1880s Program/CIRCUS Acts in FOLIES PARISIENNE/Koster & Bial's Concert Hall NYC

Description

Program (just over 7 ¼” by 10 ¼”) for the Folies Parisiennes at Koster & Bial’s Concert Hall in New York City, circa 1885. The cover of the program folder is printed in color and shows a theatre stage with text that reads Koster & Bial’s Concert Hall, Folies Parisiennes, Every Evening, and Wednesday & Saturday Afternoons, Other Afternoons, Musical Entertainments. The first interior page gives a little information about the theatre, its restaurants and bowling alley, and their wholesale beer and lager business, followed by several advertisments for pianos and shirts. The facing page has the program for their Folies Parisiennes, a variety show that featured musical performances combined with some popular circus acts of the period. There were four parts to the show, each ending with a circus act. The Elliotts performed twice. The program lists their acts as The Elliott’s, in their great Unicycle Act; and The Elliott’s, in their great Bicycle Act and Patent Revolving Table. The other two circus acts were Mlle. Jeanette Dorina and Sig. Famera Rigoli, Trapeze Artists from Cirque Hippodrome in Paris; and Messrs. Lauck & Fox, The greatest Somersaultists living, in their astonishing performance on the Three Silver Bars. All of these acts were popular circus performers in the 1880s. The back cover of the program has about a dozen advertisements from businesses located near the theatre on West 23
rd
Street in Manhattan. This came from a scrapbook assembled by J. Arthur Atwood of Wauregan, Connecticut, dating to his years as a student at Yale College in the mid 1880s. He frequently attended the theaters of New York City in these years, and I’m confident that this undated program is from that time, say around 1885. The program is in only good condition with a horizontal crease down the middle from being folded in half, with a couple of lighter creases above and below when it was folded again (to fit in a pocket perhaps). There are some minor edge tears and small holes at the spine fold and these other fold marks but no major flaws otherwise. A very nice early variety show program with acrobatic circus acts!