French architect Marc Isambard Brunel collaborated with fellow émigré Joseph-François Mangin and his brother Charles on the design of the building in the 1790s.

Construction costs mounted to precipitous levels, and changes were made in the design; the resulting theatre had a rather plain exterior.

Price and Simpson initiated a star system by importing English talent and providing the theatre a veneer of upper-class respectability.

To plan the structure, the owners hired celebrated architect Marc Isambard Brunel, a Frenchman who had fled to New York to avoid the Reign of Terror and was then the city's engineer.

The audience part, though wanting in those brilliant decorations which the artists have designed for it, yet exhibited a neatness and simplicity which were highly agreeable.

The extensiveness of the scale upon which the scenes are executed, the correctness of the designs, and the elegance of the painting, presented the most beautiful views which the imagination can conceive.

The Park at this point was already known for high-class entertainments, but Price and Simpson's policies helped to reinforce this as they booked English drama, Italian opera, and other upper-class bills, such as actress Clara Fisher.

Price and Simpson also fostered the careers of many American performers, including Edwin Forrest and Charlotte Cushman.

In her landmark book, Domestic Manners of the Americans, the British writer Frances Trollope gave a mixed review: The piece was extremely well got up, and on this occasion we saw the Park Theatre to advantage, for it was filled with well-dressed company; but still we saw many 'yet unrazored lips' polluted with the grim tinge of hateful tobacco, and heard, without ceasing, the spitting, which of course is its consequence.

If their theaters had the orchestra of the Feydeau, and a choir of angels to boot, I could find but little pleasure, so long as they were followed by this running accompaniment of thorough base.

[15]By the late 1830s, blackface acts and Bowery-style melodrama had come to eclipse traditional drama in popularity for New York audiences.

[16] The patronage changed, as well, as the New York Herald noted: On Friday night the Park Theatre contained 83 of the most profligate and abandoned women that ever disgraced humanity; they entered in the same door, and for a time mixed indiscriminately with 63 virtuous and respectable ladies.

... Men of New York, take not your wives and daughters to the Park Theatre, until Mr. Simpson pays some respect to them by constructing a separate entrance for the abandoned of the sex.

[18] Edgar Allan Poe wrote a more critical editorial in the Broadway Journal: The well-trained company of rats at the Park Theatre understand, it is said, their cue perfectly.

A profitable engagement might be made, we think, with "the celebrated Dog Bill" [part of William Cole's act in P. T. Barnum's American Museum].

The Astor family opted not to rebuild it, the more fashionable clientele having moved north to Washington Square and Fifth Avenue; instead they had stores constructed on the site.