This friend happened to be Abraham Minsky (1882-1949), the oldest of the legendary Minsky burlesque brothers. Now, Abe Minsky did not have a penny to his name, as he loved gambling and womanizing a little too much. Louis Minsky had made a fortune in dry goods and real estate. Pa Minsky must have immediately recognized that the old church was an excellent real estate investment. There were few lots of this size on the market and if the new theatre was a success, he could resell it at a profit. At the same time, as a devout Jew and prominent member of the Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, he was not particularly thrilled by the idea of setting up his son in the entertainment business. Perhaps he also felt a little uncomfortable about turning a church into a theatre. Yet in the end, Louis Minsky bought the property for the nice sum of $96,000 (the equivalent of $2,600,000 today). The legal documents reveal that he was not very picky about his partners: financial backing came from the notorious “kosher chicken czar” and Tammany District leader Martin Engel, who owned several brothels and concert saloons in downtown Manhattan. With a couple of minor alterations, the former church was converted into a vaudeville and moving picture theatre. The walls were painted, the pulpit gave way to a small stage, and the organ loft became the projection booth. Steiner and Minsky kept the old wooden church pews, which could easily seat up to 450 people. Over the next few years, the racks that once held hymnals would be frequently used for storing the bagels, salamis, knishes, and other snacks that audiences brought with them to eat during the show. On December 3, 1909, the opening of their “Houston Hippodrome” was announced in the Yiddish press. The new music hall was an instant success.įor five cents in the afternoon and ten cents at night, patrons were promised the best moving pictures, which alternated with vaudeville acts in Yiddish and English. In a way, its opening marked the beginning of the new Yiddish theatre district on Second Avenue. Two years later, Louis Minsky would, with Max D. Steuer, develop the million-dollar National Theatre at 111 East Houston Street, only two blocks west of the Houston Hippodrome. David Kessler had already left the Bowery for Second Avenue in 1911.
Noteworthy: Minsky’s business partner in this property development was, again, a man whose reputation on the East Side was pretty bad.
THE YEAR 1999 NEXTIME TRIAL
Steuer was the trial lawyer who had successfully defended the owners of the Triangle Waist Company from manslaughter charges after a factory fire killed 146 garment workers, many of them young Jewish women. Initially, a show at the Houston Hippodrome contained a mix of short movies, comic sketches, dramatic scenes, one-act plays, songs and dances, perhaps with an additional animal act, juggler or acrobat. In the fall of 1910, Steiner and Minsky decided to add three-act melodramas to the bill – initially only during day-time, but later also on weekday nights. By early 1911, Houston Hippodrome offered two (!) new plays per week.
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