
Originally Posted by
Derek2k3
Chickering Hall
437 Fifth Avenue, northwest corner of 18th Street
The address listed is not correct (number 437 Fifth is near 38th Street).
Chickering Hall was located at 130 Fifth Avenue (aka 1 West 18th Street).
Some of the other entertainment venues in the area around that same time (circa 1885):MUSEUMS & THEATRES, AND OTHER PLACES OF AMUSEMENT.
Academy of Design, Fourth Ave. and 23d.
Academy of Music, Irving Pl. and 14th.
Bijou Opera House, Broadway and 30th.
Casino, Broadway and 39th.
Chickering Hall, Fifth Ave. and 18th.
Daly's Theatre, Broadwayand 30th.
Eden Musee, 23d and Sixth Ave.
Fifth Avenue Theatre, Broadway and 28th.
Fourteenth Street Theatre, 14th bet. Sixth and Seventh Aves.
Grand Opera House, Eighth Ave. and 23d.
Harrigan's Park Theatre, Broadway and 35th.
Koster and Bial's, 23d and Sixth Ave.
Lyceum Theatre, Fourth Ave. and 23d.
>>> NYC buildings which housed some of the institutions listed above:
National Academy of Design
The Academy was housed in the building seen below from at least 1861 to 1863, and most likely until the 1870s (the building was patterned after the Doge's Palace in Venice).
This FLYER from @ 1868 shows the building to be at "The corner of Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue" (That stretch of Fourth Avenue is now Park Avenue South; the Academy is now housed at 1083 Fifth Avenue):


National Academy of Design, NYC 1861 (Arch.: Peter Bonnett Wight)
Some additional images, both of the full Academy building and some details of same HERE

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The Academy of Music
14th Street, NYC

Academy of Music, 1870
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The Bijou Theatre, 1239 Broadway at 30th Street (circa 1909; opened as the Brighton Theatre, 1878). The site is now a narrow ~ 16-story building in the heart of the knick-knack-alley stretch of Broadway below Herald Square.
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The Casino Theatre, 1404 Broadway -- opposite the old Metropolitan Opera House (Constructed 1882, burned 1906 and reconstructed; demolished 1930).

A larger image of the photo of the Casino. The Musical comedy Revival then advertised on the marquee, The Belle of New York, had a very short run of 24 performances in the winter of 1900.
Experience, "a play with music in three acts" ran at the Casino from January 11, 1915 through May 19, 1915 ...

"Casino Theatre, Street Scene" (1915) © Bettmann/CORBIS
More info on the Casino.
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Daly's Theatre, 1868-1880
24th St. (5th and Madison), New York, NY
(Later Hoyt's Theatre, previously the Fifth Avenue Opera House, 1865)
Built: 1865 Demolished: 1908

In 1865, the Christy Minstrels converted an illegal stock exchange (adjacent to the Fifth Avenue Hotel) into a theatre. Later, Augustin Daly managed it from 1869 to 1873, when it burned down, only to be rebuilt in 1877. Steele MacKaye renovated it and renamed it the Madison Square in 1879, and it boasted a number of theatrical innovations, including gas lights, folding chairs, and a primitive version of air-conditioning. It was razed in 1908 and replaced by an office building.
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The Eden Musee
55 West 23rd Street, NY
The Eden Musee Collection
The Eden Musee’ was founded in 1883 and was located on Twenty-third street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues in Manhattan. A popular destination point for visitors to New York City for over thirty years it was America’s answer to Madame Tussaud’s Waxwork in London.
In December of 1915 the Manhattan site closed, a victim of changing times and urban development and an abridged version opened at Coney Island. Sadly what remained of the original collection burned at Coney Island in February 1932.
Our Eden Musee’ Collection is an attempt to recapture and preserve the style and feeling of this once great American waxworks. We have made no attempts to restrict ourselves to exhibits described in the surviving guidebooks, but rather have created a series of effigies that would have been contemporary during its Manhattan heyday, making this series an homage to this mighty exhibition rather than a slavish, historical reproduction.

The Eden Musée, a three-story architectural hodgepodge of arches, pilasters, and ormolu at 55 West Twenty-third Street, was opened to the public in 1884 ... The sponsors of the Musée, a predominantly French syndicate founded by Count Kessler and headed by a New Yorker named Richard G. Hollaman — achieved a prose style as unctuous as an undertaker's in describing their establishment. It was, their advertisements proclaimed, "a Temple of Art without rival in this country, affording to all an opportunity for instruction, amusement and recreation, without the risk of coming into contact with anything or anybody that is vulgar or offensive." James Huneker, the critic, writing in the Times, once called the Musée the world's greatest assemblage of the "ludicrous and horrible." The public, tutored by its horse-car conductors, took to calling the place Moosie.
http://blog.chess.com/batgirl
The Eden Musee, circa 1900:

straatis, flickr
Eden Musee as commemorated at the NY Botanical Garden:

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
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Grand Opera House
NW corner of Eighth Avenue & 23rd Street
Built 1868; razed 1960

© Bettmann/CORBIS

Photo by Berenice Abbott, from the New York Public Library (1937).
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Harrigan's Park Theatre
67 West 35th Street
Architect: Francis Hatch Kimball
Built: 1890 Demolished: 1932
A parking structure until 2006, on this site is now a Peter Poon / Hilton Garden Inn

Harrigan's Theatre
Built by Edward Harrigan (of Harrigan & Hart), who managed until 1895, when Richard Mansfield took over, renaming it the Garrick. Charles Frohman assumed management in 1896, staying until in 1915. The Shuberts bought it in 1916 and leased it to Otto Kahn, who named it Theatre du Vieux Columbier (for an avant-garde French company). Later, he gave it to the Theatre Guild. The Shuberts resumed management in 1925. After three years of burlesque, it was razed in 1932.
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Koster and Bial's Music Hall
135 West 34th Street
Built: 1892; Razed: 1901

Origins of Business, flickr
The "lounge" at Koster & Bial's, 1892:

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Lyceum Theatre
Fourth Avenue & West 23rd Street
Built: 1884; Demolished: 1902
Final Performance: March 22, 1902
Replaced by what is now the oldest legitimate theater in NYC,
the grand & glorious New Lyceum on West 45th Street
just east of Broadway (recent home to "Title of Show")
*o*/\*o*
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