The Planning And Construction Of American Theatres

Author : William H. Birkmire
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781530076413
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (764 download)

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Download or read book The Planning and Construction of American Theatres written by William H. Birkmire and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the INTRODUCTION. We are informed that dramatic history in New York began more than a century and a half ago. The first dramatic performance ever seen in America was given in this city during the last week in September, 1732. The first playhouse was the Nassau Street Theatre, on the east side of Nassau Street-then called Kip-between John Street and Maiden Lane. It was a wooden structure, and opened March 5, 1750. Kean and Murray were the managers, and the play for the first night was Richard III. There were performances twice a week, and the season lasted for five months. This house gave way to a new one, built in 1753 by Lewis and William Hallen, the one a manager, the other an actor; but in a few years the new house was converted into a church for the use of the German Calvinists. David Douglass built in 1761 a theatre at Nassau and Beekman streets, where Temple Court now stands, at which, on November 26th of the same year, Hamlet was presented for the first time in America. The cost of this playhouse was $1625. The dimensions were 40 by 90 feet. From 1761 to the present time what a contrast and advancement are perceptible! The Madison Square Garden and the Metropolitan Opera House, built within the last six years, are of special prominence because of their magnitude as buildings and of the expenditure of enormous sums of money. The Madison Square Garden in magnitude is the more important of the two. It is the largest building in America devoted entirely to amusements, and cost about $3,000,000. It occupies the entire block bounded by Madison and Fourth avenues, Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh streets. It is 465 feet long and 200 feet wide, and its walls rise to a height of 65 feet. Architecturally it is a magnificent structure, because of the simplicity of the construction and the absence of trifling details in the ornamentation. The style is in the Renaissance, and the materials buff brick and terra cotta. The roof is flat, or nearly so, but the sky-lines are broken by a colonnade which rises above the roof at the Madison Avenue end and extends along either side for 100 feet; by six open cupolas, with semi-spherical domes, which rise above the colonnade; by two towers at the Fourth Avenue corners; and by a magnificent square tower which rises from the Twenty-sixth Street side, with its lines unbroken for 249 feet, and then in a series of open cupolas, decreasing in diameter, on the smallest and topmost of which is posed a figure of Diana, of heroic size, the crown of whose head is 332 feet from the sidewalk. At the Madison Avenue end, and extending on either side for a distance of 150 feet, there is an open arcade which covers the sidewalk, and the roof of which rests upon pillars of polished granite and brick piers. The top of the arcade is laid out as a promenade. The main entrance to the building is at the Madison Avenue end, through a triple doorway, and above it is the most prominent feature of exterior decoration, an elaborate arch in terra cotta set in relief into the wall....