{{short description|Theatre in Manhattan, New York, U.S.}} {{For|the rock venue|Irving Plaza}} {{Use mdy dates|date=September 2019}} thumb|300px|right|An undated photograph of the Irving Place Theatre
The '''Irving Place Theatre''' was located at the southwest corner of Irving Place and East 15th Street in the Union Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1888, it served as a German language theatre, a Yiddish theatre, a burlesque house, a union meeting hall, a legitimate theatre and a movie theatre. It was demolished in 1984.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/11996|title=Cinema Treasures - Irving Place Theatre}}</ref>
==History==
The original building on the site was '''Irving Hall''', which opened in 1860 as a venue for balls, lectures, and concerts. It was also for many years the base for one faction of the city's Democratic Party.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1916/06/18/99440560.pdf|title=Union Square Loses Its Old Residences|date=June 18, 1916|work=The New York Times|access-date=June 14, 2009 }}</ref>
The facility was rebuilt, and opened as '''Amberg's German Theatre''' in 1888 under the management of Gustav Amberg, as a home for German-language theatre.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes|editor=Ward & Trent|publisher=G.P. Putnam’s Sons|location=New York|date=1907–1921|volume=XVIII|chapter=23|isbn=1-58734-073-9|url=http://www.bartleby.com/228/0823.html|display-editors=etal}}</ref> Heinrich Conried took over management in 1893, and changed the name to '''Irving Place Theatre'''. The first night of the play ''Narrentanz'' (''The Fool´s Game'') by Leo Birinski took place here on November 13, 1912.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1912/11/14/100380815.pdf|title=The Fool´s Game Acted|date=November 14, 1912|work=The New York Times|page=11|access-date=August 1, 2011}}</ref>
In 1918 the facility became the home of the Yiddish Art Theater<ref>"[http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=21010 Yiddish Art Theatre]". Internet Broadway Database. ibdb.com. Retrieved April 13, 2017.</ref> company under the management of Maurice Schwartz.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C0CE4D6103FE433A25757C1A9649C946996D6CF|title=German Drama to Move; Irving Place Theatre Will Be Yiddish Playhouse|work=The New York Times|date=February 14, 1918|access-date=June 14, 2009}}</ref> By the 1920s burlesque shows were offered alongside Yiddish drama.<ref>{{cite book|last=Shteir|first=Rachel|title=Striptease: the untold history of the girlie show|publisher=Oxford University Press US|year=2004|pages=[https://archive.org/details/stripteaseuntold0000shte/page/65 65]|isbn=978-0-19-512750-8|url=https://archive.org/details/stripteaseuntold0000shte|url-access=registration|access-date=June 14, 2009}}</ref> Composer-arranger Harry Lubin, of ''The Outer Limits'' fame, was musical director of the theater during the 1920s and 1930s.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.apmmusic.com/g-l/harry-lubin |title=Harry Lubin |publisher=apm Music |access-date=March 16, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160314211739/http://www.apmmusic.com/g-l/harry-lubin |archive-date=March 14, 2016 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=P8QQAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA3 |title=The Best Plays of 1938 and 1939 |editor=Burns Mantle |publisher=Google Play |access-date=March 16, 2016}}</ref>
Clemente Giglio converted the theatre in 1939 into a cinema to present Italian films.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1939/04/11/archives/the-screen-ethiopian-war-in-film.html "The Screen: Ethiopian War in Film"] ''New York Times'' (April 11, 1939) - "Cinema opens April 10, 1939 with "II Grande Appello" ("The Last Roll-Call") made in Ethiopia by Mario Camerini"</ref> In 1940 it was taken over by a group of non-Equity actors, the "Merely Players", whose productions were picketed by the theatrical unions.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1940/02/25/archives/show-that-defies-unions-takes-in-74-in-a-week.html "Show That Defies Unions Takes In $74 in a Week"] ''New York Times'' (February 25, 1940) - "Outside the New Irving Place Theatre, at Fifteenth Street, the actors have posted a sign that reads: 'We are a young cooperative group, pro-labor to a man,' After giving 'Othello' for a week despite picket lines established by A.F. of L. theatrical unions, a group of youthful actors checked up on their box-office receipts yesterday and discovered that they had taken in $74"</ref> During World War II it presented a steady program of mixed bills of Soviet propaganda and French films, as well as weekly folk dance sessions.
== Ethnic theater and the immigrant == Comparative Study on ethnic stages in the United States show ethnic stage activity spanning over a century and a half.<ref name=":9">{{harvnb|ps=.|Koegel|2009|p=11}}</ref> Ethnic stages were created by and for immigrants themselves coming from Europe, Latin America, and Asia.<ref name=":9" /> Ethnic stages resonated strongly with immigrants because it reflected on their concerns and experiences. Ethnic stages were primarily designed to have immigrant-themed works for recently arrived immigrant audiences.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Koegel|2009|p=12}}</ref> Through the ethnic stage, immigrants maintained and expanded their cultural memory.<ref name=":10">{{harvnb|ps=.|Koegel|2009|p=13}}</ref> Immigrant influence on American society can be pinpointed to places like Swede Town (Chicago); Little Germany (New York); Little Italy (New York); and chinatown (San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles).<ref name=":10" /> Despite the overt, clear presence of immigrant communities all over America, the ethnic stage was hidden and closed-off from outsiders. Those not part of specific ethnic communities were not aware or interested in that community's theater.<ref name=":10" /> Ethnic theater was undermined by immigrants themselves. First generation immigrants preferred plays in their homeland language while second generation immigrants favored mainstream theater in the English-language.<ref name=":10" /> Despite this division, ethnic theater prospered in the face of continuous mass immigration, lasting several decades or a century.<ref name=":10" /> Immigrants and their descendants never completely lost interest in ethnic theater but with the advent of film, immigrants, like their American counterparts attended American Motion Pictures, providing them insight into their new home and assimilating them.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Koegel|2009|p=14}}</ref>
The vaudeville was also another competing form of entertainment eager to lure in immigrants as audience members. The vaudeville and the ethnic theater played different social functions.<ref name=":11">{{Cite book|title=The Irish Way: Becoming American in the Multiethnic City.|last=Barrett|first=James R.|publisher=The Penguin Press|year=2012|location=New York}}</ref> Ethnic stages such as Yiddish and Italian theater sought to preserve cherished aspects of old-world culture.<ref name=":11" /> Through the celebration of shared values, ethnic theaters gave immigrants a sense of community and solidarity in the face of increasingly chaotic and diverse everyday life in the city.<ref name=":11" /> Vaudevilles, on the other hand, served to interpret ethnic communities via ethnic caricatures through comedy.<ref name=":11" /> At times, ethnic communities protested their caricatures in the vaudeville but nonetheless were among the audience members of the vaudeville.<ref name=":11" /> Just like ethnic theater, the vaudeville offered a glimpse of immigrant life though, the vaudeville heavily stressed ethnic caricatures. Immigrants were drawn to the vaudeville primarily because these ethnic caricatures though unfavorable, bore a realistic resemblance to the immigrants and they would encounter on the streets and neighborhoods.<ref name=":11" />
== As a German theater == In 1893, Polish immigrant, Heinrich Conried changed the theater's name to Irving Place Theater. He worked as a director and manager, establishing the theater's success and financial stability until 1903.<ref name=":0">{{harvnb|ps=.|Koegel|2009|p=124}}</ref> Though Conried aimed to primarily attract New York's German-speaking population, not all were regular theatre-goers, so he devised a program with a frequent change of bill to expand his audience.<ref name=":1">{{harvnb|ps=.|Koegel|2009|p=131}}</ref> Each week he presented three or more different plays ranging from classics to comedies, and his theater was acclaimed for having a varied repertory.<ref name=":1" /> Musical plays were also presented, especially those popular on German stages such as ''Kumarker und Picarde'' and ''Das Versprechen hinter’m Herd'' (The Promise Behind the Hearth).<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Koegel|2009|p=130}}</ref> Conried sought to expand and educate his audience through the institution of an outreach program in eastern universities, providing performances of the German classics and comedies to students from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, and Columbia.<ref name=":2">{{harvnb|ps=.|Koegel|2009|p=134}}</ref> Through this program, students were encouraged to regularly attend the Irving Place Theater. In 1901, sponsored by Yale's German Department, Conried's company performed Lessing's ''Minna von Barheim'' in New Haven.<ref name=":2" /> In 1903, after being manager at the Irving Place for ten years, Conried took directorship of the Metropolitan Opera but would still continue as director of the Irving place until he fell ill and resigned in 1908.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Koegel|2009|p=135}}</ref>
