Pike's Opera House

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In New York City, Pike's Opera House, on the northwest corner of Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street, in the Chelsea district of Manhattan,^[1] which was constructed for entrepreneur Samuel N. Pike^[2] of Cincinnati on a grand scale in 1868, at a cost of a million dollars,^[3] survived until 1960 as an RKO movie theater. In its place public housing was built, as an example of urban renewal.

Pike's Opera House was built on the property of Clement Clark Moore, whose house "Chelsea" has given its name to the neighborhood; Pike bought up the leases to the land and secured residual right from the Moore heirs.^[4] Its frontages were 185 feet and 80 feet. The grand auditorium was seventy feet from the parquet to its dome. In six proscenium boxes and three tiers of seating, it could accommodate 1800, but over 3500 were known to have gained admittance at some popular performances.^[5]

Pike's Opera House opened with a performance of La Traviata but succombed after its first season of competition with the Academy of Music on 14th Street. Jim Fisk and Jay Gould^[6] bought Pike's theater in January 1869 and renamed it the Grand Opera House. Fisk extended the repertory to include operetta— Offenbach's La Périchole had already received its American premiere there, 4 January 1869— and plays, like Sardou's La Patrie, expressly translated for the theater. Vehicles for his mistress Josie Mansfield are often reported, though her name does not appear in the detailed cast lists in Thomas Allston Brown's History of the New York Stage;^[7] her house west of the theater on 23rd Street was connected to the theater, it was reported,^[8] by a subterranean tunnel. At the time when Fisk and Gould's failed attempt to corner the market in gold resulted in "Black Friday", September 1869, Fisk barricaded himself in his second-floor premises atthe opera house, which served as headquarters for his Erie Railway.^[9] When he was shot by his partner, Edward S. Stokes, Fisk's body lay in state in the grand lobby.

In 1876, when the authorities began cracking down on theatre fire safety, the Grand Opera House was the only theatre to pass inspection, ^[10] but a rapid series of managers had been unable to make a financial success, its overhead swallowing profit: "the house was considered, in theatrical parlance, a 'Jonah', and it was almost impossible to find any respectable manager who would take it," the historian of New York's theater recorded in 1903.^[11] When John Poole and Thomas Donnelly rented it in 1876, it was with the proviso that "a small percentage of the profits should go to the Erie Railway company". The new management lowered the price of admission and catered to the popular tastes of New York's "west side": "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (in blackface) and Buffalo Bill were among the first season's attractions; theatrical productions were accompanied by "specialty acts".

For its conversion to the second RKO 23rd Street Theater, Thomas W. Lamb Associates converted it in modern style. it opened 4 August 1938 with a double bill of Having a Wonderful Time and Sky Giant. It closed for demolition, 15 June 1960 and was gutted by fire 29 June.^[12]

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