The Boston Athenæum Theater Database is a guide to the theater programs and playbill collection at the Boston Athenæum. More than 90% of the material represented in the database consists of playbills or portions of playbills from about 45 Boston theaters, many of which no longer exist. The bulk of the playbill collection dates from circa 1860 to 1900, an especially vibrant period in the city's theater history when Boston was a theatrical beacon drawing to its stages some of the world's finest actors.

The Boston Athenæum's collection of Boston theater playbills includes many examples from more enduring 19th century playhouses such as the Colonial and the Boston Theatre, but also programs from lesser known and short-lived theaters such as Whitman's Continental Theatre and the Toy Theatre. A description and guide to these important artifacts of Boston's cultural life spanning the years from the 1840s to the early twentieth century is therefore of paramount importance both for facilitating research into the collections as well as highlighting the unique character of the Athenæum's collection.

Theater critic Francis H. Jenks donated many of the Boston Athenæum's scrapbooks containing theater, opera and concert programs as well as related ephemera. With additional gifts from Isabella Batchelder, Cora Swann and other generous donors, the Athenæum soon had a small, but choice collection of theater programs and ephemera dating from the 1840s to about 1940. As many of the scrapbooks donated by Jenks became brittle and dirty with age, some were dismantled and the programs incorporated in the Francis H. Jenks Collection, which is not included in the theater program database but has a guide of its own listing the boxed programs by theater name.

Read about the collection, the history of Boston theaters present in the collection, bibliographies, links and search instructions




Instructions on Searching the Database

Comments or Questions?
The Boston Athenæum welcomes any comments or queries regarding the Theater Database or Boston theater histories. Please direct comments to Rebecka Persson

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Rudy Rudy and webmaster Lisa Starzyk-Weldon for their invaluable help in making the Boston Athenaeum Theater Database accessible through our web site. Acknowledgements must also go to Michael Brush and Elizabeth Bornheimer for inputting thousands of records into the database; and Annette Fern, of the Harvard Theater Collection, who kindly assisted Rebecka Persson on her research into Boston theater histories.