New Theatre, New York City Directory

A View of the New Theatre in New York published in the Longworth's City Directory for 1797, drawn and engraved by Elkanah Tisdale. Source: New York Public Library.

The New-York Theatre, built in Greek revival style on Chatham Row (now Park Row), opened in January 1798 as the "New Theatre" and was destroyed by fire in 1820.

The Tisdale drawing (engraved above) was not totally drawn from nature, once the painting by Charles Cotton Milbourne, dated 1798, shows a somewhat different façade of the building, without the eagle frieze at the top, different ironwork in the balcony and only six Corinthian columns instead of the ten columns in the drawing above. The annex on the left was used for rehearsals.

According to John M. Kleeberg (The Theatre at New York, 1994), the New York City directories at that time were made to be ready by the fourth of July, meaning that the drawing above was made in the first half of 1797 or earlier. Kleeberg wrote that the Longworth's 1797 New York City directory exists in at least two versions. The New York Public Library copy (above) is the earlier version and the American Antiquarian Society copy of the directory is probably the second version, which is signed 'J. Allen sc[ulpsit] Tisdale del[inavit]".

The spire on the right belongs to the Middle Dutch Church (not the North Dutch Church, as some authors claim. Its spire was added later in 1823).