So here’s a story about research tenacity. On Friday I met (over Zoom) with a couple of fellow scholars who have researched parts of the New York Hippodrome’s history. It’s so lovely to chat with people who geek out at the same specific thing you know too much about. I hope we’ll be able to put a conference panel together soon. We talked about proposing a special issue for Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Film, which is just about the perfect venue for the hybrid circus/melodrama/extravaganza performances going on in the Hippodrome’s early years.
One of the folks in this research group had looked for the Hippodrome’s stage dimensions and list of equipment in Julius Cahn’s Official Theatrical Guide, which helped touring stage performers get from town to town and told them what to expect when they arrived. But the Hip doesn’t get listed in Cahn’s guide until 1910. I knew that Lost Broadway Theaters by Nicholas Van Hoogstraten ( Princeton Architectural Press, 1997) had good information, but where did they get their info? The appendix told me they were from The American Architect and Builder. I looked for the 1905 issues online, since that’s when the building opened. Google Books had the bound volumes with those issues, but they no longer had any illustrations. (This is one of the weird problems with studying older periodicals: the fashion plates get torn out of Godey’s Ladies Book, the Modernist Journals Project had to find original issues of the magazines they scanned in order to ensure they were archived cover-to-cover.) So I was not surprised. I popped over to my favorite place on the web, the Internet Archive, to see if they had the originals scanned. And of course they did: in fact, they have a collection of American Architect issues from 1876-1938. Illustrations are included. So, here’s the good stuff:
Plan for the first floor part 1, including proscenium, apron stage with 2 full-sized circus rings and a water tank underneath, and the floor seats.
Second part of the main floor (box office, lounges, etc.) and gallery seats.
The New York Hippodrome in cross-section