The Irving Place Theater like other German Theaters were undermined by their commitment to produce classic German drama and their desire to give in to mainstream American demands by merely producing German versions of popular American theater.<ref name=":3">{{harvnb|ps=.|Haenni|2008|p=58}}</ref> The German theater's audience was also torn by first and second generation Germans.The type of repertory offered by theaters was a critical factor in determining the type of audience. The first generation sought to watch traditional or classic repertory and the Americanized second generation preferred popular farces.<ref name=":0" /> Because first generation and second generation sought to watch different things, Conried devised varied program at Irving Place where he included both high-end classics and popular farces in order to diversify and expand his audience.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Haenni|2008|p=65}}</ref> In theory, however, Conried had envisioned a theater solely dedicated to serious drama, connecting back to German roots. In his 1898 speech, celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary of his theatrical career, Conried expresses that German theater should be “a reflection of the dramatic literature of the old fatherland, and in that way to be the first and most powerful pillar for the cultivation and maintenance of German culture in America”.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Haenni|2008|p=64}}</ref> Nonetheless, the German theater was constantly divided since first and second generation immigrants sought different repertories. Peter Conolly-Smith examines the German theater's demise in a study, conveying that the German theater's collapse in American culture had little to do with the animosities against German immigrants produced by World War I and more to do with German theater's assimilation into American culture.<ref name=":3" />
Actor Rudolf Christians took over of Irving Place Theater in 1913 as director of the company alongside two other manager-directors until 1918 when the company disbanded.<ref name=":4">{{harvnb|ps=.|Koegel|2009|p=136}}</ref> Christian's vision similarly aligned with that of Conried's. They both sought to present great modern plays and the classics.<ref name=":4" /> Under Christians, for the first time in the U.S., George Bernard Shaw's ''Pygmalion'' was presented in German.<ref name=":4" /> Both Christians and Conried desired to attract non-German speakers as their audience though at the core of their audience were German immigrants.<ref name=":4" /> Under Christians, the New York Times remarked on how the Irving Place Theater embodied German patriotism in the U.S. before America's entrance into the war.<ref name=":4" /> After America's involvement, German patriotism decreased because Germany had become America's enemy, and in 1918 the Irving Place Theater was driven to its demise as a German company.<ref name=":5">{{harvnb|ps=.|Koegel|2009|p=139}}</ref> The collapse of the Irving Place theater like any other German theater was caused by various many factors: anti-German prejudice, German America's lack of interest in the German stage, and other competing forms of entertainment such as films, English-language theater, and the vaudeville.<ref name=":5" />
== As a Yiddish theater == By 1910 Yiddish theater was flourishing on the Lower East Side in New York City, and Yiddish companies had taken over many German theaters on the Bowery; from the late 1910s to the early 1920s, Yiddish theater gradually moved northward, first to Second Avenue and then to Irving Place and East 16th Street, reflecting the beginning dispersion of the East European immigrant Jewish community.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Maffi|1995|pp=127–128}}</ref> The Irving Place theater came under the management of Jewish actor, director, and producer Maurice Schwartz in 1918, and he changed the name to the new Yiddish Art Theater. His new theater thrived until it is disbanded in 1950.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Maffi|1995|p=240}}</ref>
