Chestnut Street Theatre

Chestnut Street Theatre (Philadelphia). In 1791 Thomas Wignell and Alexander Reinagle convinced a group of Philadelphians to build a theatre to house the company Wignell had formed. Wignell's brother‐in‐law, John Inigo Richards, obtained the plans of the Theatre Royal in Bath, England, and the new playhouse was erected from these designs. It was built in traditional shape, with three tiers of boxes making a horseshoe around the pits, and was originally painted in pinks and reds. Seating capacity was said to be about two thousand. It opened in 1793 but was immediately shut down by a yellow fever epidemic. The first regular season began in 1794 with a double bill of The Castle of Andulasia and Who's the Dupe? At first called the New Theatre, it became the city's leading playhouse. In 1816 it was the first American theatre to be lit by gas. Many of the most important American plays of the early 19th century, including virtually all the major works by the Philadelphia school of dramatists, received premieres there. After Wignell retired, the elder William Warren and William Wood continued to run the house successfully. However, with the conversion of the Walnut Street Theatre to legitimate purposes in 1811 and the erection of the Arch Street Theatre in 1828, the playhouse began to fall on hard times. A small fire in 1820 had forced a temporary closing, and when the theatre burned to the ground in 1856 it was not rebuilt until 1863. Its final production was a stock revival of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray in 1913. Shortly thereafter the theatre was demolished.