The CLEVELAND THEATER, another playhouse named for the city, opened in 1885. In 1883 the Park Theater opened on the northwest quadrant of PUBLIC SQUARE, and in 1889 it became the LYCEUM THEATER. Better times in the 1880s led to more theater-building as the city continued to grow. Ellsler took the lead, and the result in 1875 was a new first-rate theater for the city, the luxurious EUCLID AVE. As Cleveland entered the 1870s, a consensus gradually developed that the academy was becoming inadequate for the changing times. ELLSLER, who with his wife and daughter solidly established the stability and reputation of the stock company as one of the finest in the country. The man responsible for the name and for the ascendancy of the "Old Drury," as it came to be known, was JOHN A. In 1859, after a quick succession of names, the new theater became the ACADEMY OF MUSIC, and under that name it began its nearly 24-year tenure as Cleveland's premiere legitimate theater. By 1853 he had been successful enough to set about building a new, more satisfactory theater in the vicinity. His effort found its focus at the Cleveland Theater on Center (Frankfort) St. Foster continued the struggle to establish a permanent stock company in Cleveland. The coming of the RAILROADS to Cleveland in the early 1850s precipitated another period of rapid growth. After 6 different names and ownership changes, as the GLOBE THEATER it was razed in 1880. Watson built a small theater on the 2nd floor of a building on the north side of Superior Ave., between Bank (W. Another venue for performances appeared in 1810 when J. With local backers, they were planning a fine new theater building for the city when the financial Panic of 1837 intervened. In Cleveland, ITALIAN HALL served as the showplace for their productions for 4 seasons from 1834-37. Seeing this opportunity, 2 enterprising actor-managers, Edwin Dean and David McKinney, put together a company of players in 1834 to perform on a lake circuit formed by the triangle of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit, with intermittent extension south on the canal to Columbus. Since the lake and the canal were the principal avenues of travel to and from the outside world, it followed that the theater season would be a summer one, coinciding with open season of transportation on those freshwater routes. That year, 1825, also saw the beginning of work on the OHIO & ERIE CANAL, which upon its completion in 1832 sparked an explosion of growth in Cleveland, the canal's northern terminus. It wasn't until 5 years later that a second dramatic company visited Cleveland. Blanchard and his troupe performed in the dining room of Mowrey's Tavern, under conditions little more adequate than the elemental prescription for theater, "a passion and a plank." The first known visit of a professional acting company to Cleveland was in 1820, when Wm. They called themselves the Theatre Royal Society, performed in a hall called the Shakespeare Gallery in the early spring of 1819, gave the proceeds to the village, and vanished from the record. Such activity eventually led to the forming of the first recorded community drama group. Playreadings and amateur performances, mostly in the schools, appear in the record with sufficient frequency to suggest that considerably more of the activity went unrecorded. So it was in the village of Cleveland early in the 19th century, when amateur theater manifested itself. In a frontier situation, where the settlers must be self-sufficient, entertainment is usually a home-grown product.
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