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    A Players Almanac: An Anecdotal History
    A Players Almanac: An Anecdotal History
    A Players Almanac: An Anecdotal History
    Ebook314 pages2 hours

    A Players Almanac: An Anecdotal History

    By John R. Camera

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    About this ebook

    The Players is a private social club founded in 1888 by Edwin Booth, the greatest and most celebrated American actor of his time. Membership today continues to be composed of actors and artists from the stage but now from the kindred professions of film and television, the fine and plastic arts, theatre history and education and those from other professions interested in the celebration and promotion of the arts.
    A Players Almanac comprises five Acts, the first with the history and growth of Gramercy Park in 1833 and the mansions built by the famous residents that surround it; the second focuses on the northward movement of commerce and theatre in the 1800s from lower Manhattan to Union Square and New Yorks famed Ladies Mile; the third on the early life of Booth as a touring star in 1849 with notes on Edwins first marriage, his most influential friends and the design of the first Booth Theatre; the fourth on the founding of The Players in 1888 and Stanford Whites design of The Players clubhouse; and the fifth act on the growing ill health and consequent death of Edwin Booth in 1893. Each Act has an extensive gallery that displays, in sequence, photos of Gramercy Park, early theatres in Union Square, the fashions and the buildings that housed the designs and styles created by the most prominent couturiers of the 19th century, of the Booth family, photolithographs of Edwin dressed in the costume of his most recognized characters and the early and later interiors of The Players. The Almanac concludes with an Addendum and a bibliography.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris US
    Release dateJun 10, 2016
    ISBN9781514452028
    A Players Almanac: An Anecdotal History
    Author

    John R. Camera

    John Camera is an actor, director, dramaturg and theatre historian. Experience in film and theatre has lead to Rehearsal and Performance: An Actors Workbook that explores changes in performance styles in six major eras of Western theatre. His dramaturgy includes Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and sixteen of Shakespeare’s plays. A Players Almanac is his first book on theatre history, covering the years from 1833 to 1893; his second, Women of a Certain Age, explores the performances and biographies of famous women actors of the nineteenth century. His has written two plays, Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places, a contemporary version of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, and Five Friends, a story of loves lost and won in contemporary New York City. Monographs and articles for dramaturgical and literary colloquia and conferences include Feasting with Panthers: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, The African-Globe Theatre: African-American Realism, Ballet and the Neoclassical Ideal in the Court of Louis XIV, and has delivered lectures on the works of Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, Maurice Maeterlinck, Bertolt Brecht and Robert Wilson. John is a member of The Players, the LMDA, MLA and the NCTE.

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      Book preview

      A Players Almanac - John R. Camera

      A Players

      Almanac

      An Anecdotal History

      BY JOHN R. CAMERA

      Copyright © 2016 by John R. Camera. 537540

      Cover design by Michael Gerbino

      ISBN:   Softcover              978-1-5144-5203-5

                    Hardcover            978-1-5144-7800-4

                    EBook                  978-1-5144-5202-8

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

      Rev. date: 07/20/2016

      Xlibris

      1-888-795-4274

      www.Xlibris.com

      Contents

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      Act 1: The Beginning: Samuel Bulkley Ruggles

