Provincetown Playhouse
139 MacDougal Street | also 137 MacDougal Street, 133 MacDougal Street | Greenwich Village | built 2011
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1915
Anarchist Polly Holladay opens a MacDougal Street hangout
Polly Holladay, an anarchist restaurateur, opens an eatery at 137 MacDougal Street that becomes a meeting place for Greenwich Village's bohemian and radical set, including Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, and Emma Goldman. It operates alongside the Provincetown Playhouse and the Liberal Club as one of the block's bohemian institutions until Polly relocates around the corner in 1919 and closes soon after.
Source: Ephemeral New York
- 1918
The Provincetown Players open a theater at 133 MacDougal Street
The Provincetown Players, a Greenwich Village theater troupe founded by George Cram Cook and Susan Glaspell, convert a former stable and wine-bottling plant into a playhouse. Members and collaborators include Eugene O'Neill, John Reed, Louise Bryant, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Djuna Barnes, and the group stages new American plays that commercial Broadway theaters would not touch.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1924
Paul Robeson stars in O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings
Eugene O'Neill's play about an interracial marriage premieres at the Provincetown Playhouse with Paul Robeson in the lead role. A scene in which Robeson's character kisses his white co-star's hand draws threats and controversy in the press, making the production one of the most talked-about events in the theater's history.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2010
NYU demolishes and rebuilds the Provincetown Playhouse
After the Landmarks Preservation Commission declines to designate the theater in 2008, citing a lack of architectural integrity, New York University spends $4.5 million rebuilding most of 133 MacDougal Street, keeping only the corner walls that hold the small theater. Preservationists object when NYU tears down some of even those walls during construction, but the rebuilt Provincetown Playhouse reopens in 2010.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Provincetown PlayhouseWikipedia
- Polly’s MacDougal Street hangoutEphemeral New York
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