page_title: Bowery Theatre
section_title: Hamblin's tenure
hierarchical_section_title: Bowery Theatre / Hamblin's tenure
caption_attribution_description: English: Bowery Theatre of 1828, published by George Melksham Bourne; looking toward Bayard Street This is a retouched picture, which means that it has been digitally altered from its original version. Modifications: file format changed from tif to jpg; rotated; color- and light-adjusted; blemishes removed.
context_page_description: The Bowery Theatre was a playhouse on the Bowery in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. Although it was founded by rich families to compete with the upscale Park Theatre, the Bowery saw its most successful period under the populist, pro-American management of Thomas Hamblin in the 1830s and 1840s. By the 1850s, the theatre came to cater to immigrant groups such as the Irish, Germans, and Chinese. It burned down four times in 17 years, a fire in 1929 destroying it for good. Although the theatre's name changed several times, it was generally referred to as the "Bowery Theatre".
context_section_description: The owners hired Thomas Hamblin and James H. Hackett in August 1830 to manage the theatre. A month later, Hackett left Hamblin in complete control. After the Bowery burned down later that year, Hamblin rebuilt. He then took the theatre in a decidedly different direction for what would be its most innovative and successful period.
  American theatres stratified in the Jacksonian Era, and the Bowery emerged as the home of American nativists and populist causes, placing it in direct contrast to the Park Theatre's cultivated image of traditional European high culture. This was partially the result of an anti-British theatre riot at the Park; Hamblin renamed the playhouse "the American Theatre, Bowery" in reaction. Hamblin hired unknown American actors and playwrights and allowed them to play for long runs of up to a month. Before 1843, early blackface performers such as George Washington Dixon and Thomas D. Rice played there frequently, and acts such as J. B. Booth, Edwin Forrest, Louisa Lane Drew, and Frank Chanfrau also gained renown on the Bowery's stage. George L. Fox and his pantomime became the most popular act at the Bowery until after the Civil War. Bowery productions also debuted or popularized a number of new character types, including the Bowery B'hoy, the Yankee, the Frontiersman, and the blackface Negro.
  The pro-Americanism of the Bowery's audience came to a head during the Farren Riots of 1834. Farren, the Bowery's British-born stage manager, had reportedly made anti-American comments and fired an American actor. Protesters reacted by attacking the homes, businesses, and churches of abolitionists and blacks in New York City and then storming the theatre on 9 July. Farren apologized for his comments, and George Washington Dixon sang popular songs to quell the rioters.
  Hamblin defied conventions of theatre as high culture by booking productions that appealed to working-class patrons and by advertising them extensively according to Gilfert's model. Animal acts, blackface minstrel shows, and melodrama enjoyed the most frequent billings, and hybrid forms, such as melodramas about dogs saving their human masters, became unprecedented successes. Spectacular productions with advanced visual effects, including water and fire, featured prominently. Hamblin also innovated by using gas lighting in lieu of candles and kerosene lamps. The Bowery Theatre earned the nickname "The Slaughterhouse" for its low-class offerings, and terms like "Bowery melodrama" and "Bowery actors" were coined to characterize the new type of theatre.
  In the spring of 1834, Hamblin began buying shares in the theatre from the New York Association; he had enough to control the enterprise completely within 18 months. By the time the Bowery burned again in September 1836, it was the most popular playhouse in New York City, despite steep increases in competition (the Bowery Amphitheatre was right across the street). Visual spectacle had become such an integral part of its appeal that Hamblin claimed $5,000 in wardrobe losses from the fire. Hamblin bought out the remaining shares in the theatre and rented the site to W. E. Dinneford and Thomas Flynn, who rebuilt. When this interim Bowery burned down on February 18, 1838, Hamblin replaced it with a bigger and more opulent structure, which opened in May 1839.
  Through Hamblin's actions, working-class theatre emerged as a form in its own right, and melodrama became the most popular form of American theatre. Low-class patrons such as Bowery b'hoys and g'hals predominated in the audience. The Spirit of the Times described the Bowery's patrons:
  By reasonable computation there were about 300 persons on the stage and wings alone—soldiers in fatigue dresses—officers with side arms—a few jolly tars, and a number of 'apple-munching urchins.' The scene was indescribably ludicrous. Booth played [Richard III] in his best style, and was really anxious to make a hit, but the confusion incidental to such a crowd on the stage, occasioned constant and most humorous interruptions. It was every thing or any thing, but a tragedy.
caption: Bowery Theatre of 1828, from Bourne  Views  of  New  York (1830-31)
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