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Broadway in the beginning -

Pictured: an engraving of Broadway in New York in 1836 showing each building from the Hygeian Depot Corner of Canal Street to Niblo's Garden.

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Niblo's Garden -

Niblo's Garden, a theater built by William Niblo in 1826 on Broadway and Prince Street, soon became one of New York's premiere nightspots. The 3,000-seat venue presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments.

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Old Bowery Theatre -

The grand and fashionable Old Bowery Theatre opened in 1826 and initially catered to wealthy and educated native New Yorkers. However, by the 1850s the venue came to cater to immigrant groups such as the Irish, Germans, and Chinese.

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Old Burton's Theater -

Palmo's Opera House was another early Broadway theater, inaugurated in 1844. It only presented opera for four seasons before going bust. The building was later rebranded as a venue for plays under the name Old Burton's Theater (pictured).

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Astor Place Opera House -

The Astor Place Opera House, which opened in 1847, became notorious after a riot broke out in 1849 when working class onlookers clashed with upper class theatergoers. After the confrontation, entertainment in New York City was divided along class lines: opera was chiefly for the upper middle and upper classes, minstrel shows and melodramas for the middle class, and cheap often shabby variety shows in concert saloons for men of the working class and the slumming middle class.

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Booth's Theatre -

Booth's Theatre was built by actor Edwin Booth and opened in February 1869. Booth could not make the theater a financially viable enterprise and it was eventually sold to become the McCreery & Co. department store until 1965, when it was demolished to make room for a parking lot. The theater is associated by name with one of the most infamous acts in US history.

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Edwin Booth (1833–1893) -

Some theater critics consider Edwin Booth the greatest American actor, and the greatest Prince Hamlet (pictured), of the 19th century. But Booth's achievements on stage were overshadowed by the actions of his younger brother, John Wilkes Booth.

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John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865) -

On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C. Earlier, in an odd coincidence, Edwin Booth had saved Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert, from serious injury or even death after the young man had fallen between a train and a station platform in New Jersey.

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42nd Street -

In 1836, New York Mayor Cornelius Lawrence opened 42nd Street (pictured). He invited locals to "enjoy the pure clean air." The street would become synonymous with Broadway theater and night life.

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Victoria Theatre -

Theatrical entrepreneur Oscar Hammerstein I built the iconic Victoria Theatre, which opened in 1899. Pictured is the venue on the northwest corner of 42nd Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan, showing signs announcing "Gertrude Hoffmann in Maude Allan's 'A Vision of Salome.'"

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Rodgers and Hammerstein -

Oscar Hammerstein I was the grandfather of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), pictured here on the right. His collaboration in the 1940s and 1950s with composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) produced some of the entertainment world's most memorable musicals, including 'Oklahoma!,' 'Carousel,' 'South Pacific,' 'The King and I,' and 'The Sound of Music.'

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Laura Keene (1826–1873) -

British stage actress Laura Keene became the first influential female theater manager in New York. Her musical burlesque extravaganza 'The Seven Sisters,' staged at the Olympic Theater in 1860, shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. Coincidentally, it was at a performance by Keene's troupe of 'Our American Cousin' at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. that Abraham Lincoln was shot.

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'The Black Crook' -

'The Black Crook' is considered by some historians to be the first musical. It opened on September 12, 1866 at Niblo's Garden, and ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The title refers to the character Hertzog, an ancient, crook-backed master of black magic. Pictured is the poster for the 1873 revival by The Kiralfy Brothers.

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Lillian Russell (1860–1922) -

Actress and singer Lillian Russell (pictured) performed regularly at New York's first vaudeville theater, opened in 1881. Musical comedies had become very popular and featured characters and situations taken from the everyday life of New York's lower classes. Russell ranked as one of the best singers in the business and the quality of her work, plus that of others like Vivienne Segal, represented a significant step forward from vaudeville and burlesque towards a more literate form of theater.

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A night on the town -

New York in the late 19th century saw more patrons venturing out at night to take in a theater show. The public transport system had improved, the network enlarged. Street lighting made for safer travel after dark. The number of theaters increased exponentially, and plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits and improved production values. 

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Theater District, Manhattan -

Accessibility to what had by now become known as the "Theater District" further improved as electrified trolley lines started in 1899, followed by the opening of the New York City Subway's first line in 1904. Besides theaters, the area attracted restaurants, hotels, and other places of entertainment. By 1920, dozens of nickelodeons and more elaborate movie theaters were also lining Broadway. Live theater suddenly had competition.

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Edith Day (1896–1971) -

Actress Edith Day starred in the musical 'Irene,' which opened on Broadway in 1919 and ran for 675 performances, at the time the record for the longest-running musical in Broadway history, which it maintained for nearly two decades.

