Klaw and Erlanger

Starting from the purchase of an existing booking agency, the partners gradually gained control of the southern territory, anchored in New Orleans.

They were part owners of the new Iroquois Theater in Chicago, which suffered a catastrophic fire in 1903 that resulted in more than 600 deaths and brought Klaw & Erlanger bitter criticism.

In the same year they opened their flagship New Amsterdam Theater in New York, where the Aerial Gardens became the longtime stage for the Ziegfeld Follies.

[1] From 1896, Klaw and Erlanger joined with others to form the Theatrical Syndicate which held an effective monopoly over the booking of stage performers into first-class legitimate theaters across the United States.

[2] After 1910, Klaw and Erlanger continued to play a role in the syndicate, which still sparred with the Shuberts for market share for years.

All the members of the Theatrical Syndicate brought in geographic territories, sections of a national, networked chain of theaters in the United States.

[5] Erlanger throughout his career was known for underwriting shows such as The Great Metropolis (1889) and producing large numbers such as Pink Lady (1911) and Honeymoon Lane (1926).

The architects were Herts & Tallant, working in a hard-to-classify fin-de-sciele style, with integrated sculpture and murals from artists the caliber of George Grey Barnard and Roland Hinton Perry.

The New Amsterdam featured the largest playhouse on Broadway (1,702 seats), new office headquarters for the firm, and, in a prompt expansion upward a year later, creation of the Aerial Gardens rooftop theater with its notorious see-through staircase, home of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1913 through 1920.

The team retained the brilliant Chicago attorney Levy Mayer to defend against the resulting wave of criminal and civil litigation.

Taking advantage of their physical chain of theaters, the syndicate developed a standardized booking process, and brought efficiency to an otherwise fragmented and wasteful scheduling system.

The motivations of Klaw & Erlanger became clear seven months later when they and the Shuberts sold out the entire operation to Albee in November.