Public Theatre (later the Anderson Theater)
66 2nd Avenue | East Village | built 1927
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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.
- 1927
The Public Theatre opens with a Yiddish version of Kalman's Bajadere, built by two former candy vendors
The Public Theatre opens in January 1927 with a Yiddish-language production of Emmerich Kalman's operetta Bajadere, billed as Parisian Love. Architects David M. Oltarsh and H. Craig Severance designed it for Nathan Schulman and Louis Goldberg, who had sold candy at the old People's Theatre on the Bowery. With about 1,800 seats and a cost estimated at $1 million, it matched the established Yiddish houses of lower Second Avenue in size and ambition.
“…the Public Theatre opened in January 1927 with a production of a Yiddish version of Emmerich Kalman's Bajadere…”
- 1957
The former Public Theatre is renamed the Phyllis Anderson Theatre, mixing Off-Broadway and Yiddish plays
After a stretch in the 1950s as the Antillas Theatre, which showed mostly Spanish-language films, the building is renamed the Phyllis Anderson Theatre in 1957. Its programs combine Off-Broadway shows with some Yiddish-language productions. The six-story Classical Revival theater is trimmed with terra-cotta beltcourses, rosettes and a cartouche.
- 1968
Rock concerts begin at the Anderson with Country Joe and the Fish and Soft White Underbelly
Two Stony Brook students, Neil Louison and Sandy Pearlman, proposed rock concerts at the Anderson after Crawdaddy asked them to bring their campus shows to the East Village. The first show, on February 2, 1968, starred Soft White Underbelly, a forerunner of Blue Oyster Cult, along with Jim Kweskin and Country Joe and the Fish. Tony Lech, a shady bar owner, fronts the money and runs the box office. When Bill Graham opened the Fillmore East that March, most of the Anderson's staff went to work for him.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1968
The Yardbirds, with Jimmy Page, record a live album at the Anderson Theatre
The Yardbirds, then a quartet with Jimmy Page on lead guitar, are recorded live at the Anderson Theatre on March 30, 1968. The band is dissatisfied with the recordings and objects to their release, but Epic Records issues them in 1971 as Live Yardbirds: Featuring Jimmy Page, after Led Zeppelin has made Page famous. Page takes legal action and Epic quickly withdraws the album, though in 2017 Page remixes the tapes from his own archive and the concert finally appears in new form.
“It was recorded at the Anderson Theatre in New York City on 30 March 1968.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1971
The Cockettes flop on opening night at the Anderson Theater, and Gore Vidal quips that having no talent is not enough
In November 1971 the San Francisco troupe the Cockettes open a New York run at the Anderson Theater, which has no sound or lighting system. The opening-night crowd includes John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Liza Minnelli, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote and Andy Warhol, but the show goes badly. Angela Lansbury walks out and most of the audience follows, and Gore Vidal quips that having no talent is not enough. After a week of empty houses the troupe switches to Pearls Over Shanghai for the final two weeks, which the Village Voice praises.
“Angela Lansbury walked out on the show, soon followed by Andy Warhol and most of the rest of the audience.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1977
Hilly Kristal opens the CBGB Second Avenue Theater with Talking Heads and The Shirts
CBGB owner Hilly Kristal takes over the long-dormant theater in 1977 and reopens it on December 27 as the CBGB Second Avenue Theater, with a legal capacity of 1,734. Talking Heads and The Shirts play the first night, the Dead Boys and The Dictators the second, and the Patti Smith Group headlines three nights. The theater has no heat and the seats are so dusty that band members fall ill, and the Dead Boys leave the stage early on the second night.
Source: dailygazette.com
Further reading
- 66 Second AvenueVillage Preservation: East Village Building Blocks
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