Bowery Theatre

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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.

Bowery Theatre, New York.

1. The first Bowery Theatre opened in 1826 with Holcroft's The Road to Ruin. The theatre was lit by gas enclosed in glass shades, not, as elsewhere, with naked jets. Edwin Forrest made many of his early successes at the Bowery, first appearing there as Othello. In 1828 the theatre was burnt down, and the actors had to migrate to the Sans Souci (see NIBLO'S GARDEN). A second Bowery opened in the same year, again with Forrest as its star, and became the first theatre in New York to have continuous runs. In 1836 the theatre was burnt down, as was a third Bowery in 1838 and a fourth in 1845, rebuilt in the same year. In 1851 an actor who was to be the idol of the Bowery audiences, Edward Eddy (1822–75), made his appearance in a series of strong parts. He took over in 1857 but closed it after one season. In 1858 the theatre reopened under George L. Fox and James W. Lingard with plays and pantomimes. When they left for the New Bowery (below), the old one, by now the oldest playhouse in New York, was subjected to a series of incompetent managers. During the Civil War it was occupied by the military, and it then became a circus. Fox reopened it as Fox's Old Bowery, with melodramas as the staple fare, though oldfashioned farce continued to flourish there long after it had vanished from New York's new playhouses. The audiences were notoriously uncouth. The theatre then fell a victim to the prevalent craze for burlesque, and closed in 1878, reopening a year later as the Thalia for plays in German. It was destroyed by fire in 1923 and again, for the sixth and last time, in 1929.

2. The New Bowery opened in 1859, under Fox and Lingard, with a good company. It had a short and undistinguished career, enlivened only by visits from guest stars and the inevitable Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was destroyed by fire in 1866.