BYGONE BROADWAY - Installment Three 'From Blackface to Arias'

In the early 1840's, the advent of a new phenomenon - the minstrel show – provided yet another spark of theatrical growth along Broadway. The old Park, the Astor Place Opera House, Mitchell's Olympic Theatre, Niklo's Garden, Barnum's Museum, and even local circuses played host to performers in blackface. Once it became established as respectable family entertainment, the minstrels dominated Broadway for nearly twenty years and enjoyed enormous popularity.

The heart of minstrel theatre began on the east side of Broadway between Howard and Grand streets. This was the location of Fellows Opera House and the Hall of Lyrics at 444 Broadway. A few steps down were the Coliseum at 448, the Minerva at 460, and Mechanics Hall at 472. Each boasted its own independent, full-length minstrel attraction that would last – not to mention exceed their most wildly profitable dreams - for nearly a decade. Mechanics eventually became the exclusive home of the Christy Minstrels, one of the most popular of its kind, which had theatre-goers lining up in the streets for a chance at the box office, and willing to pay any exorbitant price once they got there.

In the next few blocks above Grand Street were a number of other minstrels. At 514 Broadway, right below Spring Street, was Henry Wood's Minstrel Hall, operated by the mayor's brother. It was converted from a Jewish synagogue and opened in 1862, but never achieved any real fame until it was taken over by the theatrical "dream team" of Harrigan and Hart and renamed the Theatre Comique. At 539, on the west side of Broadway, were the Chinese Tea Rooms that leased a hall in 1853 to another famous minstrel troop, Buckley's Serenaders, and became known as Buckley's Opera House. Buckley's was forced to close its doors in 1862 as a result of the Concert Hall Act, which prohibited the sale of liquor in a theatre, but reopened in 1865 when P. T. Barnum chose the site for his new American Museum.

Farther along Broadway was the prestigious Tripler Hall, which was built for Jenny "The Swedish Nightingale" Lind's New York debut in 1850, but could not be completed in time. Instead, its first tenants became minstrels, a move that proved much more advantageous from a business standpoint. Known as the Metropolitan Theatre, the building was eventually leased to Dion Boucicault, an actor-playwright-manager, who remodeled it, cut seating capacity by half, filled the place with live and artificial tropical plants, and called it the Winter Garden. In 1864, Edwin Booth leased the theatre with the intentions of "establishing the pure, legitimate drama in New York" and it was on this stage that all three Booth brothers appeared together in a performance of Julius Caesar. When the site burned to the ground in 1867, Booth steadfastly refused to rebuild in the same jinxed area and made plans to erect his own structure further uptown. Winter Garden was sold and transformed into the Grand Central (now the Broadway Central) Hotel.

Not all of the auditoriums led such rich and varied lives. Hope Chapel at 720 Broadway began as a religious assembly hall before being taken over by the minstrels in 1855. Getting such a late jump on the bandwagon proved to be its undoing and it never achieved notoriety until new managers Edwin Kelly and Francis Leon, the leading female impersonator of his day, took over with their completely new format. This was the first real indication that New York's infatuation with minstrelsy was finally coming to an end. During the remainder of the century, the minstrels took to the road and played to audiences throughout the country, but only the best troupes were invited back to Broadway, and then only for very limited engagements.

In one of their popular exposes on New York life, a travel guidebook issued the following: "Nothing has changed more than the New York threatres. The opera has taken the place of drama and the so-called moral plays have superseded Shakespeare and his friends….There are no actors in New York of any note and the pieces put on stage are a burlesque. Billiards, cards, costly parties, clubs, and dissipation take the place of play-going. We have numerous sensational playhouses, where small actors perform small plays, written by small men. But the Concert Hall Act has taken the audiences out of the theatres and placed them in alcoholic establishments. The era of sterling entertainment and talented actors is in the past, never to return." This gloomy assessment did have a touch of truth in it. Serious patrons had turned their attention and support to the city's opera houses, which were now the unapologetic shrines of and for the elite. In 1854, wealthy New Yorkers built the Academy of Music as a monument to opera – and to themselves. Horace Greeley of the Tribune wanted to know how much it would cost to burn it down. "If the price is not unreasonable," he told his legions of readers, "Have it done immediately and send me the bill." The opera house was the one institution that the fashionable world was prepared to support at any cost. It was less a place to see and be seen than a place to make one's own bank account and social standing visible.

The Academy of Music reflected the pattern set by the building of previous opera houses. It was erected with money raised by private subscriptions and sat on a small part of what was originally Peter Stuyvesant's immense farm on the northeast corner of Fourteenth Street and Irving Place to be near is wealthy audience. A good portion of the surrounding territory was owned by Manhattan Bank, who immediately took advantage of the situation and began selling off parcels of land to private families. The first mansions began to appear soon after and the stream of well-to-do continued to flow into the area for the next few years. Broadway as a thoroughfare was also on the move. Originally intended to dead-end at Fourteenth Street, the Common Council unanimously voted in an extension with one small change…Henrik Brevoort refused to allow the street to pass through has farm and workers wee forced to deflect its course into a more westerly direction.

The growing prosperity and diversity of New York's population eventually led to a much broader artistic blend. Unlike its former European counterparts which scattered its theatres around geographically, the settling of Broadway as the theatrical center was simply a part of the process that was evolving in all other aspects of New York life – the division of the city into districts. And, by firmly entrenching itself on the street, the theatre was destined to alter the history of Broadway forever.