Author: Meredith Henne Baker
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 080714374X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349
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Book Description
On the day after Christmas in 1811, the state of Virginia lost its governor and almost one hundred citizens in a devastating nighttime fire that consumed a Richmond playhouse. During the second act of a melodramatic tale of bandits, ghosts, and murder, a small fire kindled behind the backdrop. Within minutes, it raced to the ceiling timbers and enveloped the audience in flames. The tragic Richmond Theater fire would inspire a national commemoration and become its generation's defining disaster. A vibrant and bustling city, Richmond was synonymous with horse races, gambling, and frivolity. The gruesome fire amplified the capital's reputation for vice and led to an upsurge in antitheater criticism that spread throughout the country and across the Atlantic. Clerics in both America and abroad urged national repentance and denounced the stage, a sentiment that nearly destroyed theatrical entertainment in Richmond for decades. Local churches, by contrast, experienced a rise in attendance and became increasingly evangelical. In The Richmond Theater Fire, the first book about the event and its aftermath, Meredith Henne Baker explores a forgotten catastrophe and its wide societal impact. The story of transformation comes alive through survivor accounts of slaves, actresses, ministers, and statesmen. Investigating private letters, diaries, and sermons, among other rare or unpublished documents, Baker views the event and its outcomes through the fascinating lenses of early nineteenth-century theater, architecture, and faith, and reveals a rich and vital untold story from America's past.
Author: Meredith Henne Baker
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807143758
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
On the day after Christmas in 1811, the state of Virginia lost its governor and almost one hundred citizens in a devastating nighttime fire that consumed a Richmond playhouse.The gruesome fire amplified the capital's reputation for vice and led to an upsurge in anti-theater criticism that spread throughout the country and across the Atlantic. In The Richmond Theater Fire, the first book about the event and its aftermath, Meredith Henne Baker explores a forgotten catastrophe and its wide societal impact. The story of transformation comes alive through survivor accounts of slaves, actresses, ministers, and statesmen. Investigating private letters, diaries, and sermons, among other rare or unpublished documents, Baker views the event and its outcomes through the fascinating lenses of early nineteenth-century theater, architecture, and faith, and reveals a rich and vital untold story from America's past.
Author: Nelson Lankford
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142003107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
Nelson Lankford draws upon Civil War-era diaries, letters, memoirs, and newspaper reports to vividly recapture the experiences of the men and women, both black and white, who witnessed the tumultuous fall of Richmond. In April 1865 General Robert E. Lee realized that his army must retreat from the Confederate capital and that Jefferson Davis's government must flee. As the Southern soldiers moved out they set the city on fire, leaving a blazing ruin to greet the entering Union troops. The city's fall ushered in the birth of the modern United States. Lankford's exploration of this pivotal event is at once an authoritative work of history and a stunning piece of dramatic prose.
Author: Philip Barrett
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781511876438
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 46
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Book Description
WITHIN the narrow limits of a small wooden tenement, on one of the most retired and unfrequented lanes of the city of Richmond, lives and labors our hero--blacksmith. For more than threescore years has he been pursuing, in our city, his humble calling. And though his head is "silver'd o'er with age," even now the merry ring of Gilbert's anvil may be heard at early dawn, saying to many a tardy young man--Be diligent in business. At his door hangs a sign painted in rude, uncouth letters. It is made of sheet iron; perhaps to save expense, perhaps to gratify the love of the old blacksmith for the metal which has so long yielded him a support. Here is the sign--
Author: Rachel Beanland
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982132485
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
“The perfect summer read” (USA TODAY) begins with a shocking tragedy that results in three generations of the Adler family grappling with heartbreak, romance, and the weight of family secrets over the course of one summer. *A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice * One of USA TODAY’s “Best Books of 2020” * One of Good Morning America’s “25 Novels You'll Want to Read This Summer” * One of Parade’s “26 Best Books to Read This Summer” Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to “America’s Playground” and move into the small apartment above their bakery. Despite the cramped quarters, this is the apartment where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence, and it always feels like home. Now, Florence has returned from college, determined to spend the summer training to swim the English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant again after recently losing a baby, is on bedrest for the duration of her pregnancy. After Joseph insists they take in a mysterious young woman whom he recently helped emigrate from Nazi Germany, the apartment is bursting at the seams. Esther only wants to keep her daughters close and safe but some matters are beyond her control: there’s Fannie’s risky pregnancy—not to mention her always-scheming husband, Isaac—and the fact that the handsome heir of a hotel notorious for its anti-Semitic policies, seems to be in love with Florence. When tragedy strikes, Esther makes the shocking decision to hide the truth—at least until Fannie’s baby is born—and pulls the family into an elaborate web of secret-keeping and lies, bringing long-buried tensions to the surface that reveal how quickly the act of protecting those we love can turn into betrayal. “Readers of Emma Straub and Curtis Sittenfeld will devour this richly drawn debut family saga” (Library Journal) that’s based on a true story and is a breathtaking portrayal of how the human spirit can endure—and even thrive—after tragedy.
