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The first theatre in New York to bear the name The Winter Garden Theatre had a brief but important seventeen year history as one of New York's premiere showcases for a wide range of theatrical fare, from Variety shows to extravagant productions of the works of Shakespeare. Although theatre burned to the ground several times, it rose from the ashes under serveral different managers, under several different names, to become known as one of the most important theatres in New York history. Some of the leading actors and managers worked at the theatre, from Jenny Lind and Laura Keene to Dion Boucicault and Edwin Booth.[2] One of the most significant and politically influential productions in American theatre history took place on a single night at The Winter Garden Theatre on November 25, 1864, when the three sons of one of America's great tragedians, Junius Brutus Booth, namely Junius Brutus Booth, Jr., Edwin Booth, and John Wilkes Booth staged a benefit performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to raise funds to build a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park; four months later John Wilkes would assassinate Abraham Lincoln in Washington D.C. as he cried out the historic words of Brutus in ancient Rome.[3] Throughout its seventeen-year history, The Winter Garden Theatre played an important role in the history of the American theatre.
Groundbreaking in 1850
The so-called "Jenny Lind Hall", detail from a poster of 1850 before the theatre was finished.[4]
The theatre was originally planned in 1850 for the first engagement of the famous singer from Sweden, Jenny Lind, known as the "Swedish Nightengale", and located at 624 Broadway, New York, across from Bond Street just south of West Third Street,[5]
File:THE WINTER GARDEN THEATRE.jpg Tripler Hall, 1850; the name given the new theatre that was eventually be called The Winter Garden Theatre.
Delays in struction meant that the theatre wasn't finished in time for Miss Lind's first show. She arrived to great fanfare and a reported gathering of over 40,000 (all arranged by her mananger, P. T. Barnum), but without the theatre being built for her; instead, Miss Lind opened at New York City's Castle Garden. The theatre that was to have opened with "the name of Jenny Lind [that] would attract attention all over the country"[6], instead was later opened and was christened Tripler Hall, thereafter, playing mostly minstrel shows, a entertainment then quite fashionable on the American stage. There were a few notable acceptions, demonstrating that Tripler Hall had a more legitimate reputation during this period; in February of 1852 a memorial service was held at Tripler Hall for the renowned American novelist James Fenimore Cooper, presided over by the noted statesman Daniel Webster, with a eulogies said by Washington Irving, and William Cullen Bryant. That same year William Thackeray concluded a national tour with a lecture at Tripler Hall.[7]
The theatre went through several different managers during this period, each manager naming the theatre as he or she pleased. After burning down in 1854, the rebuilt theatre was at last leased to Jenny Lind for her acclaimed Varieties and renamed the Jenny Lind Hall. During her residence there, she performed her famed music. Nevertheless, the "Swedish Nightengale" had competition when the theatre was used for the American Art Union Distribution. The report in The London Illustrated News gives an interesting description of the interior of Tripler Hall:
Never - not even on the nights of the "Nightengale" - has the capacity of Tripler Hall been more fully booked than the evening appointed for the distribution of the Art Union prices. The immense floor (30 feet wider than Kester Hall), the aisles, the galleries before the stage, and beside the doors, were crowded to excess..[8]
Laura Keene's newly renamed theatre, Laura Keene's Variety House, 1856. This one of the few depictions of the interior of what came to be The Winter Garden Theatre during this period, and after it was rebuilt. It shows the triple balconies, side boxes, and a full orchestra before the stage ringed with rounded footlights.
On May 15, 1855, the theatre passed to new management with a musical by John and Morris Barnett called Monsieur Jacques, and was renamed Metropolitan Hall, and managed by John Lafarge, owner of the famed Lafarge House which adjoined the theatre to the rear.
The Varieties of Miss Laura Keene
On February 22, 1856, the actress and manager Laura Keene reopened the theatre as Laura Keene's Variety House with her original "musical extravaganza" featuring music by Thomas Baker. This production was rightly called Varieties, as it featured a range of entertainments, from singers to acrobats.
It was here in her newly renamed theatre that the leading femail impressario of New York, Laura Keene, developed her talent for producting an eclectic form of entertainment which she would perfect in subsequent productions such as the musical Seven Sisters five years later.[9] The Panic of 1857 bankrupted the theatre and it was forced to be closed once again.[10]
Later next year, on December 30, 1857, John Burton took over management and renamed the theatre simply Burton's New Theatre with the opening of his musical burlesque Columbus El Filibustero!!
