Chestnut Street Theatre

The Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the first theater in the United States built by entrepreneurs solely as a venue for paying audiences.

[2] The New Theater's design, modeled after the Theatre Royal, Bath, was made possible by John Inigo Richards, Wignell's brother-in-law, who obtained architect Thomas Greenway's original plans.

[5] A yellow fever epidemic spoiled the theater's debut in 1793, and its first regular season did not begin until the following year when the inaugural night's entertainment offered a double feature, John O'Keeffe's Castle of Andalusia and Hannah Cowley's Who's the Dupe?

It was built in the customary design of the day by architect William Strickland with triple tiers of boxes making a horseshoe around the orchestra and apron of the stage that accommodated about 2,000 theatergoers.

In 1854, a committee of prominent Philadelphians funded and ordered construction of the much larger and grander American Academy of Music on Broad Street, which was completed and opened in early 1857.

[9] The third Chestnut Street Theatre was built in 1862, seven blocks to the west of its original location, where once again it found favor with Philadelphia audiences as a fashionable night spot.

[10] It closed its doors for the last time in 1913 after the curtain fell on the final act of Arthur Wing Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray.