Koster and Bial's Music Hall was an important vaudeville theatre in New York City, located at Broadway and Thirty-Fourth Street, where Macy's flagship store now stands. It had a seating capacity of 3,748, twice the size of many theaters. Ticket prices ranged from 25¢ for a seat in the gallery to $1.50 for one in the orchestra. The venue was founded by John Koster (1844-1895) and Albert Bial (1842-1897) in the late 19th century and closed in 1901.

History

The music hall featured many top performers of its day and is famous in cinema history as the site of the first public exhibition of the Vitascope on April 23, 1896. Albert Bial booked some of the greatest variety and mainly foreign music-hall performers of those days, such as Yvette Guilbert, Eugénie Fougère, Anna Held, Lottie Collins, Marie Lloyd, and Albert Chevalier. They all made their American debuts at Koster and Bial's. Koster and Bial's Music Hall was the successor to Koster and Bial's Concert Hall on 23rd Street. At that location, Koster and Bial had taken over Bryant's Opera House, a venue for minstrel shows. They offered food and drink along with vaudeville, circumventing a law against serving alcohol in theatres by replacing the curtain with a folding fan. The last Koster and Bial's Music Hall originated when they moved uptown into the former Manhattan Opera House, a huge theatre built in Herald Square in 1892 by Oscar Hammerstein I in pursuit of his passion for grand opera. Quickly running into financial problems, Hammerstein decided to convert his theatre to a vaudeville format. He offered Koster and Bial a partnership under which he would manage the entertainment and they would manage the food. The new Koster and Bial's Music Hall opened on August 28, 1893 and proved to be very successful. Hammerstein however quarreled with his partners and lawsuits ensued. Ultimately Koster and Bial bought out Hammerstein and operated the theater solely on their own. The theatre finally closed in 1901 and was demolished to make way for Macy's Department Store.

The first Vitascope exhibition

A small advertisement, mixed in with dozens of other theatre ads in The New York Times on April 19, 1896 read: The Vitascope had actually been invented and developed outside of the Edison organization by Thomas Armat, but by mutual agreement Edison's Kinetograph company acquired, manufactured, and marketed it, and presented it as having been invented by Edison. Pictures were projected on a twenty-foot screen in an ornate gilded frame. On April 24, the Times reported: A later Times article mentioned that "[Mr. Edison] has bought, for about $5,000, two ancient, but still serviceable locomotives and several dozen flat cars. He has built about a quarter of a mile of railroad track in a secluded spot, not far from his laboratory. In a few weeks he will start a train from each end of the track, and will run them to a crash... all the incidents of a train wreck will be caught by machines stationed at short intervals near the track."

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