      A Forward Vision

      Ruggles

      1.2 A Backward Glance

      The Park Above and New York Under Ground

      1.3 Other Notable Residents

      1.4 A Gramercy Park Gallery

      In Spring

      1.5 A Gramercy Park Gallery

      In Winter

      Coda

      Act 2: The Drive Northward: Union Square in the 1800s

      2.1 Theatre in Union Square

      2.2 The Drive Northward

      Act 3: The Mystery of Edwin Booth

      Romantics and Bohemians

      3.1 But This Place Is Too Cold for Hell (the Porter, Macbeth, 2.3, 18-19)

      3.2 The Soldier

      3.3 The Girl

      3.4 The Search for a Theatre

      3.5 The First Booth Theatre

      3.6 The Search for Mary Devlin

      Photography

      Antietam

      The Spirit of Mary Devlin

      Judge John Worth Edmonds and Laura Edmonds

      The Mark Gray Affaire

      The Number 3

      3.7 A Gallery of Edwin in Character Dress

      3.8 A Booth Family Album

      Act 4. Coming Home

      4.1 No. 16 Gramercy Park South

      On the Other Side of the Park

      4.2 Aboard the Oneida

      4.3 Tecumseh

      4.4 Mark Twain

      Mark’s Pipe Night

      4.5 The Players

      4.6 Inside The Players

      The Great Hall

      The Kinstler Room

      The Alcove and Loggia

      The Dining Room

      The Hampden–Booth Theatre Library

      The Card Room and The Burman Room

      The Third Floor

      The Booth Room

      The Fourth Floor Archives

      The Grill and Pool Room

      Sarah’s Room

      4.7 A Gallery of Early Interiors

      4.8 Edwin’s Declining Health

      Act 5. The Readiness is All

      The Passing of a Shadow

      A Players Almanac: Addendum

      Edwin’s debut in Richard III

      Gramercy Park

      The Players

      The Draft Riot of 1863: Booth, Badeau, Wilkes.

      Tomasso Salvini (1829-1915)

      James O’Neill (1847-1920)

      The Whole Family Together Under Separate Roofs

      Edwin’s Recordings: Eleanor Ruggles in Prince of Players Edwin Booth

      The Playful Cardinal

      Edwin Forrest (1806-1872)

      Louis Comfort Tiffany and the New York Yankees

      More Laura Keene (1826-1873)

      More Adam Badeau

      Tudor Hall

      Edwin’s Hamlet, Chester’s Claudius

      Joe Jefferson

      America’s First Presidential Mansion?

      The Little Church Around the Corner and Edwin Booth

      The Newport Chapel and Mary Devlin Booth

      A Players Almanac

      Sources

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      A Players Almanac is not a history per se, it is a story more episodic than serial, more anecdotal than narrative, more humanistic than scholarly. As such it could not have been completed without the generous collaboration of many Players. To them I offer my sincerest thanks not only for reading drafts of the manuscript and offering valuable advice and warm encouragement, but for asking challenging questions about the text that led me to deeper research and greater discoveries: Ray Wemmlinger, Curator and Archivist of The Hampden-Booth Library for granting access to archival documents, for his broad knowledge of the history of The Players and our Clubhouse, and equally for his support, advice and notes on the text; to The Players’ president, Arthur Makar, vice president Nichole Donje, and all the members of the Board and Executive Committee. Particular thanks go to Michael Barra, Gordon Hughes, Jeffrey Hardy, Suzanne Stout, Michael McCurdy and Lorcan Otway. Lorcan enhances our history with his own cherished stories of The Players’ glittering past. Many thanks also to film and video artist Melinda Hall, to Elizabeth Jackson for her rich knowledge of Players history, and to Christian Campbell for his permission to use his extraordinary, striking and graceful images of The Players.

      Peter Berinstein and Rich Barber have been exceptional in support of the Almanac, offering clarity, advice, support and a deep appreciation of its historical content – all of which was instrumental in their guiding me toward publication.

      Next to Michael Gerbino for his unwavering support and advice, for designing the cover for the Almanac and for his brilliance in page design, and to his studio Archigrafika for helping move the project along.

      Special thanks to Arlene Harrison, president of the Gramercy Park Block Association for her encouragement and for her generous permission to include the images of Gramercy Park.

      I am indebted to the writers and scholars whose outstanding biographies and histories of Edwin Booth and The Players instilled within me the desire to explore that history. Their literary archeology, the engaging artistry of their writing as well as their scholarly digging was instrumental to my research. Among them are Nora Titone’s My Thoughts Be Bloody, Arthur Bloom’s Edwin Booth, A Biography and Performance History, Ray Wemmlinger’s Booth’s Daughter, Rebecca Wallace for The Assassin’s Brother: The Tragedies of Edwin Booth, Eleanor Ruggles’ Prince of Players: Edwin Booth, and Michael Holroyd for A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and Their Remarkable Families. I should also mention biographies written by Booth’s friends and colleagues: William Winter’s Life and Art of Edwin Booth, 1894, and Laurence Hutton’s Edwin Booth, 1893, Adam Badeau among Edwin’s earliest and closest friends for The Vagabond, 1859, and Edwina Booth Grossmann for her illuminating Edwin Booth, Recollections by His Daughter and Letters to Her and His Friends.

      Then of course, my respect for and admiration of Players generally, colleagues in this special community of artists, patrons of art, writers, directors and those in associated professions, singular in their fields, who have extended collegial friendship to me even while I continued to pester them with questions.

