Annual Report FY 2007 - The Music Hall, Portsmouth

THE HISTORY OF THE MUSIC HALL
In 1878 a group of Seacoast residents, including a banker, a railroad executive, a lawyer, a
house wife, and a clergyman, all members of the prominent Peirce family, joined together to rebuild
Portsmouth’s only venue for entertainment, which had burned to the ground the year before. “The
Temple,” as the theater was called, had once been a Baptist Meeting House where abolitionist
Frederick Douglass spoke. Before that, it was the site of the country’s first Alms House as well as a
prison. The land surrounding the charred lot was owned by the family.
Following the fire on Christmas Eve of 1876, the Peirces knew what we still hold to be true, “a
community is known to some extent by the character and place of its amusements,” a sentiment
echoed on The Music Hall’s opening night in a speech by Sen. W.H.Y Hackett. The opening
celebration on January 30, 1878, was followed by the sold-out performance of two well-known
British farces, Caste and John Wopps, brought up from Boston.
For the next few decades The Music Hall brought the community opera, drama, dance and
traditional vaudeville fare from as far away as Europe and as close as our own community players.
The famed D’Oyly Carte Company (Gilbert & Sullivan) performed Pirates of Penzance within weeks
of its US premiere, and countless Shakespearean actors known around the world graced The Music
Hall stage, including Margaret Mather, Thomas W. Keene and John Drew. Buffalo Bill Cody and his
Wild West show performed its smaller indoor show numerous times, and Portsmouth saw its very
first moving pictures on Edison’s Graphophone here in 1898.
Broadway was well represented, with performances of Peter Pan, Wizard of Oz and No, No, Nanette
among many other shows that came to the theater within the first weeks of leaving “the great white
way” in New York City. As is true today, The Music Hall was also dedicated to providing support for
local organizations to raise money and awareness through the arts. Groups such as The Masons,
the Portsmouth Athletic Club and The Chase Home for Children produced local benefits to raise
money for their various causes.
In 1901 The Music Hall’s new owner, the politician-brewer-railroad baron Frank Jones, envisioned
and executed its first renovation. The theater, now endowed with a proscenium arch and stage
house, remained a central feature of the downtown area through the mid 1920’s.
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