Yiddish Theater began in Europe in the early 18th century and came to the United States with mass Eastern European immigration, thriving primarily in New York City from the late 19th to mid-20th century.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The A to Z of American Theater: Modernism|last1=James|first1=Fisher|last2=Hardison Londre|publisher=Scarecrow Press|year=2008|location=Lanham|pages=528}}</ref> The idea to establish a Yiddish theater came from the immigrant community who wanted to combat the effects of ''shund'' (trash) popular entertainment.<ref name=":7">{{Cite book|title=New York's Yiddish Theater From the Bowery to Broadway|last=Nahshon|first=Edna|authorlink=Edna Nahshon|publisher=Columbia University Press|year=2016|location=New York|pages=154}}</ref> For the immigrant community, Yiddish theater offered entertainment, an escape, and reminisces of immigrant life and home traditions.<ref name=":6">{{harvnb|ps=.|Wilmeth|1996|p=414}}</ref> When the theater opened for the first time as the new Yiddish Art Theater on August 30, 1918, it did not find huge success.<ref name=":7" /> Zalmen Libibin's ''Man and his Shadow,'' did not meet audience and critic expectations.<ref name=":8">{{harvnb|ps=.|Wilmeth|1996|p=415}}</ref> The new theater would find success with Peretz Hershbein's The ''Forgotten Nook'' and ''The Blacksmith's Daughter'', both of which emphasized on the idyllic, village life, something that resonated strongly with immigrants.<ref name=":6" /> The Yiddish Art theater at Irving Place, like other Yiddish theaters, rejected popular, sentimental and melodramatic improvisations, and instead focused on quality by carefully rehearsing plays, ensemble, acting, and presentation.<ref name=":6" /> Yiddish theater was an entertainment of cultural exchange. Through the translations of classics, immigrants could learn about world literature; through the translation of popular American theater, immigrants could americanize.<ref name=":6" />
After World War I, Yiddish theater in America began to show signs of a struggling show business.<ref name=":6" /> Restricted immigration and a demographic movement away from New York City's old neighborhoods affected the Yiddish theater's prosperity.<ref name=":6" /> Ever-increasing assimilation by immigrants continually pushed Yiddish language and Yiddish theater out America.<ref name=":6" /> English words made their way into Yiddish dialogue while American mainstream productions influenced Yiddish productions. Just like had occurred in German theaters, the younger generation of immigrants preferred English-language, americanized theater, shows and films.<ref name=":6" /> With time, the Yiddish theater's audience decreased, and Yiddish plays were placed on limited runs. Just as in theater in general, the Yiddish theater's demise would come with the spread of film and television.<ref name=":6" /> The domination of Hebrew also drove out Yiddish language and Yiddish theater.<ref name=":6" /> Hitler and Stalin were responsible for the waning of Yiddish culture. They destroyed old world sources and texts of Yiddish language and culture.<ref name=":6" /> Nonetheless, today there are Jewish organizations and centers that sponsor theater-related events. And many are still interested in making Yiddish theater accessible especially since Yiddish theater still resonates with American Jews because it carries memories of their ancestors and cultural traditions.<ref name=":8" />
==In culture== The theater is the setting for the 2013 fictional play, ''The Nance''.<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/theater/reviews/the-nance-starring-nathan-lane-at-lyceum-theater.html | title = A Play's Love Woes Cut Close to Home | work=The New York Times | date = March 28, 2013 | access-date = October 12, 2014}}</ref>
==References== '''Notes''' {{Reflist}}
'''Sources''' * {{Cite book|title=Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York City 1840-1940|last=Koegel|first=John|publisher=University of Rochester Press|year=2009|location=Rochester}} * {{Cite book|title=Gateway to the Promised Land: Ethnic Cultures on New York's Lower East Side|last=Maffi|first=Mario|publisher=New York University Press|year=1995|location=New York|isbn=9780814755099 }} * {{Cite book|title=The Immigrant Scene: Ethnic Amusements in New York 1880-1920|last=Haenni|first=Sabine|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|year=2008|location=Minneapolis}} * {{Cite book|title=Cambridge Guide to American Theatre|last=Wilmeth|first=Don B.|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1996|location=New York}}
==External links== {{Commons category|Irving Place Theatre}} * [https://web.archive.org/web/20180306083247/http://timefreezephotos.com/pictures/burlesk.jpg Undated photograph] showing 'burlesk' sign in contrast to 1938 'follies'
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Category:Burlesque theatres Category:German-American culture in New York City Category:Cultural history of New York City Category:Music venues in Manhattan Category:Former theatres in Manhattan Category:Former cinemas and movie theaters in New York City Category:Yiddish theatre in New York City Category:Jews and Judaism in Manhattan Category:Theatres completed in 1888 Category:Buildings and structures demolished in 1984 Category:Gramercy Park Category:1888 establishments in New York City Category:1984 disestablishments in New York City Category:Demolished buildings and structures in Manhattan