The Hand & The Eye will be a new, $50 million magic theater off Magnificent Mile

Chicago Tribune

15-05-2025

With a $50 million investment in the struggling Magnificent Mile, the Chicago healthcare entrepreneur Glen Tullman is opening a massive new live entertainment venue in the historic McCormick Mansion (100 E. Ontario St.), most recently the home of Lawry's Prime Rib restaurant. Tullman said the new venture, called The Hand & The Eye, will employ some 200 people and offer seven different performance spaces, along with multiple bars and a dining experience, all devoted to the art of magic.
'This is not some six-month pop-up thing. This is a once-in-a-generation project,' Tullman said during a tour of his venue under construction. Opening night is anticipated for March 2026.
The closest comparable existing venue is probably the long-established Magic Castle in Los Angeles, first opened in 1963. Tullman said that Chicago's 36,000-square-foot The Hand & The Eye will be larger than that famous venue (by some 10,000 square feet) and will feature an interior design by David Rockwell, known for Broadway shows as much as his restaurant interiors. 'People come to Chicago from Iowa and Indiana and they want to be amazed,' Tullman said. 'This will amaze them.'
Although there are multiple stages and performance nooks, the plan for The Hand & The Eye is to be open seven nights a week and offer a single inclusive ticket that will move audiences through numerous performances and a dinner, with patrons making timed reservations and then traversing all the rooms in a bespoke fashion. The price point has not yet been set, but it is not likely to be cheap. Tullman, 65, described his intent to offer an upscale, all-adult experience with a dress code. 'This will not be a jeans and sneakers kind of place,' he said.
Along with the one-night, all-inclusive ticket aimed more at visitors to the city, the venue also plans to offer club memberships for residents and regulars, allowing members the ability to come and go to the various stages and bars through a dedicated entrance, perhaps to see a favorite magician. Members, Tullman said, will be required to learn a magic trick, but otherwise memberships will be open to everyone, creating a Soho House-like experience, albeit with an illusionary theme.
Numerous magicians, including 'curator of magic' Jeff Kaylor, have already moved to the city to work on the project. 'We're bringing something special to Chicago,' said Kaylor, 'but also to the world of magic.'
Performers, Kaylor said, will be a blend of resident magicians and 'world-class' special guests. 'We want to open up people's imaginations,' Kaylor said, 'and we also want to create a place where every magician in the world wants to perform.'
A tour revealed a historic building being gutted virtually to the studs, albeit with the preservation of the original grand staircase, fireplace and a few other elements. The historic exterior of the building, which dates to 1899, is landmarked and cannot be changed.
L. Hamilton McCormick, the nephew of famed agriculturalist Cyrus McCormick, and his wife, Constance Plummer McCormick, commissioned a four-story Italian Renaissance home with bricks imported from Belgium (and wrapped in straw) on the corner of Ontario and Rush Street. At various points in its history, the house also housed a puppet theater and a members-only nightclub called the Continental Casino. A fourth-floor ballroom hosted as many as 400 guests including, on occasion, visiting royalty hosted by Mrs. McCormick. Rockwell's new design will include a roof garden as part of the venue.
The seven theaters inside the mansion will range from about 25 to 100 seats, Kaylor said, offering conditions for different levels of magic from tight close-up through more medium-range illusions. In a nod to Chicago's long history of bartender magicians, bars will be set up as much for trickery as for cocktails. The operation will also feature live jazz and have a full-time music director and there will be a retail outlet for magic tricks that come with human instructions. Opening hours are projected to be from 5 p.m. until midnight. Tullman also said there would be an educational component, offering opportunities to young Chicago magicians from the city's neighborhoods, as well as some weekend brunches and daytime performances opened up to a family audience.
In a phone interview from Madrid, Rockwell said he was intrigued by the possibility of 'doing something that had never been done, of creating an intimate audience experience that integrated both performance and hospitality spaces.' Rockwell said his design byword was 'hand-crafted' and that, as a theater designer, he had obsessed over theatrical lighting and audience sightlines, often not preoccupations of traditional interior designers. 'This is the first time I've worked on a hospitality project where the building blocks are the one-on-one human interactions that comes from theater,' Rockwell said.
Levy Restaurants CEO Andy Lansing, also a self-described magic geek, said 'magic and dining and design have all been treated with equal care, instead of existing in their own silos.' Food is likely to be retro in orientation. 'Think the Pump Room in its heyday,' Lansing said. 'And the food will be served in the most beautiful of dining rooms.'
The Hand & The Eye hardly will be the only magic venue in the city. The successful Chicago Magic Lounge operates in Andersonville, offering two stages and a bar. Longtime Chicago magician Dennis Watkins plies his craft multiple times a week in the basement of Petterino's Restaurant a little further south in Chicago's Loop, under the auspices of the Goodman Theatre. And the Rhapsody Theatre presents magic in Rogers Park. All are likely to face formidable new competition, although an argument can be made that more venues will create more demand in a city with an auspicious history of prestidigitation.
'This will be part of the reinvigoration of Michigan Avenue,' Tullman said, noting that he did not have any partners in the venture beyond himself. 'I'm betting on the city.'