For Fifth Avenue’s 200th Birthday: On the Misnamed Fifth Avenue Theatre

Hungry I guess for any kind of positive story to tell, local press in New York is trumpeting the news that Fifth Avenue has now reached its bicentennial as one of the city’s main thoroughfares (commissioned in 1811, opened in 1824). The other big Fifth Avenue news is that Mayor Adams has announced a project to widen the sidewalks on the stretch where there’s expensive shopping. Somehow there is money for that but not none to keep libraries open for working people, or to have retained the workers who might have prevented the fire in Prospect Park a few days ago. Go figure.

At any rate, the bicentennial milestone seems like a good opportunity to talk about one of New York’s main vaudeville showplaces, Proctor’s Fifth Avenue. I don’t often write about particular venues but some are legendary enough to rate attention (some I’ve done in the past include The Palace, Loew’s State, Hammerstein’s Victoria, and the Hippodrome, with some related ones like Castle Garden and Madison Square Garden). The Fifth Avenue Theatre has its points of interest, too, the most glaring one being that it was NOT located on Fifth Avenue, but on Broadway and 28th Street, dating from that middle period when the theatrical district was shifting from Union Square to Times Square.

The answer as to why a venue called the Fifth Avenue Theatre was not located on Fifth Avenue is of course that originally it was. The story begins on a block of Fifth Ave. frontage along Madison Square that had first been a farmhouse, then a stagecoach stop, then the site of Franconi’s Hippodrome, and finally the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which opened in 1859. In 1862, Jim Fisk leased a spot next to the hotel for a gold trading exchange during the Civil War. It then became the Fifth Avenue Opera House, which hosted minstrel shows and burlesque productions by George Christy (stepson of E.P. whom I wrote about here) and others from 1865 to 1869.

Augustin Daly took it over next and ran it as a legit house called Daly’s Fifth Avenue until it burned down in 1873. At this point the story splits in two. A new space was built at this original location four years later. Originally known as Fifth Avenue Hall, it opened with a long run by the magician Robert Heller. In 1879 Steele Mackaye took it over and ran it as the Madison Square Theatre.

Meantime, in 1870, Daly had moved his operation to the St. James Theatre (built as Apollo Hall in 1868), which was located at Broadway and 28th, and dubbed it the New Fifth Avenue Theatre, because at that point it was his brand. Many crazy decisions have been made over the decades in the interest of the retention of brand recognition, and this is a great example of one. Helena Modjeska, Eleonora Duse,Lottie Briscoe, and John Drew all trod its stage during its legit years. New works by Boucicault and Gilbert and Sullivan premiered there, and classics were presented. Henry Miner ran the place in the 1890s.

The Fifth Avenue Theatre was acquired by F.F. Proctor in 1900, and he it was who converted it to continuous vaudeville. (His slogan: “After breakfast, go to Proctor’s; after Proctor’s go to bed”). It was one of Proctor’s flagship locations for years (he had several in New York), conveniently located near the literal Tin Pan Alley. In 1906 he merged with B.F. Keith for a time, and it became Keith and Proctor’s for a time. Keith’s name came back off in 1911.

Cameras were rare to nonexistent inside theatres at this time, but in 1906 Everett Shinn created this wonderful painting entitled The Orchestra Pit (Old Proctors Fifth Avenue Theatre):

Major acts who played Proctor’s Fifth Avenue during the vaudeville heyday included Lillie Langtry,Louise Dresser, Al Jolson, Olga Petrova, Fred Allen, Larry Semon, Frederick Warde,Dolores Vallecita and Her Leopards, and Pauline Musters, the World’s Smallest Woman. During peak years, Eddie Darling was the booker.

Motion pictures were phased in starting in 1915, though variety acts were still presented. Proctor vacated in 1929. In the ’30s it became a burlesque house, shuttering for good with Laguardia’s crackdown in 1939.

For more on vaudeville history please check out No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.