National Theatre (1911-ca. 1996)

733 Tremont Street

Located in Boston’s South End, the National Theatre (the 3 rd of that name) was yet another building designed by C.H. Blackall. In its day, the National was the largest theater in Boston with 3,500 seats and a movie projection booth built into one of its two massive balconies. Also known as the Hippodrome and the Waldorf Theatre, it was demolished in the 1990s to make way for an expanding arts center.

 

Both of our Nickelodeon Theatre playbills date from Oct. 1888 and so should not be confused with the later Nickelodeon built in 1894. Like the Boston Museum, this obscure theater included a cabinet of curiosities that also incorporated museum exhibits, a lecture hall, punchinello exhibits, a bowling alley and a shooting gallery. In the so-called “theatridium” theatrical performances were given four times a day. As an example, the Nickelodeon presented in a single day a ventriloquist, a black female impersonator and a dancing minstrel - all for 5 cents!

Located in Roxbury and one of several summer-garden theaters built for summer entertainment only, the Oakland Garden Theatre was managed by Isaac B. Rich in the mid-1880s. Programs in the Athenaeum’s collection all date from the mid to late 1880s. Summer theaters like Oakland Garden specialized in light English opera offerings.

619-621 Washington Street

The former Beethoven Hall was located where Cathay Bank is now, and was for a long time one of only two surviving Boston theaters from the 19th century - the other being Tremont Theatre. The Park Theatre was erected by the successful actress Lotta Crabtree, who reputedly became the city’s largest tax payer. The wealthy Ms. Crabtree opened the theater with La Cigale on April 14, 1879. Apart from Lotta herself, prominent actors at the Park included Madame Janauschek, Edwin Booth and Richard Mansfield.

At her death in 1924, Crabtree left more than $4 million to various charities which still are administered in Boston by the Crabtree Trust. In the early 1930s, after the Minsky brother’s had taken ownership of the Park, it became Minsky’s Park Burlesque where Gypsy Rose Lee did her striptease act. Throughout this century, the theater had been variously known as the “Hub” and the “Trans-Lux”. The Park Theatre was remodeled by Blackall in 1903 and demolished in 1990.

The library’s collection of Park Theatre programs includes a premier theater program for La Cigale , which also contains fascinating information on the design and decoration of the theater as well as on the demolition of Beethoven Hall.

Most of our Park Theatre playbills date from 1879 to 1898; with a small number from about 1899, 1905-1907 and 1910-1913 in the Swan collection of scrapbooks.

131 Stuart Street

The Plymouth Theatre was originally known as the “Gary” and eventually converted to a movie theater. Yet another Blackall creation, the theater was dubbed “one of the crucibles of the American drama” by Elliot Norton because of the many significant plays that reached their maturity there. The Plymouth premiered on October 16, 1911 with John Millington Synge’s controversial Playboy of the Western World at which theatergoers William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory were forced to hire a pack of Harvard graduates for protection against local agitators. This theater was apparently not afraid of staging daring, contemporary plays!

The few playbills in the library’s collection date from 1911-1913 and 1931-1934. Of special interest is a Plymouth program for Elmer Rice’s play Counselor at Law starring Paul Muni.

 

Huntington Ave.

Only five programs from the Pompeiian Amphitheater can be found in the Athenaeum’s Jenks collection consisting of programs and playbills taken from dismantled scrapbooks donated to the library by Francis H. Jenks, drama critic for the Boston Evening Transcript in the late 19th century. According to one of these programs, the theater was located on Huntington Avenue, near Westchester Park, and had a seating capacity of about 8,000. The building, apparently modeled after the Coliseum, had been erected by J. Pickering Putnam, Esq., and specialized in variety acts, especially pyrotechnical displays and spectacles of various kinds such as The Lost Days of Pompeii. Apart from one undated theater broadside, the four remaining programs date from 1888 and 1889.

 

(1871- , not same as 1901 Chickering Hall on Huntington Ave.)

744-756 Washington Street

Formerly the Continental, the St. James Theatre was located roughly where Tufts Medical Center is now. It was converted into a clothing factory sometime after 1873. The Athenaeum’s St. James Theatre programs date from 1871 to 1872.

 

364 Washington Street

Selwyn’s Theatre programs at the Athenæum date from about 1868-1870 and 1873. This playhouse should not be confused with the Cort Theatre (1914-1915) which was later renamed the Selwyn Theatre. Located on Washington Street near the corner of Essex Street, Selwyn’s Theatre was named after its manager John H. Selwyn who had worked for the Boston Theatre both as actor and scenic artist. In 1870 it was rechristened the Globe and burned down three years later. Among its repertoire Selwyn’s included operettas such as Jacques Offenbach’s La Grand Duchesse de Gerolstein.

