Greenwich Village Gazette

The Greenwich Village Theatre

by Simi Delgado

Across 7th Avenue South from Sheridan Square, between Christopher St. and West Fourth St. now stands a low-rise commercial building built in 1931. It occupies the same lot that saw the illustrious Greenwich Village Theatre go up in November of 1917. Shown above, it was built by Maguerite Abbott Barker more as a neighborhood playhouse than professional shows. The first shows were so good they attracted uptown audiences downtown in droves. One of the most noteworthy was Sinclair Lewis's sharp edged satire, Hobohemia. Lewis was a young unknown then.

The thing responsible for putting the theatre on the map was The Greenwich Village Follies, invented and produced for the stage by John Murray Anderson. In these pre and post World war One days the Lavish Broadway playhouses competed with more and more money to stage the biggest and most dazzling shows. Murray had no money, but all the talent he needed to create the very concept of the intimate revue to New York City. The Follies of Greenwich Village opened in July of 1919, and starred a popular Village artist, singer-musician Bobby Edwards whose hit "Why be an Industrial Slave When You Can be Crazy?" Tony Sarge, who gained a great deal of fame with his marionettes, choreographed a full puppet ballet. His real fame was earned as the person who designed the first giant balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Bessie McCoy Davis sang "I'm the Hostess of a Bum Cabaret!" It wasn't long before a "Sold Out" sign hung in the box office window. After a six week run the show moved uptown to Broadway, which no other Village production had ever managed to do before.

A second Follies was spun by Anderson for the 1920 season, and like the first, it also moved to a Broadway . From then on the Follies was a Broadway only production and renewed itself annually throughout the '20's.

Back in Greenwich Village at Sheridan Square, The Greenwich Village Theatre took on a whole new life in 1924. The Provincetown Theatre over on Macdougal Street had seen great success with it's young star writer Eugene O'Neill. They took over rental of the Greenwich Village Theatre and premiered O'Neills Desire Under the Elms, and The Great God Brown. They tried to keep both theatres open and found it too much and gave up on the Theatre as the economics were getting worse and the crash in '29 brought about their demise. By 1930 the end came to the Greenwich Village Theatre, too. 

The building here is all we have to remind us of days gone by. But it is a familiar site at Sheridan Square. And now that you have seen the theatre above, you'll see the Square a little differently from now on. I know I do.