Philadelphia

Philadelphia, Pa., one of the first American cities to have theatrical entertainment. In 1749 Kean and Murray's company acted Addison's Cato in a converted warehouse. The same building, subsequently used for other purposes but not demolished until 1849, housed the elder Lewis Hallam's company in 1754, two years after its arrival from England. David Douglass brought his American Company to Philadelphia in 1759, and returned in 1766 to build the Southwark Theatre, considered by some to be the first permanent theatre in the United States. Later theatres were the Chestnut Street, which opened in 1793, the Walnut Street, which became a theatre in 1811 and is still in use, and the Arch Street, opened by William B. Wood in 1828. In the 1830s, Philadelphia's undoubted theatrical supremacy passed to New York. The Arch Street Theatre, however, was to have its greatest artistic and financial success from 1860 to 1892 under the able management of Mrs John Drew. The city, like Boston, cannot now be considered of major theatrical importance, although there was a renaissance in the 1980s, with some US and world premières. The Philadelphia Drama Guild has done valuable work since its foundation in 1956, and from 1971 to 1980 was housed in the old Walnut Street Theatre. It then took up residence in the Zellerbach Theatre, a new theatre in the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania.