Bowery Theatre

Bowery Theatre (New York). Originally planned as the Bull's Head Theatre after a tavern on the site, it was opened in 1826 as the New York Theatre, Bowery. The name never took and it was always known simply as the Bowery Theatre. In its early years the house was the major competition to the Park Theatre, and was the New York home of Edwin Forrest. The theatre burned and was rebuilt in 1828. Shortly afterward Thomas Hamblin took over management, emphasizing new plays, especially increasingly popular melodramas. Shortly before it burned again in 1836, the theatre witnessed the farewell of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper and the first appearance of Charlotte Cushman as Lady Macbeth. The rebuilt theatre suffered a third fire in 1838. By the time it was rebuilt in 1839, the theatre district had begun to move away and the area was changing. Ineluctably the house's fare became less lofty. Under a succession of managers, including Edward Eddy, it gained fame as the home of roaring, all‐stops‐pulled melodrama and briefly, under George L. Fox, the home of pantomime. Although from the first the theatre attracted a less‐elite audience than the older Park, it was during this pe‐riod that the playhouse's rambunctious clientele became a theatrical legend. The theatre was the last major auditorium in New York to retain a pit, which survived well into the 1860s. There and in the upper reaches, filthy urchins sold fruit, nuts, and candy. The nutshells, fruit stones, and rinds were often hurled on stage by the disgruntled ruffians who comprised a large segment of the playgoers, and verbal insults accompanied the trash. On happier occasions outspoken encouragement was offered to luckier performers, and they were often expected to depart from the text and drop the character they were portraying to engage in a dialogue with the audience. By 1879 the theatre, which was surrounded by immigrant tenements, was renamed the Thalia and offered plays in German and Yiddish. No attempt was made to rebuild it again when it burned in 1929.