When Chicago's Auditorium Theater opened in 1889, Pullmans, Palmers and Fields descended on the great granite edifice on Michigan Avenue in a stream of horse-drawn carriages. Inside, men stood and cheered as Adelina Patti sang Home Sweet Home, followed up with the Swiss Echo Song as an encore. President Benjamin Harrison, seated in a special box at the side of the stage, leaned toward Vice President Levi Morton and murmured, "New York surrenders, eh?" So it seemed that night in the magnificent hall, proudly proclaimed on the program to be "the Parnassus of modern civilization."
Last week contemporary Chicago...
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