The Music Box opened on August 22, 1929 at 3733 North Southport Avenue as a single screen theater with a seating capacity of 750.

The dark blue, cove-lit ceiling with "twinkling stars" and moving cloud formations suggests a night sky.

The plaster ornamentation of the sidewalls, round towers, faux-marble loggia and ogee arched organ chambers are, by Hollywood standards, reminiscent of the walls surrounding an Italian courtyard.

George Schutz in an article written for Exhibitor's Herald-World in 1929 praised the theater for its small size and lack of frills and "non-cinematic elements" often found in the much larger movie palaces of the day.

“It is entirely competent, both in design and equipment, to function as a hall in which to present the highly special kind of mechanized entertainment which is the modern motion-talking picture.” He also mentions the cracked colored tile floor, "a variegated broken faience tile floor of simple, lasting beauty and great durability", which is still maintained to this day, and "a built-in decorative fountain, in the basin of which swim gold fish”,[9] which no longer contains gold fish.

[11] The Music Box has been screening Rocky Horror Picture Show since the early 1980s accompanied by a shadowcast of actors from the local Chicago theatre troupe Midnight Madness.

Photos of the theater in the year it was built show "Western Electric Sound System" and "Vitaphone" advertised on the marquee.

The Music Box has continued to screen silent films with live organ accompaniment monthly since 2012.