Before Broadway: Where the Gilded Age Went to the Theater

A look at New York’s theater world before Broadway theater became what we know it to be today. Tim Dolan, theater historian and theater district tour guide (owner of Broadway UpClose) takes us on a journey back in time to look at theater in the Gilded Age including the shows, the stars and particularly some theaters that those glittery audiences once saw and that we can still see today. 

Through most of the 19th century, New Yorkers thought of Broadway as a street, not a term that meant great theater or even a theater district. This episode takes a look at what theater was like in the late 1800’s and early 1900s just as the world of Times Square was beginning and which included some famous shows like Floradora and the beginnings of the Ziegfeld Follies. Tim discusses some famous performers such as the star Lillian Russell and the fascinating Julian Eltinge. We look at a few theaters still playing to full houses from that time — the Hudson, the Lyceum, the New Amsterdam and the Belasco — and a couple of those, it could be said, may contain a few ghosts of the past that continue to wander the halls.