For the rock venue, see Irving Plaza

Irving Plaza

Irving Plaza is a 1,200-person ballroom-style music venue at 17 Irving Place and East 15th Street in the Union Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...

The Irving Place Theatre was a located at the south-west corner of Irving Place

Lexington Avenue (Manhattan)

Lexington Avenue, often colloquially abbreviated by New Yorkers as "Lex," is an avenue on the East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City that carries southbound one-way traffic from East 131st Street to Gramercy Park at East 21st Street...

 and East 15th Street in the Union Square

Union Square (New York City)

Union Square is a public square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York.It is an important and historic intersection, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road – now Fourth Avenue – came together in the early 19th century; its name celebrates neither the...

 neighborhood of Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. Built in 1888, it has served as a German language theatre, a Yiddish theatre

Yiddish theatre

Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; naturalist drama; expressionist and...

, a burlesque

Burlesque

Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...

 house, a union meeting hall, a theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 and a cinema. It is now demolished.

History

The original building on the site was Irving Hall, which opened in 1860 as a venue for balls, lectures, and concerts. It was also for many years the base for one faction of the city's Democratic Party.

The facility was rebuilt, and opened as Amberg's German Theatre in 1888 under the management of Gustav Amberg, as a home for German-language theatre. Heinrich Conried

Heinrich Conried

Heinrich Conried was a theatrical manager and director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.-Biography:...

 took over management in 1893, and changed the name to Irving Place Theatre. The first night of the play Narrentanz (The Fool´s Game) by Leo Birinski

Leo Birinski

Leo Birinski was a playwright, screenwriter and director. He worked in Austria-Hungary, Germany and in the United States. As a playwright in Europe he gained his biggest popularity in 1910 – 1917, then he was forgotten. From the 20s to the 40s of the 20th century he worked mainly as a...

 took place here on November 13, 1912.

In 1918 the facility became the home of a Yiddish theater company under the management of Morris Schwartz

Morris Schwartz

Morris Schwartz was an American photographic inventor, photographer and businessman.Born in Russia, Schwartz went to America in 1906. He started in the New York Times in 1922, staying with the paper until 1926, when he moved to the Jewish Daily Forward, where he was a staff photographer until 1931...

. By the 1920s burlesque

Burlesque

Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...

 shows were offered alongside Yiddish drama.

Clemente Giglio converted the theate in 1939 into a cinema to present Italian films. In 1940 it was taken over by a group of non-Equity

Actors' Equity Association

The Actors' Equity Association , commonly referred to as Actors' Equity or simply Equity, is an American labor union representing the world of live theatrical performance, as opposed to film and television performance. However, performers appearing on live stage productions without a book or...

 actors, the "Merely Players", whose productions were picketed by the theatrical unions. During the war it presented a steady program of mixed bills of Soviet propaganda and French films, as well as weekly folk dance sessions.

External links

• 1938 Berenice Abbott photograph from the New York Public Library
  New York Public Library
  The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
  
  
• Irving Place Theatre Photographs from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
  Museum of the City of New York
  The Museum of the City of New York is an art gallery and history museum founded in 1923 to present the history of New York City, USA and its people...
  
  
• Undated photograph showing 'burlesk' sign in contrast to 1938 'follies'