Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1975 - 12

basement, were located the property room, and the
armory (Figures 8 and 91Parallel with these rooms along the south wall were
located the green room, about 30 general dressing rooms,
and the managers' offices. William Winter commented
that:
This part of the building was five stories in height,
so distributed as to contain the apartments necessary for the actors, coryphers of ballet, and the
corps of assistants of all grades connected with
the theatre. 28
The area over the auditorium, between the flat ceiling
and the Mansard roof, was occupied by a dead stor.age
area, a large skylight, which doubled as a ventilation
flue and, according to one account, a fully equiped
gymnasium. 29
Beneath the sidewalk on Twenty-third Street was
the carpenter's shop and the machine room. In this
space, two large boilers provided steam to drive a large
engine which, in turn, powered the rotating machinery
in the shop and, during the daytime operated a hydraulic
pump which elevated "the croton to the huge water
tanks at the top of the building," and at night set "a
huge fan in motion under the auditorium, which in the
summertime tilled the theatre with cold and in the winter
with warm air."30 It is probable that the warm air was
produced by steam from the boilers and the cool air by
water evaporative coolers, which would have comprised
a very early and perhaps, the first known application of
air conditioning in an American theatre.

eatre ,/prope<-ty. room beneath

Iii. O.B. Bunce, Appleton's Jdurnal.

In most theatres of this period flat scenery would
have either been run into position by hand from the
sides "in grooves or ruts prepared by the stage carpenter,"31 or dropped down from overhead, usually by
rollers, but occasionally from a free hanging position.
By this time there might possibly have been a few
theatres in which a limited amount of scenery was lifted
from below on long narrow platforms called "bridges"
or "sinks".32 But at Booth's Theatre all three options
were employed simultaneously for handling the copious
amounts of scenery needed to fill the enormous volume
of stage space that was visible to the audience. Spacious
fly galleries were located 65 feet above the floor along
both side walls of the stage, each equipped with three
pin-r"ils and sundry hand winches (See front cover and
Figure 10), similar to those installed more than 60 years
before at such theatres as the Walnut Street in Philadelphia. Near the cornice line, about 95 feet above ground
level, was the rigging loft, which also housed the wooden
grid. Above this, attached to the roof supports were
"innumerable drums and windlasses"33 - "the machinery
by which the flies are raised and lowered"34 (Figure 111It was noted that:
Act drops, or drop scenes, canvases fell down
complete, taut and unwrinkled, from the enormously equipped fly-regions or rigging lofts. There
were no rollers or cylinders; immense spaces above
allowed the raising or lowering of pictures stretched
on frames. 35

WINTER,1975

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

USITT

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1975