      John Camera

      New York City

      December 2015

      Act 1: The Beginning: Samuel Bulkley Ruggles

      In 1833, the same year Edwin Booth was born, Samuel Bulkley Ruggles had just completed his plans for Gramercy Park. Having graduated from Yale College when only fourteen, Ruggles studied law for seven years with his father Philo and in 1821 took a degree in law and became a trustee of Columbia University and the Astor Library. One year later he married Mary Rosalie Rathborn and ten years later became recognized as New York’s pioneer advocate of urban open space. He is quoted in Antiques Digest, 1921, as having believed: Come what will, our open squares will remain forever imperishable. Buildings, towers, palaces, may moulder and crumble beneath the touch of time; but space, free, glorious, open space, will remain to bless the City forever.

      01-SAMUEL B

      Samuel Bulkley Ruggles

      1800-1881

      Ruggles had a passion for developing underused real estate. Having been the driving force behind the development and growth of Union Square and looking for opportunities for developing new open spaces, he came upon the marshy land that survived as part of Peter Stuyvesant’s 1651 farm. In 1784 Mayor James Duane, a descendent of Peter Stuyvesant by marriage and for whom the city’s Duane Street is named, owned the northern extension of the Stuyvesant farm from the Bowery up to a wet, marshy swamp covered in morass and cattails. The northern-most pear tree on the seventeenth century Stuyvesant farm lived an astounding two hundred twenty years on the corner of what is now 13th Street and Third Avenue and was still bearing fruit at the time Ruggles was forming his plans for Gramercy. Behind it is Kiehl’s first pharmacy 1851.

      02-PLAYERS PETER STUYVESANTs PEAR TREE

      Pear Tree Corner, 1867

      "Crommessje" is a quasihomonym derived from the Dutch Krom Moerasje meaning swamp or morass, and Krom Mesje, meaning little crooked knife, describing, respectively, the marsh itself and the shape of the small stream that ran down Bowery Hill into the marsh at the northern end of the Stuyvesant farm now owned by James Duane. The stream, which later become known as Crommessje Vly, flowed in a forty-foot gully along what is now 21st Street into the East River at 18th Street.

      03-#3 swamp

      Crommessje 1831

      04-GRAMERCY PARK 1831

      Ruggles’ Plan for Gramercy Seat

      The Stuyvesant farm, operated from 1647 to 1664, extended all the way from below Wall Street to about East 19th-20th Street, encompassing almost all of what we now call the East Village and the Bowery. Seeing the potential of the area, in 1831 Ruggles proposed that the land be reworked and made into a park and residential center. Ruggles purchased the land and over the course of a year spent $180,000 (approximately $6.9 million in 2016) to drain the wetland, pull the weeds and rampant gooseberry bushes and move thousands of cartloads of earth from Bowery Hill to fill and landscape it. He then designed a rectangular area he called Gramercy Seat, possession of Gramercy Seat was included in the deed granted to the individual owners of sixty-six parcels of land Ruggles originally laid out to surround it. The number of lots was ultimately reduced to sixty. In 1832 tax-exempt status was granted for the Park. In 1833 the Park was enclosed by a wrought iron fence with a sculpted gate. Because of the Grand Opening of the Croton Aqueduct and Reservoir in 1842, the supply of water to the City meant that owners of the surrounding lots could now begin construction of new townhouses with the convenience of indoor plumbing. Krom Mesje became Crommessje that in turn became Gramercy in 1833.

      05-samuel b ruggles marriage - Google Search - Google Chrome 6142014 20124 PM

      Mssrs Charles Davis, Robert Weeks, Thomas Mercein, Thomas Wells, Samuel Ruggles and his brother Philo were Trustees of Gramercy. In 1844 they met at the mansion of philanthropist James Watson Gerard at 17 Union Square West. At that meeting banker Elihu Townsend sold the first portions of lots, numbers 17 and 18, to James Watson Gerard II. James combined the lots and built a brownstone calling it 17 Gramercy Park. The bedrock Manhattan schist is an extremely strong and durable rock type but above Canal Street it is located deeper underground, causing the earth layered upon it to be less stable. As a result, new building height in Gramercy was limited originally to three floors, Number 16 was built to four floors in approximately 1845.His work almost done, Ruggles faced one more challenge to keep the space open and free. The City proposed a road to be built that would transverse the Park from north to south, splitting the Park into two separate pieces. Ruggles successfully defended the proposal from being passed, the Park was saved–it was the road that was split into two separate pieces: Lexington Avenue at Gramercy Park North and Irving Place at Gramercy Park South. Ruggles named the roads Lexington, in honor of

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