Views in New-York and Its Environs from Accurate, Characteristic, and Picturesque Drawings; Taken on the Spot, Expressly for This Work, by Dakin, Architect (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1831 edition. Excerpt: ...&c., Phoenix Buildings, on the right of the view, do an extensive business, principally with the cities and towns in our country, particularly in the south and west. One of the homeliest buildings in the city of any note, as to its exterior, is the Park Theatre--the large plain edifice visible in the sixteenth plate. We possess but slender materials for describing accurately the earliest efforts of our ancestors at Theatrical performances, which were commenced nearly a century ago in a large Store near the Old Slip, on a. place called Cruger's Wharf, at about the same period, by the way, the first regular weekly was published in New York, called the "Weekly Gazette." There are now about thirty weekly papers. The accounts before us do not represent the persons engaged in the undertaking to have been either very serious or successful, but a mere party of frolicksome young men, rather desirous of gratifying their own love of mirth and frivolity, than of founding any permanent and well regulated dramatic establislunent. About the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty, a stone Theatre was built in Nassau Street, in the rear of the Dutch Church, near Maiden Lane. It is said to have been quite well conducted by a Mr. Hallam, who principally by the aid of players from the Provincial Theatres of Great Britain, performed many of the best English plays until the Manager, either from want of encouragement, or allured by more lucrative prospects elsewhere, withdrew his Company and the building was pulled down. In 1770 a new effort Weis made by a Mr. Miller, in a miserable wooden house in Beekman Street, a few doors below Nassau Street. Tliis is described as inferior to the other. The scenery was of paper, and the wardrobe deficient...