Revamping the Lindo: Breathing New Life into an Old Theater

by Cynthia Young
Contributing Editor

How do you . . . inject new life into a downtown movie theater and keep its historic charm?

Summary: Willis Johnson has been buying historic movie theaters and restoring them to their former luster in northern Illinois for nearly 30 years. Starting with a renovation of the Tivoli Theatre in Downers Grove, Ill., Johnson is currently expanding the 85-year-old historic Lindo Theatre in Freeport, Ill. He now operates 12 theaters encompassing modern and historic venues in 11 towns across the state.

When Willis Johnson bought the historic Lindo Theatre more than two decades ago, the theater had been closed for a year, the roof leaked, and the boiler had failed. Inside, the lobby featured paneling in “early rec room” decor, a dropped ceiling, and carpet glued to the terrazzo floor. “We didn’t know what we had gotten into,” says Johnson of Classic Cinemas, a family-owned company he runs with his wife Shirley and son Chris based in Downers Grove, Ill.

But under the layers the Johnson family discovered a gem. “After investigating, we found a 14-foot-high ceiling with a heavy plaster cornice with cherubs and lots of detail that was 18 inches high,” says Johnson, who has been buying and renovating historic movie theaters in northern Illinois for nearly 30 years. They fixed the roof, stripped off the paneling, built three auditoriums inside the original, and were in business.

Fitting the original
Over the years, Johnson expanded into an adjacent property to offer six screens, all while continuing to buy and renovate neighborhood movie theaters, old and new. Now, to increase the Lindo’s movie selections, they are remodeling once again by constructing four new screens in space that used to be a parking lot and combining the original three auditoriums into two. All nine screens are slated to be ready for this movie-going holiday season.
“When we do renovations or additions, we try to make it fit the original,” Johnson says. “We even go to old movie houses to buy things we don’t have, just to keep that nostalgic feel.”

The expansion project includes a reproduction of the original vertical sign on the outside of the theater and, inside, period wall sconces, cornice moldings and plaster in keeping with the original design, and original stained glass exit signs. “We paid 200 movie passes to get a couple of the stained glass signs back and are reproducing more as well,” adds Johnson.

Johnson tries to stay true to the theater’s classic, original style and construct the additions in the same manner; yet he is also practical. “We do what we can afford. We don’t do a full restoration or return it to exactly the way it was. It’s a restoration that opens the theater and keeps the theater in operation. It’s contributing to the community instead of being closed and helps to revitalize downtown.”

From the heyday of grand houses
This year, the Lindo celebrates its 85th anniversary. Designed by movie palace architects Rapp and Rapp during the heyday of grand motion picture houses, the 1,200-seat theater opened in 1922. One of the first movie theaters in Freeport, the Lindo originally showed silent motion pictures. The theater received its distinctive name through a competition-winning entry that acknowledged the historic Abraham Lincoln-Stephen Douglas debate held a few blocks away during their 1858 Senate campaign.

“All of his theaters have something in common,” says architect Kevin Peterson, of K. Peterson and Associates, Naperville, Ill. “They are usually older theaters in a downtown environment, and with older buildings, there are many constraints you have to work around.”

One challenge at the Lindo was creating wider auditoriums. “The original rooms were long, deep, and narrow. We are splitting these three auditoriums into two for a more comfortable proportion of rooms,” says Peterson, who has helped renovate other historic theaters for Classic Cinemas.

Another issue was tying the new addition into the existing building. “It is always a challenge working with the auditoriums’ different slopes, the grades at the top of the theater, and the grades that you need to exit the building,” Peterson says.

The Johnson family’s first purchase, the Tivoli Theatre, remains a thriving enterprise and celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2008. This year, AIA Illinois named the Tivoli one of the most historic sites in the state.