Broadway Glacier

1895

A FAMOUS OLD HOTEL AND THEATER SUCCUMB TO IT.

Memories of the Glorious Career of the Old Metropolitan and Niblo's Garden. Reminiscences That Will Interest Others Besides New Yorkers.

Thirty years ago the Metropolitan hotel was the focus of the town. The gilded youth went there for late suppers. The most noted politicians of the Tweed ring poured out champagne there. Its birds were always well cooked, its steaks were marrowed to a turn, its oysters had the call, and its whisky was famous.

It was the plaza for the actors until long after the war. They stood in clusters all round its steps and held council in its vestibule, for all the noted chophouses were in the neighborhood.

Round the corner, in Houston street, were the House of Lords and Clifton's, and up on the other end of the block was the Revere House. From that corner down you could meet on a pleasant day all the famous actors in town — E. L. Davenport, Tom Placide, Burton, Dion Boucicault, James W. Wallack, Charles Fisher, John Brougham, Rufus Blake and a double score of others. If any of them got up as far as the Metropolitan Opera House, it was behind a fast team, and they found themselves in the country.

When the Metropolitan was opened in 1852, it was the town talk. It was inaugurated with a stupendous banquet. Stephen A. Douglas and Tom Benton and Sam Houston were there. Voluminous descriptions of the hotel appeared in the newspapers of that date. People stood in crowds and looked up at it from the other side of the street. It was thought by conservative people to be a most unwarranted piece of extravagance. But the Metropolitan became at once one of the most popular hotels in the city. And its complement of 1,000 guests did not fall off while the Lelands had charge of it.

Before and during the war it was customary for the reporters to go to the Metropolitan every night to get the news. It was jammed with people on the night of the cable celebration and on the day that Sumter was fired on. There was, in fact, no such center above it on Broadway, and its walls must have rung with the voices of many great captains and celebrated beauties.

There are people in New York who can remember when Niblo had a garden there. There are many more who can remember the first theater which went by the name of the garden, and how the American institute was wont to hold its fairs there, and the original Christy minstrels, before they got into Mechanics' hall, really caught the small town there, and how for several seasons the concert hall was the resort of our small musical population.

Then later the theater spread out into a great auditorium, and Mr. A. T. Stewart bought the property and had a private box connected with a parlor, and finally came Jarrett and Palmer to take the management, and then bloomed upon the world the "Black Crook" and the "White Fawn," spectacles whose like had never been seen, and which rolled up fortunes for everybody connected with them.

But at this time the theater was in the full swing of popular success. The enormous success of the "Black Crook" had secured all the commercial visitors in town. It was denounced by the pulpit, but never waned in attractiveness for years. Agents were kept in Europe to snap up every specialty they could find, and such was the pliability and capacity of the performance that it swallowed up everything, from a performing goat to a prima ballerina assoluta.

Bonfanti was then in her prime and became the rage of the town. Pauline Markham was in full girth of glory and led the Amazons.

If some one will lay hold of the still virile beard of the venerable Commodore Tooker, he will reminisce for an hour on the palmy days of Niblo's. All the historic Thespians of the pave will tell of the days of William Wheatley and the production of the "Duke's Motto," a play which made the most extraordinary kind of a hit, and how after that Forrest came with the "Broker of Bogota," one of the best original American dramas of its era.

When Jarrett and Palmer took hold of Niblo's Garden, a change came over the house. Then opened the era of Terpsichore, and for years the place was given over to a voluptuous orgie of bacchantes and spectacle. There were long rows of the handsomest women in the world in the corridors on Tuesday mornings to draw their salary.

After the "Black Crook" wore itself out there were spasmodic efforts to call back the old dramatic prestige of the house. Charles Fechter made his American debut there, playing Hamlet in a blond wig and failing to please the public. It was there that Boucicault brought his "Formosa" from London after declaring that he was going to open "a new path for the drama through the sewers," and the play was damned on the first night.

The Metropolitan has succumbed to the inevitable. Broadway is a glacier, not a rock. It moves slowly north with all its gayety, its groups, its centers. Everything historic melts and vanishes. Every old stager has marked the shifting of the centers. Thirty years ago the focus of Vanity Fair was there between Houston and Prince streets. When Rachel came to this country, she got no higher than Houston street. And when the war was over the meeting place of all the lions, the swells, the flaneurs, was between the St. Nicholas and the Metropolitan.

Those blocks thundered and palpitated with the life that has gone up to Thirty-ninth street. First the crowd jumped to Union square, then it went to the Fifth Avenue hotel, then to the Hoffman House, then to the Coleman, then to the Grand, then to — well, you will have to take a cable car to find it now. — Nym Crinkle in New York World.