The New 400 Theater is “the oldest and longest surviving movie theater showing movies in Chicago,” according to Scott Holz, general manager. Opening first in 1908, it was a fixture of the Rogers Park neighborhood with a name that spoke to the optimism of the era. “The New 400 meant what the Fortune 500 means now,” says Holz. “It meant money, it meant the elite.” The theater was shut down for a year due to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. To date, the theater has survived two world wars, many periods of economic downturn, several owners, and now, two global pandemics. In a word, the New 400 is resilient. It survives.
But after a month or so, both Baker and Holz say that demand for testing dropped off precipitously. Holz explains, “It was never intended to be something that would last forever. It was only ever out there as demand would hold up.” As positivity rates dropped in January and optimism began to spread thanks to news of the vaccine, Holz tells me that the number of people seeking COVID tests “had cut into a fraction of what we had started with.” On February 5, the Rogers Park COVID Center closed after a month and a half of operation.
