnished and in need of a new roof, the struggling arena shut down in 1983 and was put up for sale. The asking price: a paltry $2.5 million, only $1 million more than it cost more than half a century earlier.
Hoping to resuscitate the old place, investors talked of converting it into a shopping mall, movie studio or video arcade. Eventually, the arena was auctioned off in the fall of 1984 for a pittance: $250,000.
“I just sat there in shock. I couldn’t believe it,” said Mander, of Lincoln Meat, who was at the auction. “But I guess by that point all the glory and the greatness were gone.”
After sitting idle for three years, the arena was revived in 1987–though longtime fans say it never felt quite right. In recent years, the arena had served largely as a performance hall for Latino bands and dance troupes.
More Top Picks Best Leather Boots For Women For Knee Pain
In May, the city announced that it was acquiring the 12-acre-lot and ending the arena’s use as a performance space.
City planners have said they intend to expand the sprawling Stockyard Industrial Corridor, which stretches from Ashland Avenue to Halsted Street and Pershing Road to 47th Street.
Some in the neighborhood applaud the move, hoping that it might breathe some life into a time-worn patch of the South Side.
Still, there is at least one person who is going to miss the old arena.
“I’ve had a lot of deaths in my family,” said 65-year-old Dutch Trentz, the arena’s chief engineer who has worked with the Amphitheatre’s heating and electrical systems for 31 years. “But when they tear that place down, that one’s really going to hit me.”
While Trentz acknowledges the arena’s decline, he wonders whether the arena couldn’t have been saved.
“It’s history to you, but that’s life to me,” he said.