Belasco Theater – Noted for integrated audiences: 1929 ca.
The Belasco Theater at 17 Madison Place NW at Lafayette Square in a photo with a notation of December 20, 1929 on the back.
The Belasco was one of the few performing arts venues in Washington, D.C.’s era of segregation that permitted integrated audiences.
During the attempt to secure a venue for Marion Anderson following the DAR’s denial of Constitution Hall in 1939, the theater could not given a definitive answer as to its availability. This in turn led to securing the Lincoln Memorial for the landmark concert that served as a massive civil rights demonstration.
It was originally built as the Lafayette Square Opera House, opening September 30, 1895.
Before the opera house was built, the site was a private home noted for the violent acts that took place in early Washington. Civil War general Daniel Sickles killed the district attorney for the District of Columbia, Phillip Barton Key II, the son of Francis Scott Key on the site in 1859. At the same location, John Wilkes Booth co-conspirator Lewis Powell made an assassination attempt on Secretary of State William H. Seward in 1865.
The opera house was purchased by S. S. Shubert Amusement Company and David Belasco and reopened as the Belasco Theater. It was later converted to a movie house in 1930 and ultimately purchased by the federal government in 1940 where it was used periodically to entertain troops.
It was raised in 1964 and is now the site of the US. Court of Federal Claims.
For more information and related images, see www.flickr.com/gp/washington_area_spark/n8Z2Gv
Image courtesy of the District of Columbia Public Library.
Belasco Theater – Noted for integrated audiences: 1929 ca.
The Belasco Theater at 17 Madison Place NW at Lafayette Square in a photo with a notation of December 20, 1929 on the back.
The Belasco was one of the few performing arts venues in Washington, D.C.’s era of segregation that permitted integrated audiences.
During the attempt to secure a venue for Marion Anderson following the DAR’s denial of Constitution Hall in 1939, the theater could not given a definitive answer as to its availability. This in turn led to securing the Lincoln Memorial for the landmark concert that served as a massive civil rights demonstration.
It was originally built as the Lafayette Square Opera House, opening September 30, 1895.
Before the opera house was built, the site was a private home noted for the violent acts that took place in early Washington. Civil War general Daniel Sickles killed the district attorney for the District of Columbia, Phillip Barton Key II, the son of Francis Scott Key on the site in 1859. At the same location, John Wilkes Booth co-conspirator Lewis Powell made an assassination attempt on Secretary of State William H. Seward in 1865.
The opera house was purchased by S. S. Shubert Amusement Company and David Belasco and reopened as the Belasco Theater. It was later converted to a movie house in 1930 and ultimately purchased by the federal government in 1940 where it was used periodically to entertain troops.
It was raised in 1964 and is now the site of the US. Court of Federal Claims.
For more information and related images, see www.flickr.com/gp/washington_area_spark/n8Z2Gv
Image courtesy of the District of Columbia Public Library.