page_title: Monterey State Historic Park
section_title: First Theater
hierarchical_section_title: Monterey State Historic Park / The park / First Theater
caption_attribution_description: English: FIRST THEATER IN CALIFORNIA; BUILT IN 1847 BY JACK SWAN
context_page_description: Monterey State Historic Park is a historic state park in Monterey, California. It includes part or all of the Monterey Old Town Historic District, a historic district that includes 17 contributing buildings and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970. The grounds include California's first theatre, and the Monterey Custom House, where the American flag was first raised over California.
  The park is a group of restored historic buildings: the Custom House, the Larkin House, California's First Brick House, Colton Hall, Old Whaling Company, the Stevenson House, the First Theater, the Pacific House Museum, the Interpretive House, Casa del Oro, and Casa Soberanes. These houses display the cultural diversity that guided California's transition from a remote Spanish outpost in Las Californias province, to an agricultural Mexican Alta California territory, to U.S. statehood. These influential adobe houses made up California's earliest capital and were the site of the state's first constitutional convention.
  Today the historic buildings retain their rich heritage, preserving an important part of Californian as well as Spanish, Mexican, and American history.
context_section_description: This adobe, California's First Theater, was built by English seaman Jack Swan in 1846-47 as a lodging house and tavern for sailors. He built the wood portion of the building in about 1845. He added the adobe portion in 1847, as the actual theater. 
  It was used as a theatre in 1850 when U.S. Army officers stationed in Monterey, i.e., Lt. Alfred Sully, and others, produced plays under the direction of Actor/Manager Charles Bingham, and named it "The Union Theatre for the production of Melodramas". Swan built a small stage and provided benches, whale-oil lamps, candles for footlights and blankets as curtains. In later years, the First Theatre was used as a lodging house for whalers, but fell into disrepair after Swan's death in 1896. 
  It was purchased in 1906 by California Historic Landmarks League and donated to the State of California. In 1937 and until recently, the Troupers of the Gold Coast staged the first melodramas since the 1850s. Because of structural issues, the building is closed to the public except for the Christmas in the Adobes event in December. This building is a California Historical Landmark (#136).
caption: California's First Theater
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