Dion Boucicault and the naming of the theatre
The Octoroon, Act IV, 1859. (Compliments of the Special Collections, Templeman Library, University of Kent.)[11]
During the summer of 1859, the daring actor-playwright-manager Dion Boucicault, called "the most conspicious English dramatist of the 19th century,"[12] tried his hand at management, and gave the theatre its final name of The Winter Garden Theatre and opened his original burlesqueChamooni III on October 19, 1859. The theatre was aptly named The Winter Garden because Boucicault remodeled the theatre extensively, surprisingly cutting the auditorium in half and installing "artificial tropical plants after a Parisian prototype."[13] Boucicault effectively turned the theatre into a "winter garden" in the fall of the year. Among Boucicault's stable of first-rung actors were Joseph Jefferson, Agnes Robertson, and Mrs. John Wood. Boucicault dramatization of Charles Dickens's Christmas story Cricket on the Hearth was his opening production, starring Jefferson as Caleb Plummer and Robertson as Dot; this immensely popular production eventually toured, as one critic has said, to "every possible playhouse in English-speaking America."[14]
That winter, on December 5 of 1859, Boucicault premiered one of his most popular - and controversial - melodramas The Octoroon, which he had adapted from the novel The Quadroon by Thomas Mayne Reid. The Octoroon, dealing with people of mixed white and African heritage, caused nothing short of a sensation, to see on the stage a drama that provoked discussions about race and politics. About this new phenomenon, The New York Times wrote that it had become "the great dramatic sensation of the season":
Everybody talks about the Octoroon, [sic] wonders about the Octoroon, goes to see the Octoroon; and the "Octoroon" thus becomes, in point of fact, the work of the public mind...the public having insisted on rewriting the piece according to its own notions, interprets every word and incident in wholly unexpected lights; and, for aught we know, therefore, the "Octoroon" may prove after all to be a political treatise of great emphasis and significance, very much to the author's amazement.[15]
The newly named Winter Garden Theatre eventually became home to a series of musical extravaganzas and burlesques: Cinderella with music by Charles Koppitz and a text by Charles Dawson Shanley on September 9, 1861, The Wizard's Tempest by Charles Gayler, on June 9, 1862, and King Cotton by Charles Chamberlain on June 21, 1862.
On February 21, 1863, Edwin Booth took on the management of the Winter Garden Theatre with the intention of shifting the focus from musicals and burlesques to classical dramas. This enterprise included a toga-clad, one-night production of Julius Caesar on the evening of November 25, 1864, played by Edwin and his two brothers, John Wilkes Booth and Junius Brutus Booth, Jr..
The goal of staging Julius Caesar for just one night was to raise funds for the establishlment of a statue of William Shakespeare designed by J. Q. A. Ward in the relatively new Central Park on the northern outskirts (then) of Manhattan.[16] Tickets went for sale for a (then) astounding price of five dollars. Considering the way history was to unfold, it is curious that it was Edwin Booth who played the role of Brutus, assassin of Julius Caesar, and the role of Marc Antony was played by John Wilkes Booth, while "hean and hungry" Cassius was given to the heavier builtCassius.[17]
.In the handbill promoting the production (above), it stated that there would appear, for one night only, "The Three Sons of the Great Booth." The three Booth brothers were then listed, from oldest to youngest, Junius, Edwin, and John, and beneath this, the latin phrase that left no doubt that the entire production was dedicated to their father, the great tragedian Junius Brutus Booth: Filii Patri Digno Digniores.
As their mother watched on from a box on the aisle, the three Booth brothers reenacted the tragedy of Julius Caesar before an audience in The Winter Garden Theatre that was "packed to the rafters."[18] During the performance the clanging of fire bells could be heard from the streets of New York, as confederate sympathizers during the ongoing Civil War tried to burn the city to the ground, which included fires set in the LaFarge House, which abutted the rear of The Winter Garden Theatre. About a half hour into the performance, during the first scene of Act Two, when Brutus was pacing in his orchard, contemplating his pending assassination of Caesar, the clang and clatter of horse-drawn fire engines could be heard from the street outside. It seemed that there was a fire next door in the Lafarge House which threatened to engulf The Winter Garden Theatre. Before panic could consume the audience, Edwin stepped to the footlights to calm the audience. [19]
The brothers Booth play Julius Caesar as New York burns
The fire at the Lafarge house that almost spread to The Winter Garden Theatre had been set by sympathizers to the cause of the Confederacy with the intention of burning New York to the ground during these, the last months of the American Civil War.[20] At the Lafarge House, someone had set fires in the front parlor and had emptied a bottle of phosphorous on the furniture throughout a room on the third floor.[21]
In describing this "diabolical plot to burn the City of New York," which The New York Times called "one of the most fiendish and inhuman acts known in modern times," it was reported under a banner heading:
THE EXCITEMENT AT WINTER GARDENS
When the alarm of fire was given at the Lafarge the excitement became very intense among the closely-packed mass of human beings in [the] Winter Garden Theatre adjoining the Lafarge, and but for the presence of mind of Mr. BOOTH, who adressed them from the stage of the theatre, telling them there was no danger, it is fearful to think what would have been the result. There was only the usual number of policement and watchmen in attendance, and the panic was such for a few moments that it seemed as if all the audience believed the etire building was in flames, and just ready to fall upon their devoted heads. In addition to what Mr. BOOTH said from the stage, Judge McCLUNN rose in the dress circle, and in a few timely remarks admonished them all to remain quietly in their places, and at the same time tried to show them the danger which would attend a pell-mell rush for the doors, and especially the uselessness of it, inasmuch as the theatre part of the building was known to be on fire. The presence of a squad of policemen soon after so reassured the audience that with a few exceptions, they remained until the close of the performance.[22]
The city was saved, as was The Winter Garden Theatre.
