Bowery Theatre

A playhouse on the Bowery in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. Although it was founded by rich families to compete with the upscale Park Theatre, the Bowery saw its most successful period under the populist, pro-American management of Thomas Hamblin in the 1830s and 1840s. By the 1850s, the theatre came to cater to immigrant groups such as the Irish, Germans, and Chinese. It burned down four times in 17 years, a fire in 1929 destroying it for good.The Bowery Theatre was built in 1826 and soon became a theater for the working man. Walt Whitman described the theater as "packed from ceiling to pit with its audience, mainly of alert, well-dressed, full-blooded young and middle aged men, the best average of American-born mechanics".Although the theatre's name changed several times (New York Theatre (1826) Bowery Theatre (1828) American Theatre, Bowery (c1840) Thalia Theatre (1879) Fay's Bowery Theatre (1929)), it was generally referred to as the "Bowery Theatre".