265 Tremont Street

The Athenæum owns only two programs (1911-1912) from the Shubert Theatre, known as “ Boston’s Little Princess”, which was designed by Thomas M. James in 1910. From its opening night production of The Taming of the Shrew starring E.H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe, the Shubert has had a long history of first-rate theatrical productions. Here was where Laurence Olivier first introduced John Osborne’s critically acclaimed drama The Entertainer to American audiences, and where in 1950 Ethel Merman starred in Call Me Madam. The Shubert was also where Robert C. Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest opened its pre-Broadway tour in 1936. Starring Leslie Howard, this production also featured a then unknown actor in the role of Duke Mantee named Humphrey Bogart. The Shubert’s marquee is the last of its kind in Boston.

Programs from the Theatre Comique date from 1858-1860 and 1864-1867. Formerly Andrews Hall and located on what used to be the site of P.T. Barnum’s Museum and Aquarial Gardens, the theater was managed by J. Wentworth and presented mostly variety shows, including ballet, acrobatics and pantomime among its productions.

Several Boston playhouses were named Tremont Theatre (built in 1827, 1889 and 1908, respectively), but the major one represented in the Athenaeum’s playbill collection is the second Tremont built in 1889 by J.B. McElfatrick and Sons, and located on Tremont Street at the corner of Avery. Extremely successful and fashionable in the 1890s, this theater is famous for hosting the great Sarah Bernhardt, who enraptured Bostonians in 1891 with her performance of La Tosca.

In his September, 1895 article in Bostonian Magazine Atherton Brownell wrote about the Tremont Theatre:

“The Tremont Theatre may fairly be called the first of the modern theatres of Boston, i.e. the first to be built from the ground up for the purpose for which it was designed from modern plans. The result is that it is most complete in every way, not only from an architectural standpoint, but also as decorations and accessories. As it was opened by the British comedian Mr. Charles Wyndham that seemed to give it a certain foreign stamp, which later events have carried out and accentuated. Being built by Messrs. Henry E. Abbey and John B. Schoeffel, it is but natural that their attractions from abroad should be seen at this house. Being international managers, they control very largely the American tours of the world’s greatest artists; and thus it comes that the Tremont Theatre has been seen in a short space of time such world-famous players as Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, Coquelin, Sarah Bernhardt, Mounet-Sully, and Rejane. With this class of attractions as a foundation the standing of the theatre is beyond question, especially as the standard is kept up in other lines. The theatre is cosy, and of just the right size to admit of a wide variety of productions.”

In 1913, the Tremont was adapted to a feature-length movie theater. When D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation opened at the Tremont in 1915, a riot broke out. Until that time, motion pictures had been a relatively minor entertainment medium, but Griffith’s pioneering albeit admittedly racist epic inaugurated a new era for films and film-making. Twelve years later, the first sound film, The Jazz Singer, was also seen here. By 1945, Tremont Theatre, along with Old South and Majestic, was a first-run movie house for lower quality films. One might say that the Tremont Theatre exemplified the cultural transitions of an era when many “legitimate” stage theaters were either razed or converted into movie houses featuring the new entertainment of choice. In 1947 the Tremont became a movie theater named the Astor and briefly, before its demise, a juice bar. Loew’s Boston Common Theater multiplex now occupies the site.

(See also “Jane English’s New Tremont Theatre”)

 

Wilbur Theatre (1914- )

250-252 Tremont Street

The Wilbur Theatre was named after its original owner, A.L. Wilbur who originally called the playhouse Ye Wilbur Theatre. The playhouse was designed by C.H. Blackall and features a colonial façade of burned Harvard brick, its three main doorways copied from those of the Thomas Bailey Aldrich House on Beacon Hill. Major actors performing at the Wilbur Theatre include Marisa Tomei, Quentin Tarantino, Fred Astaire and Ethel Barrymore. In 1947, the Wilbur helped launch the career of a young Marlon Brando with its production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

 

Previously known as the Novelty Theatre and located at the corner of Washington and Dover Streets, the Windsor Theatre was initially owned by John A. Stevens, who often acted as both the playwright and the leading actor in many of the theater’s productions. By late October 1882, ownership of the theater had been passed on to G.E. Lothrop who renamed the Windsor the New Grand Museum and incorporated a museum featuring a large heated swimming pool called a “Natatorium” on the ground floor. The Athenaeum’s Windsor Theatre programs date from 1881 to 1883.

 

661-667 Washington Street

The Athenæum owns only two 1892 programs from the World’s Theatre and Museum, which specialized in burlesque and variety shows. Formerly called the New Boylston Museum, it was owned by F.P. Clough. On Sept. 19, 1892, the theater was renamed the Lyceum Theatre (see entry above) and all that remained of the old building was its outer wall on Washington Street.

 

 

 

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