The Chicago City Temple and the Photodrama

Following on from meeting places being called Tabernacles (e.g. Brooklyn Tabernacle, London Tabernacle) it was easy to see why some large halls would be called Temples in the Bible Student world. So there was the New York City Temple, where the Photodrama of Creation was shown in New York. However, probably the most famous of all was the Chicago City Temple (formerly the old Globe Theater), which again was used for the Photodrama.

The Chicago class produced a special brochure entitled Our Temple, which is highly collectable today. It shows how the Photodrama presentation worked, and as a bonus had a photograph from the first Bible Student convention held in Chicago in 1893. It also contained numerous portrait photographs of men and women who were involved in the Photodrama work; in many cases these are the only photographs that have survived of some of these individuals. If you visited the Chicago Temple you would likely have been given a tour by Albert Franz, whose photograph is in the brochure.

Albert Edward Franz (1889-1940)

As a link with more recent times, his younger brother, Fred Franz, was president of the Watchtower Sociery from 1977-1992.

The Temple was only used by Bible Students for a short time. The Chicago class grew to about 600 in 1914. They first hired the Auditorium Theater in Chicago to show the Photodrama in April-May of that year, while looking for a more permanent location. They then obtained a lease on the Old Globe Theater (which was origionally built to exhibit the Panorama of the Battle of Gettysburg) and after much work redecorating opened for business as the Temple later in 1914. There is an article in the St Paul Enterprise for October 16, 1914, showing it to be up and running then. As well as a theater it included a book room, library, dining room, and accommodation for the workers. The address was 700 South Wabash Avenue, near 7^th Street.

However, an internet search shows that this building became the Strand Theater in May 1915, so it wasn’t used by the Bible Students for very long at all. When a new film for Bible Students called “Restitution” came to town in 1918, they were back in the Auditorium Theater. The former Chicago Temple was demolished in 1921.

In that window of operation the Temple sold postcards, and one is reproduced below from Tom’s collection. It was mailed on November 13, 1914.

The writing on the reverse gives no clue that the writer or recipient was ever an active Bible Student. The message from “Auntie Emma” refers to the weather and a funeral of someone both parties knew, but there is none of the usual scriptural references you would expect in a Bible Student message of that nature. The recipient, Isabelle Youle (1892-1971), appears to have never married. When she died her obituary in the Eau Claire (Wisconsin) Leader Telegram for May 8, 1971, said she was born in Chicago and that “she was active in Christ Church, Order of the Eastern Star, White Shrine, Order of the Amarenth, of which she was past Royal Matron and present secretary.”

Whatever connection with the Bible Student movement there may have been with this particular postcard is sadly lost in time.