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OLDEST Theater founding date
(continued from page 26) This is the year the theater venue opened in the build-
ing. In most cases, the building date and the theater
Because America’s pre-1900 theaters have presented founding dates are the same. However, I found 58
such a rich assortment of performance, community examples where the theater space was added later,
and cultural events, I decided that a looser definition including 43 where the theater space was added in
of “performing arts” would be more helpful and am 1900 or later. So, while there may be 302 American
generally including any event which has taken place theaters housed in pre-1900 buildings, there are only
on a stage in front of an audience. 259 theaters which began prior to 1900.

What is being measured? Number of buildings as theater

The two categories I’ve tried to create rankings for Fire, storms and general disrepair have taken a huge
are “Longest Running Performing Arts Theaters” and toll on our old theatrical venues. Complete rebuild-
“Oldest Performing Arts Theaters”. ing after a fire or storm, or simply for modernizing, is
pretty easy to document. What is more difficult are
Of the two, “Longest Running” is certainly the clean- those cases where the interior is gutted even though
er ranking as it solely measures the number of years the shell of the theater remains. Does this count as a
a theater has existed primarily as a performing arts new building? I would argue that it does. Using these
venue. For example, if a theater was closed for reno-
vation, or primarily used as a movie theater,
offices etc., I did not count those years as
primarily performing arts.

“Oldest” is more problematic as meaningful
rankings require comparing each theater
to venues which share the same qualities
in order to create “like to like” rankings. For
example, “Oldest” requires additional filtering
by “number of years performing arts-dark”
and “currently in operation.”

Rankings of “Most Active (most performanc-
es)” and “Most influential (most important
performers)” would be interesting to attempt
but would be much more challenging. Fortu- 1857 Academy of Music, Philadelphia
nately, I suspect the winner in both categories
would be Carnegie Hall (New York, NY 1891).
According to Carnegie Hall archivist Rob Hudson, guidelines, I found that 44 (17%) of America’s pre-1900
their current database for the multi-venue institution theatrical institutions have existed in more than one
lists an astonishing 58,000 performances. And in terms building.
of important performing artists surely no other theater
can rival Carnegie Hall’s list which includes the likes of Multiple buildings are even more prevalent in the 20
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Charlie Chaplin, Billie Holiday, Duke oldest theaters, where 7 (35%) have existed in more
Ellington, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, and than one building. Because so many of America’s old-
The Beatles. est theater institutions have existed in more than one
building, my tendency would be to accept “multiple
Here are the spreadsheet columns and data points buildings” as one of the allowed filters for determining
I’ve built for each pre-1900 American theater. our oldest theaters, alongside items such as “founding
date”, “number of years performing arts-dark” and
Building completion date “currently in operation”.
Interestingly, for the purpose of creating lists of Amer- Number of locations as theater
ica’s oldest performing arts theaters, the building
completion date is not always helpful. This is because Much more uncommon than multiple buildings are
quite a few theaters are actually relatively new and multiple locations. I could only find 9 (3%) of America’s
are simply housed in older buildings. The main weak- pre-1900 theatrical institutions which have existed in
ness of LHAT’s inventory of historic theaters is that the more than one location. However, this list includes
“built” dates listed are of the buildings rather than the several of our country’s most prestigious cultural insti-
theaters inside the buildings. tutions, such as New York’s Metropolitan Opera House
PAGE 30 | INLEAGUE League of Historic American Theatres