"Maguire's New Theatre" Advertisement Broadside de Maguire, Thomas - 1876

S. l. (San Francisco): Figaro, 1876. Softcover. Small broadside, n. d. (ca 1876); 7 3/4 x 5 1/4; single sheet, printed recto only; small nick to left edge; a few scattered, light spots of foxing; very good condition.An interesting survivor of San Francisco history, the broadside advertised the Fifth Week of the Brilliant Season of the Grand English Opera Company and the performances of Lucia di Lammermoor, Fra Diavolo!, and The Marriage of Figaro. It also listed the casts and the admission prices. In 1850, Irish-American bartender and hack driver from New York City Thomas Maguire arrived in San Francisco and opened an 800-seat theater called the Jenny Lind. He would soon become a pioneer theater manager on the West Coast. It was said that Maguire was profoundly illiterate, but an excellent businessman and his elegant performances of King Lear and Hamlet, in a plush, first class playhouse, captured the hearts of theatergoers as much as the burlesque and minstrel shows, which were flourishing in the booming San Francisco. The Jenny Lind burned down in 1851 and Maguire opened Jenny Lind No. 2, which also burned, in less than a month, prompting the opening of Jenny Lind No. 3. In what was considered a scandalous deal, he sold the building to the city in 1852 and it was used as a City Hall until 1896. He would go on to acquire and manage a number of performing venues, including the San Francisco Theater, later Maguire's Opera House, the Maguire Academy of Music, the first and second Metropolitan Theaters, the Baldwin Theater, and the Alhambra, which would become Maguire's New Theatre. His downfall came when he and one of the greatest pioneers of California business ventures Elias Jackson "Lucky" Baldwin decided to produce and stage "The Passion" at the Grand Opera House in 1879. The play enraged the citizenry and the clergy community and led to San Francisco's first arts censorship battle. Statute #1493 would be passed, forbidding “any person to exhibit, or take part in exhibiting, any play or performance or representation displaying, or intended to display, the life or death of Jesus Christ..." Maguire lost the Baldwin Theater and went back to New York, where he died in 1896.