Arts & Culture
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On the former site of Tony Pastor’s Opera House, Antonio Pastor, known as the “Bowery Autocrat,” emerged as one of the legendary founders of vaudeville. Born in New York City in 1832, he sang as a child performer in P.T. Barnum’s Museum and later worked as a circus ringmaster and blackface minstrel. After the Civil War, he launched his Opera House from 1865 to 1875, where he performed, served as master of ceremonies, and booked acts including Harrigan and Hart, regarded as the fathers of American musical comedy. In contrast to the raucous variety shows of saloons, his productions opened with the “Star Spangled Banner” and were deliberately kept clean and suitable for women and children, with drinking, smoking, and rude language banned. In this way, he can be said to have invented vaudeville, although he never used the word himself.
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