History
Merchant and real estate magnate Amos R. Eno leased land next to his Fifth Avenue Hotel in 1862 [1] to James Fisk Jr., who built an after-hours gold trading exchange during the U.S. Civil War. The “regular stock exchange” found the competition disruptive and soon shut down the operation. [2] The building became a performance space, the Fifth Avenue Opera House, used by George Christy and other minstrel shows from 1865 to 1867 when C.H. Garland took it over as the Fifth Avenue Theatre for burlesque shows. The theatre closed at the beginning of 1868 after one minstrel show manager murdered another after attending a performance. John Brougham briefly managed it as Brougham's Theatre in 1869, followed by building owner Fisk, who restored the Fifth Avenue name and presented French opéra bouffe. [3]
Augustin Daly became manager later in 1869, sometimes calling it the Fifth Avenue Theatre, sometimes Daly's Fifth Avenue or simply Daly's Theatre. The house (seating area) during this period was described as being “plated with mirrors for the illusion of immensity,” with a palette of “blush rose, neatly framed in white, with delicate boundaries of gold.” Capacity was 900, or 1,000 with standees, and gas jets provided interior lighting. [2] When the theatre burned to the ground after a matinee on New Year's Day 1873, Daly moved his company and the Fifth Avenue Theatre name to an existing theatre on 28th and Broadway. [4] The name similarities continue to cause confusion today. It was four years until a new building appeared, first called the Fifth Avenue Hall, where a magician named Heller performed for several months in 1877, then Minnie Cumming's Drawing Room Theatre.
George and Marshall Mallory then erected yet another building on the site, for actor-director-playwright Steele Mackaye who had produced a few shows in the small hall in 1879 under a name they kept, the Madison Square Theatre. Mackaye's famous stage technology improvements included the "double stage", an elevator the size of the full stage that was raised and lowered by counter-weights and reduced scene changes to one or two minutes from five or more. The double stage required the builders to excavate an extra-deep foundation. [5] Ventilation featured a primitive form of air conditioning, with cool air drawn in from the roof and circulated to perforations under the seats. To increase stage-room for action and house-room for seats, the orchestra was in a balcony above the stage, and the conductor received "cues by means of electric signals and reflectors." Interior decoration was meant to evoke an intimate drawing-room, with imitation-mahogany trim, gold and pale colors, Shakespeare illustrations, [6] and a Tiffany-designed drop curtain that burned in an otherwise uneventful fire a few weeks after the reopening. [7]
The Mallory brothers and Mackaye soon fell out, and Mackaye lost the rights to his single commercially successful play, Hazel Kirke , and his position at the theatre. By then Business Manager Daniel Frohman had hired his brothers Gustave and Charles. They used Hazel Kirke's long run to implement the nation's first theatrical touring organization with multiple companies of a single play and developed their promotional and management skills. [8] The Frohmans, along with Marcus Klaw and Abraham Lincoln Erlanger, who met while working in the Madison Square Theatre's publicity department, [9] and David Belasco, who also worked at the theatre in this period, became major forces in American theatrical management over the next 35 years.
The Rev. Dr. George Mallory, owner (with his brother) and editor of the Episcopal Church publication The Churchman , sought to use their ownership of the theatre "to elevate the moral tone of the American stage", among other things by running only American-written plays cast almost exclusively with American actors. [10] The Mallorys managed the theatre on this principal themselves for four years. In 1885 they brought in impresario A.M. Palmer who bought them out and managed until 1891, with a more conventionally international mix of plays. Palmer was followed by playwright/director Charles H. Hoyt, along with Charles Thompson who died in 1893 and Frank McKee, who ran the theatre after Hoyt became incapacitated in 1898. During this time the theatre was variously known as Hoyt's Madison Square Theatre, or simply Hoyt's Theatre.
