Astor Place Riot

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The Astor Place Riot occurred May 10, 1849 at the Astor Place Opera House in New York City, resulting in 22 killed and at least 38 injured. It was the deadliest to that date of a number of civic disturbances pitting the poor against the upper classes (who controlled the police and militia) in the urban United States of the 19th century, particularly in Manhattan.

The Bowery Theatre had opened in Manhattan in 1826. By the late 1840s it catered mostly to a working class audience from the notorious, immigrant-heavy Five Points section of lower Manhattan a few blocks to the west. Its lead actor was Edwin Forrest, whose muscular frame and impassioned delivery was deemed admirably "American" by the Bowery B'hoys and other working-class groups. Wealthier theatergoers, to avoid mingling with the immigrants and the Five Points crowd, had built the Astor Place Opera House on the corner of Broadway and Astor Place in 1847, a twelve minute walk to the north of The Bowery Theatre. The new theater, with its high ticket prices and dress code requiring kid gloves for men, was already a symbol of classism and Anglophilia to many New Yorkers of modest means but energetic patriotism.

Forrest had recently completed a European tour, which had primarily been a failure in large part due to the actions of William Charles Macready, a former friend and competing actor. Macready then came to New York to perform Macbeth in the Astor Place Theater. In competition, the Bowery Theater decided to offer Macbeth on the same nights, starring Forrest in the leading role.

On May 7, 1849, the first night of the performances, an unruly mob of Forrest fans infiltrated the audience at the Astor Place Theater and pelted Macready with rotten eggs, potatoes, old shoes and an open bottle of a liquid believed to have been asafetida, which is nicknamed "devil's dung" for its penetrating stench. Macready completed the performance but decided not to complete the run until he was convinced to do so by a petition signed by well-heeled New Yorkers including authors Herman Melville and Washington Irving. On May 10 he took the stage again.

The crowd began gathering early in the day. By the time of the performance, over 20,000 people filled the streets around the theater.

Reported the New York Tribune: "As one window after another cracked, the pieces of bricks and paving stones rattled in on the terraces and lobbies, the confusion increased, till the Opera House resembled a fortress besieged by an invading army rather than a place meant for the peaceful amusement of civilized community." The police force could not quell the riots so the National Guard from the Seventh Regiment, already mobilized and prepared, was called in. Most of the rioters did not disperse even as the soldiers assumed the firing position. To the surprise of many, even among the soldiers, the order was quickly given to fire directly into the crowd.

The next night, May 11, a large gathering developed in City Hall Park, with some crying out for revenge against the men whose petition led to the fatalities at the "Massacre Place Opera House". On this occasion, however, cooler heads prevailed and another fourteen years would pass until Manhattan saw rioting on this scale again in the Draft Riots of 1863. [1][2]

[edit] Depictions in Literature

The riot is a key turning point in the plot of Anya Seton's novel Dragonwyck (1944). The Interpretation of Murder (2006) by Jed Rubenfield contains discussion with Sigmund Freud about an Astor Place Riot in which he incorrectly suggests that theater goers rioted over whether Hamlet should be a feminine or masculine character. The book is a work of historical fiction.