St. Charles Street 
New Orleans, Louisiana 

What do you get when a theatre is constructed by a brilliant man driven to control the entire theatrical business in the southeast, driven also to mount theatrical productions only to his own lofty standards, & who has money enough from previous theatrical management & other successful commercial enterprise to do things the way he wants?

The St. Charles Theatre: the most important theatre in the southeast, one of the most luxurious theatres in the world, & the strategic center of one of the most energetic, bitter, & entertaining struggles for control of power in the theatre business.

James Caldwell firmly established theatrical productions in English in New Orleans, was successful enough to then build the first permanent theatre for English productions in New Orleans (the American Theatre), established touring theatrical companies of the highest quality based from his theatre, & then retired in 1833 from his successful theatrical management career to concentrate on his civic projects which included establishing municipal gas works in New Orleans.

On November 30, 1835, he returned to show buisiness in a big way with the opening of his St. Charles Theatre.
Caldwell, a successful performer as well as manager, went for visual impact with his productions, & his St. Charles Theatre was to be his biggest production ever. The theatre was designed by Antonio Mondelli, Caldwell's scenic artist from the American Theatre.

Composition was not enough; Caldwell wanted scale, too. The $350,000 theatre was enormous & extravagant. Located on St.Charles Street between Poydras & Gravier, it extended almost to Camp Street. Its front was 130 feet wide, & the facade included a balustrade decorated with statues of Apollo & the muses. Inside, the auditorium featured 4,000 seats, 47 boxes draped in crimson, blue & yellow silk, and gilded columns flanking what was probably the largest stage in the country -- ninety by ninety-five feet.

The opening night program included overtures from the 29 piece orchestra, the plays The School for Scandal and The Spoiled Child, and an orchestral interlude of the overture to Der Freischütz.

The theatre was opened before its interior decoration was completed, & the local newspaper felt that "The house is at present cold & cheerless." At the opening of the theatre's second season, both of those problems were remedied by the installation of the St. Charles Theatre's most famous feature: an enormous chandelier 12 feet high & 30 feet in circumference of 23,000 crystal prisms illuminated by 176 gas jets.

Caldwell assembled for the St. Charles Theatre a stock company of many of the best actors in the United States & based touring companies derived from this company to tour theatres all over the southeast. Quite often, his stock actors played supporting roles, as Caldwell's programming was based on the "star system": attracting the biggest theatrical stars in the country with high salaries & wide exposure in shows at the St. Charles & touring the rest of his circuit for limited runs in each theatre.

The St. Charles Theatre was referred to as "The Temple of the Drama", and became a center of amusements for all of New Orleans. Starring actors were constant; productions were popular and ran from the drama's classics of tragedy & comedy, to melodrama & farces, to opera, and to variety acts such as horse shows, acrobats, jugglers, singers & comics.

On March 13, 1842, a coffin factory behind the theatre caught fire. The fire spread to the theatre, and New Orleans' beloved St. Charles Theatre burned to the ground.

We gazed in mute amazement of the terrific sight until the colossal statue of Tragedy, which adorned the front of the building caught on fire, and the mask of her dramatic sister, Comedy, was likewise in flames....From the extended arms of Tragedy the fire glowed with surprising effect. When the blaze died away, after having consumed the outer painting, her hands were a coal of fire, red as Lady Macbeth's after dipping hers in the blood of Duncan; whilst the face of Comedy was as Lady Teazle when discovered in the apartments of Joseph Surface. They were the last mementos of the exquisite and sublime representations we had witnessed in the Temple, and when they fell from their pedestals, we turned with a moist eye and heaving bosom; we had witnessed the last scene of the St. Charles. The curtain had fallen to rise no more, and the glory of the drama has vanished forever.
-- New Orleans Bee, March 14, 1842, quoted in Nelle Smither's A History of the English Theatre in New Orleans

Mardi Gras: Tuesday night, March 5, 1867.
The Comus parade passes in front of the second St. Charles Theatre.

In 1899, the second theatre burned.
It was rebuilt in 1902, along the lines of the original building.

The theatre was named "The Orpheum", & was part of the Keith-Orpheum vaudeville circuit.

In 1924, a new Orpheum Theatre by architects G. Albert Lansburgh & Samual Stone was built about 3 blocks north for the vaudeville circuit.
The original Orpheum theatre on St. Charles Street was "re-named" with the name that the two previous theatres at its location had -- "The St. Charles Theatre".

The third St. Charles Theatre was bought by the Saenger organization, which continued to operate it as a house for live theatre & first-run movies. It was home to one of the last holdouts of stock theatrical companies in New Orleans.
In 1932, the theatre was given a renovation by its original builder.

Next: the Strand Theatre in New Orleans, Louisiana