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Broadway in the 20th century -

Broadway in 1920 looking north from 38th Street showing the Casino and Knickerbocker Theatres. The Metropolitan Opera House and Times Tower are visible on the left. In 1906 the Knickerbocker Theatre staged 'The Red Mill,' the first Broadway show—an operetta, in fact—to be advertised outside the premises using electric white light signs, a precursor to modern neon signage. As more theaters adopted exterior lighting, Broadway was nicknamed "The Great White Way."

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Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) -

The emergence in the 1920s of Eugene O'Neill, whose plays 'Beyond the Horizon,' 'Anna Christie,' and 'Strange Interlude,' among others, proved there was an audience for serious drama on Broadway. Others would follow, dramatists that included the likes of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller.

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'Showboat' (1927) -

But musicals could still hold their own. 'Showboat,' with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, premiered in December 1927 at the Ziegfeld Theatre and ran for 572 performances. The musical was produced by Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies (1907–1931).

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Classical theater -

Classical revivals staged on Broadway in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s and early 1940s proved popular. The works of Shakespeare were often performed, and attracted British theatrical stars, such as John Gielgud, to New York. Paul Robeson, pictured here with Uta Hagen, was acclaimed for his role as Othello. Plays by George Bernard Shaw were also well received.

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'Watch on the Rhine' (1941) -

With war in Europe looking ever more likely, several Broadway dramas addressed the rise of Nazism and the issue of American non-intervention. The most successful was Lillian Hellman's 'Watch on the Rhine,' which opened in April 1941. Pictured is Paul Lucas (seated) with youngsters Peter Fernandez, Eric Roberts, and Ann Blyth in a scene from the play.

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'Oklahoma!' (1943) -

With the Great Depression still a raw memory for many and the United States at war, theatergoers sought lighthearted escapism with musicals like 'Oklahoma!,' which premiered on Broadway in 1943. It was a box-office hit and ran for an unprecedented 2,212 performances.

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Broadway in the 1950s -

The US economy in the 1950s was booming. So was Broadway. Musicals were being transported to the big screen as quickly as new stage productions were being created: 'Guys and Dolls,' West Side Story,' My Fair Lady' and 'Auntie Mame' were just a few of the captivating musicals produced during the decade.

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Hollywood treads the boards -

Many Hollywood film stars got their big break appearing in Broadway productions, including a young television actor called Yul Brynner, who starred as the King of Siam in the hugely successful 'The King and I,' which premiered at St. James Theatre in 1951.

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The 1960s -

In the 1960s, Broadway confronted the seismic changes in American culture by reinventing its own tradition. The rock musical 'Hair' opened on Broadway in April 1968 after a brief off-Broadway debut and ran for 1,750 performances. Essentially an observation of the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the late 1960s, 'Hair' included songs that became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. Using a racially integrated cast, the production broke new ground in musical theater by defining the genre of "rock musical."

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Off-Broadway -

An off-Broadway theater is any professional theater venue in Manhattan with a seating capacity between 100 and 499. These venues are clustered in a New York City entertainment district called Theatre Row, and include the Laurie Beechman Theatre and the Pearl Theatre Company.  

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Decline -

By the late 1960s, Broadway had lost its glittering showbiz allure. The 1970s saw a worsening of the area in and around Times Square, and a dramatic drop in the number of legitimate shows produced on Broadway. The district became a byword for sleaze.

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Joseph Papp (1921–1991) -

In the early 1980s, theatrical producer Joe Papp led the "Save the Theatres" campaign, an initiative to save several theater buildings in the neighborhood from demolition by property developers, many of which had fallen into disrepair. Unfortunately the campaign ultimately failed due to strong opposition by political and corporate entities. Papp is pictured in 1972 with playwrights Jason Miller, David Rabe, John Ford Noonan, Ilunga Adell, Cyamo, and Murray Mednick outside the Public Theater he founded in 1954.

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Historic district -

The "Save the Theatres" campaign then turned their efforts to supporting the establishment of the Theater District as a registered historic district. A number of celebrated Hollywood A-listers, among them Meryl Streep, helped publicize the new initiative, which eventually achieved its goal.

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Antoinette Perry (1888–1946) -

Mary Antoinette "Tony" Perry was an actress, director, and co-founder of the American Theatre Wing. She is the eponym of the Tony Awards. Back in the 1940s, the American Theatre Wing created a series of awards to be given in her honor. Since 1947, the Antoinette Perry Awards, or Tony Awards, have been given annually for distinguished achievement in theater, and are one of the theater world's most coveted honors.

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Broadway today -

New York's Theater District today boasts a collection of 41 theaters. However, only four of these, the Broadway Theatre, the Palace Theatre, the Minskoff Theatre, and the Winter Garden Theatre, are actually located on Broadway itself. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world.  

Sources: (Spotlight on Broadway)

See also: The best ever stage-to-screen musicals

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