In 1823 Hippolite Barrière, the manager of the Chatham Gardens in New York City, erected a white, canvas tent in his public pleasure grounds.

[2] Stephen Price, manager of New York's Park Theatre, tried to put a stop to Barrière's enterprise by reporting the tent to the authorities as a fire hazard.

[6] The New-York Mirror offered these instructions: [T]he entrance to the theatre is through the hall of [a] dwelling house on Chatham Street.

[Y]ou proceed onward to the fountain, which throws up a refreshing column of pure water directly in front of the folding doors to the theatre.

Passing through these doors you ascend, by a double flight of stairs (to the right and left) to the lobby of the first circle of boxes.

Later managers changed the theatre's focus from upper-class drama and opera to fare that appealed to the lower classes.

[11] The Opera House became Blanchard's Amphi-theatre on 18 January 1830, which specialized in equestrian entertainment and light drama.

Since Barrière's death, the Chatham Garden had slipped to the low end of New York's entertainment industry.

[13] Frances Trollope described the playhouse in no uncertain terms: The Chatham is so utterly condemned by bon ton, that it requires some courage to decide upon going there; nor do I think my curiosity would have penetrated so far, had I not seen Miss Mitford's Rienzi advertised there.

The interest must have been great, for till the curtain fell, I saw not one quarter of the queer things around me; then I observed in the front row of a dress-box a lady performing the most maternal office possible, several gentlemen without their coats, and a general air of contempt for the decencies of life, certainly more than usually revolting.

Over the next ten years, at first here, then from 1835 to 1836 at the massive new Broadway Tabernacle,[15] Finney gave sermons each Sunday to crowds as large as 3000[16] and led revivals three times a week.

[17] The Sacred Music Society, a popular religious choir, rented the building for two nights a week in this period at a cost of $850 a year.

the chorus consisted of upwards of a hundred, the females all draped alike in white and arranged on opposite sides of the music gallery, formed an interesting and beautiful coup d'oeil.

The ground floor, which is very capacious, and two large galleries were so crowded that I could scarcely find standing room behind the benches .

The building has since been demolished, and the land is now the site of a Metropolitan Correctional Center federal facility housing male and female pre-trial and holdover inmates, serving the Southern District of New York.