Something is happening in Chicago that is worthy of the magic community’s attention. It is both exciting and a bit frightening.
A $50 million venue called The Hand & The Eye is set to open this spring inside the historic McCormick Mansion at 100 E. Ontario St., steps from the Magnificent Mile. It bills itself as the largest magic venue on earth. It features 37 rooms, seven performance theaters, secret passageways, opulent interior design, and a dress code that bans jeans and sneakers.
The architect is David Rockwell, who has designed Broadway sets and luxury restaurants. The money comes from Glen Tullman, a Chicago healthcare entrepreneur. The curator of magic is Jeff Kaylor, an internationally acclaimed working magician who left his touring career and relocated to Chicago to help bring it to life.
The location fits. Chicago is not just a city where magic happens to be popular. It is the city where close-up magic as the world practices it today was born — intimate, funny, personal, and impossible — all happening right under the spectator’s nose. The land where The Hand & The Eye plants itself is hallowed ground to the magic insiders. Before their doors open, I find myself asking one question: Do they realize — and truly respect — that they are treading on sacred ground?
I keep coming back to one word in their marketing. Largest.
I understand why they use it. At this scale, with this investment, you lead with the superlative. But it causes me to wonder if the people building The Hand & The Eye understand the profound importance of some of the smallest magic venues in history.
Just 2½ miles north of The Hand & The Eye’s location, in the early twentieth century, Matt Schulien used to settle into his chair at 1800 N. Halsted — a cigar in his mouth, a deck of cards in his hands, 320 pounds of warmth and mischief — and invented tableside close-up magic while customers waited for their food. The room wasn’t large. What happened there was huge and changed magic forever.
One mile away, in the early 1940’s, Bert Allerton sat down next to strangers at the Pump Room in the Ambassador East Hotel and performed close-up miracles for $2 a couple. Fourteen years he did this. At the height of his career he was the most celebrated close-up performer and the highest paid café entertainer in the country. No stage. No lighting rig. No velvet curtains. Just a man and a deck of cards and the impossible happening three feet from your face. The Hand & The Eye has invoked the Pump Room as their dining inspiration. I have not seen Allerton’s name mentioned in their materials.
1½ miles from the new mega venue, Johnny Paul introduced a new idea in magic performance — bar magic — at the LaSalle Hotel.
Ed Marlo was born in Chicago in 1913. He was a machinist by day. By night he was the most prolific creator of card magic in history — nearly 4,000 routines, methods, and sleights published over half a century. He barely performed outside Chicago. He held court at Schulien’s. He mentored a generation of magicians including Bill Malone. He coined the term “cardician.” His work lives in the hands of every serious card magician on earth today. His name does not appear in The Hand & The Eye materials.
Frances Ireland Marshall started working at the L.L. Ireland Magic Company in Chicago in 1931. She co-founded Magigals with Bess Houdini. She and Jay Marshall built Magic Inc., which has served the magic community for a century. Her son Sandy Marshall runs it today. Do they know or care that less than a mile south of their opulent location is the street corner where that story began? The firm is still operating today in a new location, still teaching, still manufacturing tricks. A living institution, with a century of history, invisible in The Hand & The Eye’s public narrative.
Famed 20th century illusionist Harry Blackstone, Sr. started his career as a teenager on the streets of Chicago where he was born. His first show was in the basement of a local Chicago church. From there he rose to fame and established his lasting influence on the world of illusion.
Perhaps there is a tribute to Frances Ireland and Jay Marshall soon to be revealed within the walls of The Hand & The Eye. Possibly there is a nod to Matt Schulien as big as the man himself. Maybe there are rooms named for Blackstone, Allerton, and some fitting tribute to the fourteen magic bars that once made Chicago the close-up magic capital of the world. I genuinely hope so.
But what I see publicly so far is a venue that leads their publicity with talk of opulent interiors and grand size — only mentioning the tradition of Chicago magic in a few lines of a press release calling out a single legend by name. I hope when the doors swing open I will feel relief to see that the heritage surrounding the new site has not been overlooked.
A $50 million magic venue with mainstream press coverage will either be the best thing that happened to magic’s public profile in a generation, or a very public argument that magic cannot sustain projects requiring serious investment. There is no quiet middle outcome at this scale. The results, success or failure, land on all of us involved in magic.
Conjurly’s news section will cover The Hand & The Eye’s every newsworthy development — the opening, the talent, the relationship with the city’s magic community, the long-term story of whether a $50 million venue can earn a permanent place in the art form. We will do it with respect, with care, and without fear or favor. But here in this column I can express my fears and hopes about the project.
I hope that The Hand & The Eye is a long-term success that will stand like a monument to the magic that came before it on the streets of Chicago.
The press release that announced the project proclaims the dawn of a new golden age of magic. My fear is that the essence of Chicago-style magic becomes lost in translation on the journey from small wooden tables and drink stained bars to the opulence and grandeur promised for the project.
The history of Chicago magic is deep and the legacy already lives on. It continues to thrive at venues like the nearby Chicago Magic Lounge, and on small stages and across bar tops performed by people who remember.
Walking distance from The Hand & The Eye’s soon-to-open location is the Magic Parlor, where Dennis Watkins performs six magic shows a week for intimate groups downstairs at Petterino’s Restaurant. He doesn’t have $50 million in his pocket. But he has magic in his heart.
I hope The Hand & The Eye proves they do too.
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