Amateur plays and concerts were the first theatre in New York. Performances were censored under the control of the British colonial governor and the Common Council. No professional performances were licensed prior to 1699. In the 1700s in England, monopolies were granted to government-approved theaters. As unlicensed theatres were closed down, some English theatre professionals looked toward the Americas.
New Theatre
In December 1732, "New Theatre" opened in New York with a performance of "The Recruiting Officer," British playwright George Farquhar's satire of deceptive recruiting during the "War of the Spanish Succession." In North America, that was "Queen Anne's War," second of four "French and Indian" frontier struggles. Rip Van Dam, a New York politician who had clashed with the British colonial governor, opened the theater in his warehouse on Nassau Street, adjacent to Broadway. Van Dam was a friend of radical journalist Peter Zenger. City maps of this era also identify a theater in a tavern on Broadway east of the Commons (City Hall Park).
John Street
In July 1753, the London Company of Comedians publicized the colonial governor's refusal to issue them a license to perform. Later, they opened in a new building on the site of Van Dam's warehouse. In 1767, under new management, they were called the American Company of Comedians and began a 30-year tenure at John Street theatre near the intersection of John Street and Broadway. The Continental Congress banned theater during the Revolution, so the company worked in Jamaica. British officers occupying New York gave amateur performances at John Street Theatre, which they temporarily renamed Theatre Royal.
The Park
In 1797, elegant Park theatre was built on Broadway near current City Hall by a group of investors, who sold it to merchants John Jacob Astor and John Beekman, Although the Park was built for the city's wealthy elite and relied on Astor and Beekman's patronage, performances were staged by professionals and were open to the public. The Park introduced Italian opera to New York in 1825. When the Park burned for the second time in 1848, the Astor family built retail property on the site.
Anthony Street
In 1813, actors from the Park moved to Anthony Street Theatre at the current intersection of Broadway and Worth. They opened with "The Midnight Hour," a 1787 farce by French actor Antoine-Jean Dumaniant. Their second season opened with a patriotic play, "Bunker Hill." The theatre sold in 1820 and re-opened as the Pavillion with a fresh repertoire that included "The Vampire."
Riot
In 1856, twelve New York theatres were taxed to support a boy's reformatory, on the assertion that theatres created juvenile delinquents. This sentiment was supported by occasional riots at theaters. For example, when a black venue opened in the same block as the Park in 1822, theatre owners hired gangs to disrupt performances. In 1849, rival performances of Macbeth by an actor with lower class fans and an actor with upper class fans sparked a riot outside Astor Place Opera House that police dispersed by firing cannon into the crowd.
