Bijou theater chicago closing1/2/2024 ![]() With such a circuit he was able to secure top quality acts by offering performers a week in each city, which guaranteed a two-month run of steady employment with limited travel expense. Soon Butterfield had control of eight such theaters in as many cities across lower Michigan, adding Flint, Bay City, Ann Arbor, Saginaw and Lansing. Butterfield established a string of so-called “Bijou” theaters in Battle Creek, Jackson and eventually Kalamazoo. The couple met and married in 1903 while actress Caroline was playing the part of Mrs. ![]() Kalamazoo is glad to enroll him among her up-to-date business men…” – Kalamazoo Gazette, 21 January 1906īutterfield eventually traded life on the road for domestic life in West Michigan with his second wife, Caroline Kelley McCord (1873–1930), and their two daughters, Caroline Hamilton Butterfield (1903–1954) and Laura McCord Butterfield (1905–1969). “Butterfield is business from the word ‘go,’ an enterprising, friendly, affable gentleman whom it is a pleasure to know and who is a desirable resident in any community. Butterfield even penned a four-act play of his own in 1901 entitled “An Odd Fellow” – Butterfield was a member of the Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F) fraternal organization, and soon became recognized within the industry as one of the best ahead-of-the-show men in the country. Blaney, and spent the next dozen years as a manager and part owner doing advance work for Blaney’s traveling theatrical productions, including William Bonelli’s “An American Gentleman” (c.1902) and a massively popular stage adaptation of “Buster Brown” (1905). The marriage didn’t last but during his time in Chicago Butterfield did manage to connect with the “King of the Melodrama,” Charles E. It was an exciting time to be in Chicago. ![]() Butterfield - along with some 27 million others - visited Chicago’s spectacular 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, where he spent time marveling at the many acts along the midway. After the birth of their daughter, Mitties Louise Butterfield (1892–1928), W.S. In 1891 Butterfield married Maria Louise Mills and moved to Chicago, where he soon found work as treasurer at the Chicago Academy of Music. Theatrical work it seems was in his blood by this time. A year or so later Butterfield took a job across town to the Grand Opera House where he put in several more years of work. He soon worked his way up as an usher, doorkeeper, assistant treasurer and finally treasurer. After moving to Columbus, Ohio, the young Butterfield was delivering newspapers when he discovered the nearby Comstock Theater, where he took a job distributing programs. ![]() Butterfield - “The Bijou Man” - to finally establish full time vaudeville theaters in downtown Kalamazoo.īorn April 25, 1867, in Connersville, Indiana, Walter Scott Butterfield developed a fondness for theater at an early age. Vaudeville came to dominate popular entertainment in America for decades and remained so through the 1920s.ĭuring the final decades of the 19th century traveling variety shows, concert orchestras, dramatic companies, and minstrel troupes occupied the stages at Union Hall and the Academy of Music, but it took a man named W.S. Live stage shows that incorporated comedy, music, dance and drama into a neat and somewhat respectable package quickly found massive new audiences in metropolitan areas and on the road in smaller communities and rural regions. When Tony Pastor’s Star Troupe brought “The Largest and Best Vaudeville and Specialty Company on Earth” to Kalamazoo’s Union Hall in November 1876, audience members that night were unknowingly witness to the humble beginnings of one of America’s most popular pastimes. Butterfield, 1916 (Kalamazoo Public Library) ![]()
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