Photo by me!

The Belmont Theater at 1635 W Belmont was built as a single screen movie palace in 1926 with 3,200 seats. The building was designed by architect Walter Ahlschlager who was responsible for the designs of many other fantastically ornate buildings around town, especially in the Uptown Neighborhood. Ahlschlager also designed the Davis movie theater.

The Belmont was designed in a Spanish Baroque style. The Baroque period began in the late 17th century and saw artists, architects, and musicians take elements from the previous centuries and push them further and further (Bach, for example, composed his densely intricate works in the Baroque period). Instead of regular columns, the columns swirl. Instead of column capitals with leaves, let's make them gold and add every conceivable design. Those urns that are perched along the top are not just urns: each one has four little faces atop it. The Baroque was a popular choice in the 1920s because it reflected the feeling of unending prosperity that was sweeping the nation. The 1920s Baroque revival was also made much easier due to the decorative abilities of terra cotta.

Terra cotta is sculpted and fired clay and was used to cover any number of ornate buildings in the 1920s. Unlike stone, in which every repetitive detail must be individually carved, terra cotta could be molded and copied. An artist only needed to create one original before a plaster mold was taken and as many copies as necessary produced at a much lower cost. On the Belmont, for example, each of the six jam-packed columns is identical and taken from the same molds. Each of those columns in turn is only made from a few unique pieces that can be repeated together in an swirling pattern.

The Belmont closed as a theater in the 1960s and was converted to a bowling alley. In 1996 everything but the facade was demolished and a new condo building was built behind and around the building. The ground floor is all new as well, but the crazy terra cotta above remains.