Winter Garden Theatre (1850)

Drawing of interior of large concert hall, crowded with formally dressed people, mostly men. There are two balconies. The main floor has no seats, so attendees are standing. The stage is crowded with male participants in a formal ceremony.
Interior of Tripler Hall, 1850. In 1854 it burned down and was replaced by The New York Theatre, which was renamed The Winter Garden Theatre by the impresario Dion Boucicault after extensive remodeling in 1859.

The first theatre in New York City to bear the name The Winter Garden Theatre had a brief but important seventeen-year history (beginning in 1850) as one of New York's premier showcases for a wide range of theatrical fare, from variety shows to extravagant productions of the works of Shakespeare. Initially known as Tripler's Hall or Metropolitan Hall, it burned down in 1854 and was rebuilt as The New York Theatre. It rose from the ashes under different managers, bearing various names, to become known as one of the most important theatres in New York history.[1] It nearly burned again in November 1864, in plot hatched by Confederate sympathsizers, and burned to the ground a second time in 1867.

  1. ^ Mary C. Henderson. The City and the Theatre, (Back Stage Books, New York, 2004) p. 94-96.