The Madison Square Theatre name returned in 1898, and remained through the management of Walter N. Lawrence until Eno's descendants demolished the building and the Fifth Avenue Hotel in 1908. [11] By that time the "Theater District" had moved uptown to the Times Square area around 42nd Street.
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Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden, known professionally as Maude Adams, was an American actress and stage designer who achieved her greatest success as the character Peter Pan, first playing the role in the 1905 Broadway production of Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. Adams' personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more than $1 million during her peak.
James Morrison Steele MacKaye was an American playwright, actor, theater manager and inventor. Having acted, written, directed and produced numerous and popular plays and theatrical spectaculars of the day, he became one of the most famous actors and theater producers of his generation.
Daniel Frohman was an American theatrical producer and manager, and an early film producer.
Helene Wallace Stoepel, known professionally as Bijou Heron, was an American stage actress, who became famous as a child actor in the 1870s.
Charles Francis Coghlan was an Irish actor and playwright popular on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Annie Ellen Russell was a British-American stage actress.
Blanche Galton Whiffen, known on stage as Mrs. Thomas Whiffen, (1845–1936) was an American actress born in London. She was educated in France; made her stage début at the Royalty Theatre, London, in 1865; came to America in 1868; and toured the United States under John Templeton's management.
The Fifth Avenue Theatre was a Broadway theatre in Manhattan, New York City, United States, at 31 West 28th Street and Broadway. It was demolished in 1939.
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Ethel Jackson was a United States actress and comic prima donna of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She appeared in Broadway theatrical productions, creating the title role in the original Broadway production of The Merry Widow.
Elizabeth Tyree was an American actress in Broadway theatrical productions beginning in the mid-1890s. Her married name was Elizabeth Tyree Metcalfe. Professionally she was billed as Bess Tyree.
Caroline Miskel Hoyt was an American stage actress who became the second wife of playwright Charles H. Hoyt.
Amos Richards Eno was an American real estate investor and capitalist in New York City. He built the Fifth Avenue Hotel and many other developments on the streets of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, where he established a prominent family fortune of 20 to 40 million U.S dollars.
The Garden Theatre was a major theater on Madison Avenue and 27th Street in Manhattan, New York City. The theatre opened on September 27, 1890, and closed in 1925. Part of the second Madison Square Garden complex, the theatre presented Broadway plays for two decades and then, as high-end theatres moved uptown to the Times Square area, became a facility for German and Yiddish theatre, motion pictures, lectures, and meetings of trade and political groups.
The Lyceum Theatre was a theatre in New York City located on Fourth Avenue between 23rd and 24th Streets in Manhattan. It was built in 1885 and operated until 1902, when it was torn down to make way for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower. It was replaced by a new Lyceum Theatre on 45th Street. For all but its first two seasons, the theatre was home to Daniel Frohman's Lyceum Theatre Stock Company, which presented many important plays and actors of the day.
The White Heather is an 1897 melodrama by playwrights Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton. The climactic scene of the play portrays a fight between two underwater divers.
The Sporting Duchess is an 1895 play by Cecil Raleigh, Henry Hamilton and Augustus Thomas. In England it was titled The Derby Winner and played at Drury Lane.
Paul West was an American playwright, lyricist, newspaper editor, journalist, screenwriter, author, and talent agent. After working as a journalist in Massachusetts from 1888 to 1892, he began his career in the theatre as a press representative for Charles H. Hoyt; followed by a season as the business manager for the opera singer and actress Camille D'Arville and the comedian Frank Daniels. From 1898 to 1911 he worked on the editorial staff The New York Sunday World during which time be began a career as a prolific lyricist for both Broadway musicals and Tin Pan Alley publishers of popular song; publishing more the 500 songs during his lifetime. He also worked as a playwright, penning both plays and the books for several musicals. More than 15 of his stage works were mounted on Broadway between the years 1902–1913. In 1904 his children's book The Pearl and the Pumpkin was published; a work which he later adapted into a 1905 musical.