The production of Julius Caear proceded. The production was the first - and only - time that the three sons of one of America's great tragedians, Junius Brutus Booth performed together on the same stage. The production raised $3,500 for the building of the statue of Shakespeare in Central Park, which stands there today.[23]
The "Hundred Nights Hamlet"
Set design for Edwin Booth's production of Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene 1, An Apartment in Portia's House, 1867, by Charles Witham.
The following night, on November 26, 1864, Booth played the lead role in what became known as the “100 nights Hamlet" - a record which stood for fifty-six years.[24] His Hamlet is well documented in reviews and diaries of those who saw the production. One review, appearing in Harper's shortly after the run of "the hundred nights Hamlet" summarized what Edwin Booth had accomplished during this important portrayal - a production which, perhaps more than any other single production in American stage history, solidified one of the great roles in dramatic history with a single actor:
A really fine actor is as uncommon as a really great dramatic poet. Yet what Garrick was in Richard III or Edmund Kean in Shylock, we are sure Edwin Booth is in Hamlet.[25]
Booth followed this marathon on March 23, 1865, with a series of what he called "Grand Revivals",[26] beginning with a highly acclaimed production of Othello. Finally, after Booth's return to the stage after a retirement due to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by his brother John, Booth played his acclaimed Richelieu in February of 1866, and, later, mounted a spectacular production of Merchant of Venice in January of 1867.[27]
The final fire for a grand showplace
On Wednesday, March 25, 1867, a fire broke out under the stage which eventually burned the Winter Garden Theatre to the ground. [28]
A fire broke out about 8:40 o'clock on Saturday morning beneath the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre, resulting in the entire destruction of that establishment, and doing considerable damage to the Southern Hotel, formerly known as the Lafarge House. Although the Fire Department was promptly on hand, in an incredibly short space of time the flames had wrapped the entire interior of the Winter Garden in a sheet of fire, and the firemen were unable to work therein owing to the intense heat...By 9 o'clock the flames had reached their limit and the spectacle was one of peculiar grandeur and effect...At 9:15 the roof of theatre fell...The aggregate loss is roughly estimated at $250,000. Both the theatre and the hotel are owned by the Lafarge estate, as also the "stock" scenery and properties of the former...Messrs. EDWIN BOOTH and W. STUART also suffer severe losses. These gentlemen were the joint lessees and managers of the Winter Garden, and their extensive and valuabe wardrobes, used in the recent Shakespean revivals, as well as a large amount of new scenery and properties, were all destroyed by the flames. These articles were valued at $60,000 and uninsured...Mr. BOOTH is a heavy loser by the total destruction of his private wardrobe and many valuable presents. This wardrobe was considered to be the most extensive and valuable one in the possession of any single actor on this continent.[29]
Rather than rebuild the theatre once again, Booth decided to erect his own theatre twenty blocks uptown on newly fashionable West Twenty-Third Street on the corner of Sixth Avenue, to be called Booth's Theatre.
^Depiction from The Illustrated London News, January 24, 1851.
^March C. Henderson. The City and the Theatre, (Back Stage Books, New York, 2004) p. 95.
^Eleanor Ruggles. Prince of Players. (New York), p. 282
^ Poster of Jenny Lind's first engagement in New York, 1850, on which the theatre is named "Jenny Lind Hall", before its completion.Note that this detail, from a poster (right) proclaiming the arrival of Jenny Lind in America in 1850, names the theatre that was first called "Tipler Hall" when it wasn't completed in time for Miss Lind's first performance there in 1850. The representation of the theater is almost (but not exactly) identical to that of "Triper Hall" in the other rendering (above, to the left); it has eight windows across, compared to the other above rendering of nine, and lacks the pointed roof. One would suspect that the poster was done before the completion of the building, the delay of which caused the building that eventually became "The Winter Garden Theatre" to first be named "Tripler Hall." The complete poster is from the Library of Congress collection, LC-USZ62-1425.
^For a good map of New York theatres of this era, see Mary C. Henderson's The City and the Theatre, (Back Stage Books, New York), p. 82.
^Review of Jenny Lind's first performance in New York, for which tickets were auctioned off by P. T. Barnum for as much as a thousand dollars, New York Herald, September 9, 1850.
^The Mercer Arts Center History, compiled by Joseph Devorkin, 2004.
^Michale W. Kauffman. American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (Randon House, New York: 2004) p. 149-150.
^The record of Booth's 100 consecutive performances of Hamlet lasted until John Barrymore played exactly 101 Hamlets in 1920.
^George William Curtis. "Editor's Easy Chair." Harper's, April, 1865, quoted in Charles H. Shattuck. The Hamlet of Edwin Booth. (University of Illinois Press; Chicago, 1969. p. 60.
^William Winter. Life and Art of Edwin Booth. MacMillan and Co., New York. 1893) p. 49.
^"Destruction by Fire of the Winter Garden Theatre. The Midnight Mission. Ordination of the Pastor of the First German Baptist Church. Funeral Discourse in Memory of Dr. Chauncey." The New York Times,March 25, 1867, Wednesday.
