Winter Garden Theatre (1850)
The first theatre in New York City to bear the name The Winter Garden Theatre had a brief but important seventeen-year history 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. It nearly burned again in November 1864, in plot hatched by Confederate sympathsizers, and burned to the ground a second time in 1867.
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 so-called "Jenny Lind Hall", detail from a poster of 1850 before the concert hall was finished.
On Mercer Street. The theatre burned to the ground on January 8, 1854 and was replaced by a new theatre the same year.
Laura Keene's Variety Theatre, 1856
Laura Keene was a British stage actress and theatre manager. In her twenty-year career, she became known as the first powerful female manager in New York. She is most famous for being the lead actress in the play Our American Cousin, which was attended by President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington on the evening of his assassination.
Laura Keene
The blood-stained sleeve cuff belonging to Keene on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Burial site at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
