Theatre on Nassau Street

The story

A merchant-governor's wooden playhouse on Nassau Street was probably the first purpose-built theatre in Manhattan. Rip Van Dam opened it on December 11, 1732, with a performance of The Recruiting Officer. Eighteen years later, the traveling troupe Murray & Kean's staged The Beggar's Opera there — New York's first-known musical and the first time professional actors performed in the city. Lewis Hallam expanded it in 1753, calling the new structure "very fine, large and commodious." Within a decade it became a German Calvinist church, then rubble. The site held buildings until 1822.