PARK THEATRE (MANHATTAN)

:''For the other New York City theatre of this name, see Park Theatre (Brooklyn).''
The 'Park Theatre' was a playhouse in New York City, located at 21, 23, and 25 Park Row, about 200 feet east of Ann Street and backing Theatre Alley. The location, at the north end of the city, overlooked the park that would soon house City Hall. French architect Marc Isambard Brunel, father of the famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, designed the building in the 1790s. Construction costs mounted to precipitous levels, and changes were made in the design; the resulting theatre had a rather plain exterior. The doors opened in January 1798.
In its early years, the Park enjoyed little to no competition in New York City. Nevertheless, it rarely made a profit for its owners or managers, prompting them to sell it in 1805. Under the management of Stephen Price and Edmund Simpson in the 1810s and 1820s, the Park enjoyed its most successful period. Price and Simpson initiated a star system by importing English talent and providing the theatre a veneer of upper-class respectability. Rivals such as the Chatham Garden and Bowery theatres appeared in the 1820s, and the Park had to adapt to survive. Blackface acts and melodrama squeezed Italian opera and English drama out of their preferential positions. Nevertheless, the theatre maintained its high-class image. The Park Theatre burnt down in 1848.

Contents

Construction

Early management

The Park as high culture

Final years

Notes

References

Construction

In the late 18th century, New York's only playhouse was the decaying and increasingly low-brow John Street Theatre. Tired of attending such an establishment, a group of wealthy New Yorkers began planning the construction of a new playhouse in 1795.^[1] Investors bought 113 shares at $375 each to cover the estimated $42,375 cost. To plan the structure, the owners hired celebrated architect Marc Isambard Brunel, a Frenchman who had fled to New York to avoid the Reign of Terror and was currently the city's engineer. Part way through construction, however, the project ran out of money. The owners sold more shares for what would eventually mount to a construction cost of more than $130,000.^[2]
As a cost-saving measure, Brunel's exterior design for the building was not implemented. The resulting three-story structure measured 80 feet wide by 165 feet deep and was made of plain dressed stone. The overall effect was an air of austerity. The interiors, on the other hand, were quite lavish. The building followed the traditional European style of placing a gallery over three tiers of boxes, which overlooked the U-shaped pit.

Early management

The section of Manhattan where the theatre stood was not stylish: the New Theatre, as it was called, was neighbor to Bridewell Prison,, a tent city's worth of squatters, and the local poorhouse.^[3] Lewis Hallam, Jr., and John Hodgkinson, both members of the John Street Theatre company, obtained the building's lease. They hired remnants of the Colonial Old American Company to form the nucleus of the theatre's in-house troupe and thus give the establishment the sheen of tradition and American culture.^[4] Meanwhile, the men quarreled, and construction continued languorously. The theatre finally held its first performance on 29 January 1798, despite still being under construction. The gross was an impressive $1,232, and, according to theatre historian T. Allston Brown, hundreds of potential patrons had to be turned away.^[5]

Interior of the Park Theatre

New York newspapers generally praised the New Theatre:
The theatre offered performances on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. William Dunlap eventually joined the management team. Hallam parted mid-season, and Hodgkinson waited for season's end before doing the same. Dunlap remained as sole proprietor; his expenses were so great that he had to make at least $1,200 per week to break even.^[6] He left in 1805 after declaring bankruptcy. After a few more failed managers, the owners sold the theatre to John Jacob Astor and John Beekman in 1805. These men kept it until its demolition in 1848.

The Park as high culture

Over three months in 1807, an English architect named J. J. Holland remodeled the theatre's interior. He added gas lighting, coffee rooms, roomier boxes, and a repainted ceiling. Stephen Price became manager in 1808. He instituted a star system, whereby he paid English actors and actresses to play English dramas there. Price spent much of his time in England, where he had a successful acting career, leaving much of the actual business of theatre management to Edmund Simpson. The Park at this point was already known for high-class entertainments, but Price and Simpson's policies helped to reinforce this as they booked English drama, Italian opera, and other upper-class bills. Price and Simpson also fostered the careers of many American performers, including Edwin Forrest and Charlotte Saunders Cushman. The theatre burnt down in May 1820. All but the exterior walls were destroyed. The owners rebuilt the following year.
In the early 1820s, the New Theatre was New York's ''only'' theatre, and this lack of competition proved its most profitable period.^[7] The Chatham Garden Theatre was built in 1823 and provided the first real challenge to the Park's primacy; the Bowery Theatre followed in 1826. The New Theatre, having lost its newness, became known as the Park Theatre around this time. At first, each of the rivals aimed for the same upper-class audience. However, by the late 1820s and early 1830s, the Bowery and Chatham Garden had begun to cater to a more working-class clientele. In comparison, the Park became the theatre of choice for ''bon ton''.^[8] This was helped by the evolution of its neighborhood. New York home owners had steadily moved northward from Bowling Green so that by this point, the Park stood in an upper-class residential area and fronted City Hall and a large park.^[3] Coffeehouses and hotels soon followed.
Despite its upper-class luster, however, some commentators found due cause to criticize the Park. Frances Trollope gave a mixed review:

Final years

The Park Theatre and neighborhood

By the late 1830s, blackface acts and Bowery-style melodrama had come to eclipse traditional drama in popularity for New York audiences. Simpson adapted, booking more novelty acts and entertainments that emphasized spectacle over high culture. The patronage changed, as well, as the ''New York Herald'' noted: Nevertheless, the theatre's traditional patronage continued to support it, and the Park largely maintained its high-class reputation.^[10]
Edgar Allan Poe wrote a more critical editorial in the ''Broadway Journal'':
The Park Theatre was destroyed by fire 18 December 1848. The Astor family opted not to rebuild it, the more fashionable clientèle having moved north to Washington Square and the Fifth Avenue; instead they had stores constructed on the site.

Notes

1. Barnham 839.
2. Nagler 522.
3. Henderson 50.
4. Bank 115.
5. Brown 12.
6. Nagler 524.
7. Henderson 51.
8. Henderson 49.
9. Henderson 50.
10. Henderson 52.

References

★ Bank, Rosemary K. (1997). ''Theatre Culture in America, 1825-1860''. New York: Cambridge University Press.

★ Barger, Andrew, ed. (2006). ''Entire Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe''. BottleTree Books LLC.

★ Banham, Martin (1998). ''The Cambridge Guide to Theatre''. New York: Cambridge University Press.

★ Brown, T. Allston (1903). ''A History of the New York Stage: From the First Performance in 1732 to 1901''. Dodd, Mead and Company.

★ Henderson, Mary C. (2004). ''The City and the Theatre''. New York City: Back Stage Books.

★ Nagler, Alois M. (1952). ''A Source Book in Theatrical History''. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications.

★ Trollope, Frances (1832). ''Domestic Manners of the Americans''.