Source information
2011-07-27 01:58 PM

Bibliographic Citation:

Morrison, Andrew, Theatre Guide of Washington, D.C., (Washington, DC: The Theatre Historical Society, 1972).

Related Places

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Adelphi

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Relationship updated: 2011-07-27 01:59 PM
  • Dates: Dec 20, 1847

Clarendon Hall

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  • Dates: Mar 01, 1862
  • Place information: A popular entertainment venue that featured daily musical performances. A typical advertisement for April 5, 1862 promoted a "concert every evening, by a full band, beautiful waiting girls, good liquors, cigars, and everything in the eating line."

Ford's Theatre

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  • Dates: Mar 19, 1862
  • Place information: At the start of the Civil War, the location that would become Ford's Theatre was a Baptist Church. In December 1861, it began its life as a theatrical venue for the "George Christy Opera House," a popular minstrelsy troop with performances that lasted into February 1862. Following a renovation, it reopened in March 1862 as Ford's Atheneum. The Atheneum was destroyed by fire on 30 December 1862. It reopened in August 1864 as The New Ford's Theatre." President Lincoln is known to have attended ten performances: La Figlia Del Regimenta, starring Clara Louisa Kellogg (28 March 1862); Fanchon, the Cricket, starring Maggie Mitchell (30 October 1863); The Marble Heart, starring John Wilkes Booth (9 November 1863), Henry IV, starring James H. Hackett as Falstaff (14 and 15 December 1863); The Merry Wives of Windsor, starring Hackett (17 December 1863); King Lear, starring Edwin Forrest (8 April 1864); a concert (19 June 1864); a Treasury Department Ball and Concert (19 April 1864); and Our American Cousin, starring Laura Keene (14 April 1865). Booth shot Lincoln at the 14 April 1865 performance. (Lincoln Day by Day).

Metropolitan Hall

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  • Dates:
  • Place information: Metropolitan Hall was a men's club, which first invited women as guests of members for a monthly Fine Art soiree in February 1863. The event was celebrated in an 18 February 1863 poem in the Intelligencer, "The Ladies Raid on the Metropolitan Club Room": Our club-rooms! Our Club-rooms! How jolly and free, / With our billiards, our cribbage, our euchre were we! / Escaped from all trammels and free from all care, / We joyed in the blessings of Bachelor fare." Following the ladies' "raid," which was accompanied by an exhibition of painting and statuary, the club's transformation seems complete: "Then to the dear creatures surrender our pride, / Let's welcome the ladies, or let the Club slide."

National Theater

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Relationship updated: 2011-08-05 06:40 PM
  • Dates:
  • Place information: The National Theater existed in three configurations during the Civil War. Sometime in late 1861, the National Ampitheater, a "crude structure," featured circus performances. In November, a more formal structure opened. On April 24, 1862, the "New National," also known as "Grover's Theater," opened as a permanent structure and remained through the end of the war. The President attended seventeen performances at Grover's Theater between 1863 and 1685: The Lakes of Killarney, starring Barney Williams (24 February 1863); The Latest From New York Phil, starring Barney Williams (24 February 1863); Hamlet, starring E.L. Davenport (25 March 1863); Othello, starring E.L. Davenport (6 October 1863); The Ticket of Leave-Man (23 January 1864); The Iron Chest, starring Edwin Booth (19 February 1864); Catherine and Petruchio, starring Booth (19 February 1864); Brutus, starring Booth (25 February 1864); The Merchant of Venice, starring Booth as Shylock (26 February 1864); Don Caesar de Bazan, starring Booth (26 February 1864); Hamlet, starring Booth (2 March 1864); Richelieu, starring Booth (4 March 1864); The Fool's Revenge, starring Booth as Burteccio (7 March 1864); Too Much For Good Nature (7 March 1864); Richard III, starring Booth (10 March 1864); Hamlet, starring E.L. Davenport (15 November 1864); the Treasury Department Ball and Promenade Concert (19 December 1864); and Leah, The Forsaken, starring Avonia Jones (7 January 1865).

Odd Fellows' Hall

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Relationship updated: 2011-10-21 09:21 PM
  • Dates: Jan 01, 1845
  • Place information: Odd Fellows, was a private club, the Grand Order of the Independent Lodge of Odd Fellows of the District of Columbia, incorporated by the Thirty-Sixth Congress. Odd Fellows Hall was constructed in 1845. According to the original plan, it was to be a three-story edifice with a front of sixty-five wide and a depth of eighty feet. The salon was forty-two feet by seventy-seven feet and twenty-two feet high. During the war, it featured plays, burlesques, comedy routines, circus acts, melodrama, and minstrel shows. Beginning in spring 1863, it featured large-scale war spectacle projections, known as "dioramas" or "great stereoscopic panoramas." The stereopticon, or magic lantern, was an optical projection instrument. According to a 12 May 1863 advertisement in the Intelligencer, Sanderson's Diorama of the Russian War, which ran for five weeks, displayed scenes on a canvas 400 feet square.

Washington Theater

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  • Dates: Jan 01, 1857
  • Place information: Billing itself as "The" Theater at the start of the Civil War, Washington Theater was a small venue that doubled as a dancing hall and saloon. It was the only theater in operation when the war began in April 1861. Beginning in 1864, it joined Odd Fellows' Hall in featuring dioramas or stereopticon projections. Production was temporarily suspended after the start of the war, due to (as an announcement stated in the Evening Star newspaper) "the condition of affairs here just now not being favorable to theatricals." The hiatus began around April 22, 1861 and lasted only about a week.

Willard's Hall

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  • Dates: Mar 01, 1862
  • Place information: Willard's featured more refined literary and musical entertainments, including benefits that featured European-trained "charming vocalists" and pianists. The performers were often "invited" by esteemed citizens or known from church or private parlor performances.