Hammerstein’s Victoria
The New Place of Entertainment Opened with Every Promise of Success

Hammerstein’s Victoria, the new vaudeville theatre at West Forty-second Street and Seventh Avenue, was opened last night with evey promise of success. Everybody was there who could reasonably have been expected to go there. The audience filled every seat and crowded the capacious lounge back of the orchestra stalls. A list of selected names would be quite superfluous. Even the gallery was filled with well-dressed women and men in evening dress

An excerpt from the New York Times’ write-up of the Victoria Theatre’s opening night in March of 1899

(credit: American Theatre Architecture Archive, Theatre Historical Society of America)