Author: Noel Coward
Publisher: Concord Theatricals
ISBN: 9780573619250
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 68
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Book Description
Een gescheiden echtpaar ontmoet elkaar weer na vijf jaar, terwijl zij beiden op huwelijksreis zijn met hun nieuwe partner.
Author: Andrew Davis
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271030534
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428
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Book Description
America&’s Longest Run: A History of the Walnut Street Theatre traces the history of America&’s oldest theater. The Philadelphia landmark has been at or near the center of theatrical activity since it opened, as a circus, on February 2, 1809. This book documents the players and productions that appeared at this venerable house and the challenges the Walnut has faced from economic crises, changing tastes, technological advances, and competition from new media. The Walnut&’s history is a classic American success story. Built in the early years of the nineteenth century, the Walnut responded to the ever-changing tastes and desires of the theatergoing public. Originally operated as a stock company, the Walnut has offered up every conceivable form of entertainment&—pageantry and spectacle, opera, melodrama, musical theater, and Shakespeare. It escaped the wrecking ball during the Depression by operating as a burlesque house, a combination film and vaudeville house, and a Yiddish theater, before becoming the Philadelphia headquarters for the Federal Theatre Project. Because Philadelphia is located so close to New York City, the Walnut has served as a tryout house for many Broadway-bound shows, including A Streetcar Named Desire, The Diary of Anne Frank, and A Raisin in the Sun. Today, the Walnut operates as a nonprofit performing arts center. It is one of the most successful producing theaters in the country, with more than 350,000 attending performances each year.
Author: Bryant Simon
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469661373
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
For decades, the small, quiet town of Hamlet, North Carolina, thrived thanks to the railroad. But by the 1970s, it had become a postindustrial backwater, a magnet for businesses in search of cheap labor and almost no oversight. Imperial Food Products was one of those businesses. The company set up shop in Hamlet in the 1980s. Workers who complained about low pay and hazardous working conditions at the plant were silenced or fired. But jobs were scarce in town, so workers kept coming back, and the company continued to operate with impunity. Then, on the morning of September 3, 1991, the never-inspected chicken-processing plant a stone's throw from Hamlet's city hall burst into flames. Twenty-five people perished that day behind the plant's locked and bolted doors. It remains one of the deadliest accidents ever in the history of the modern American food industry. Eighty years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, industrial disasters were supposed to have been a thing of the past in the United States. However, as award-winning historian Bryant Simon shows, the pursuit of cheap food merged with economic decline in small towns across the South and the nation to devalue laborers and create perilous working conditions. The Hamlet fire and its aftermath reveal the social costs of antiunionism, lax regulations, and ongoing racial discrimination. Using oral histories, contemporary news coverage, and state records, Simon has constructed a vivid, potent, and disturbing social autopsy of this town, this factory, and this time that exposes how cheap labor, cheap government, and cheap food came together in a way that was destined to result in tragedy.
Author: Chuck Richardson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998167213
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Learn the true story of Councilman Chuck, the youngest of the five Black candidates in Richmond, Virginia, elected to the first Black majority Council in the former Capital of the Confederacy.
Author: Duane K Nelson
Publisher: Little Star
ISBN: 9781735887203
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
The history of "Virginia's Grand Motion Picture Palace," the Byrd Theatre, belongs to every movie goer who has graced her gilt doors and sat on the edge of a springy seat awaiting the rise of the mighty Wurlitzer. Seeing a show at the Byrd is now cemented in the Richmond experience, a beloved piece of the city's authentic soul. It's a tradition that nearly didn't survive. The Byrd: Miracle on Cary Street is Duane K. Nelson's behind-the-scenes account of restoring the Byrd in the 1980s to her original 1928 luster with the help of Richmond A-listers, theater front-liners, and a host of movie aficionados. Thanks to their hard work, vision, and sweat equity, seeing a show at the Byrd, and paying only a few dollars to do so, has been a treasured experience since the Byrd reopened her doors in 1984. Read the who and the how of saving the Byrd and walk down memory lane through the movies and reviews of your own Richmond experience. Nelson managed and operated the Byrd Theatre until 2007 when her future was entrusted to the Byrd Theatre Foundation. A portion of proceeds from the sale of this book will benefit their mission. Every so often God chooses an individual, gives them a purpose, and gives them a mission to perform in life. Sometimes that person is the most unqualified and undeserving person in the world. Duane K. Nelson felt that way about being, somehow, chosen to perform the mission of saving the Byrd Theatre in Richmond, Virginia. Nelson managed the Byrd Theatre from 1982 to 1989 and then owned the management operation of the Byrd Theatre for close to eighteen years. This is the story of the redevelopment, restoration, and operation of the Byrd Theatre during his twenty-five-year tenure. It is also the story of the vision and means of making that vision possible for the continuous operation and salvation of the Byrd Theatre for many years and generations to come. This story is true and includes many names of the people who contributed so much to the Byrd Theatre.
