The Park was not merely the cynosure for years it had no competition at all. ![]() Hamblin, Tyrone Power (great-grandfather of the movie star), Charlotte Cushman, the Wallacks, Henry and James William, and the Kembles, Fanny and Charles. On its boards walked a collection of actors imported and domestic, many of whose names are familiar even now: Junius Brutus Booth, Edwin Forrest, Charles Kean, Ellen Tree, George Frederick Cooke, Thomas S. It was expensive for its time, with prices up to fifty cents for pit seats and a dollar for boxes. The Park Theater was built on the model of the London stage, with a repertoire that naturally ran heavily to Shakespeare, as well as featuring the work of such successful comic playwrights as Colly Cibber and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In Luc Santé’s indispensable book, “Low–Life,” he offers a description of Park Theatre: John Howard Payne, composer of “Home, Sweet Home” was a frequent performer at the Park as a dramatic actor, as was Edmund Kean and his son Charles Kean, Junius Brutus Booth (father of famed actor Edwin Booth and Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth) and Tyrone Power (1795-1841), an antecedent of the famed screen actor of the 1930s and 1940s. Charles Dickens was feted at the Park on a visit to New York in 1842. ![]() But the carriages approaching each other from both sides of the narrow lane created NYC’s first traffic jams causing Theatre Alley to become NYC’s first one way street! Depiction of Park Theatre, seen in Kenneth Dunshee’s “As You Pass By” The alley served as the service lane for carriages bringing theatergoers to Park Theatre. The Park opened in 1798 with a performance of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The Astors, who owned it then, elected to not rebuild it. At that time the Park Theatre was beginning to lose out to other theaters springing up along the Bowery uptown. It stood from 1798 to 1820 after a fire the theater was rebuilt the next year, and stood till 1848, when it once again burned down. ![]() Theatre Alley, running from Ann to Beekman just east of Park Row, at one time was the back entrance to the old Park Theatre (originally the New Theatre), which fronted on Park Row. WHEN ambling around the area east of City Hall Park recently, I was surprised to find Theatre Alley completely open to the air and the elements, as opposed to the usual sidewalk sheds frequently found at construction sites.
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