Jake Well’s ColonialĪnd Empire theaters charged 10 and 20 cents and offered five acts and films In 1912, the Bijou and Lubin’s, featured acts (such as a comedy sketch or blackface act, a comic song orĭance, and a juggler or funmaker”) interspersed with film shorts, could be seenīy purchasing tickets ranging in price from 5 to 10 cents. Help raise the local profile of popular entertainment. Managed to add comparable features such as decorative sculpture that would Like the Empire and the Lyric were not as opulent as the New York houses, but Galleries and boxes arranged in a horseshoe form. These theaters still, however, resembledĮarlier American (and traditional European) houses in the use of a centralįloor― now furnished with seats and called the orchestra― surrounded by stacked Patron beyond the everyday experience of urban life. He employed marble, mural paintings, and gold leaf to transport the
Opulent styles of European opera houses to create a sense of vaudeville as Vaudeville, Benjamin Franklin Keith, opened the New Keith Theatre in Boston inġ894 to give new legitimacy to vaudeville performances. That of conventional theaters and concert halls.
Owners were able to present a heightened level of seriousness to the public, rivaling Increased capital became available for theater construction. The Academy by theater reviewers and their advertisements mingled with thoseīenjamin Franklin Keith, a small-time huckster who pioneered a clean version of variety in Boston in the 1880s and eventually, with his partner, Edward Franklin Albee, controlled the nation's top vaudeville acts by his death in 1910.Īffordability of popular theatrical entertainment spread across the nation, The new Bijou and a few other vaudeville houses were given equal treatment with Thanks to Jake Well’s championing of “clean entertainment,” The circular openings across the tall frieze at the top of the Bijou’sįacade were part of a convection exhaust design to remove heated airįrom the interior. Theaters advertised good ventilation, an asset in the humid RichmondĬlimate. Music Theater of 1882 or the much older Richmond Theater, by this time hoary For all of its naiveĭetails, it looked much more like the Jefferson Hotel of 1893― the city’s grandest exercise in academic Shallow balconies, applied sculpture, and electric lights. Theater, the new Bijou presented a highly ornamented facade encrusted with The city’s first theater to combine vaudeville and film. Transformed the previous Bijou, located on the same block, into the Colonial,
In 1905, Wells, with significant financial backing,īuilt a new Bijou, a large and architecturally significant theater. New Bijou Theatre of 1905 together with the Lubin Theatre of 1909 (later Putnam’s Theater, an “illegitimate burlesque house in the city’s ‘red light Only two significant theaters in the city, the high-toned Academy of Music and Richmond became aware a need for entertainment venues. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, “boosters” of Traditional culture, made it difficult to sustain this type of mass Infrastructure and capital investment in the South and the strength of its While variety tried for a foothold in Richmond, lack of Like medicine shows and burlesque shows into a popular and well-developedĮntertainment industry. The former Barton Opera House and introduced “polite vaudeville” to the city.Įlsewhere in the nation, vaudeville had been derived from earlier forms of showmanship In 1899, he opened a large,Īrchitecturally distinctive new venue, billed as “the Bijou Family Theater,” in Player with the backing of two partners, helped transform the way that Richmonders understoodĮntertainment and how they made use of the theater.
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