In the first decade of the 20th century, Henry Street Settlement hosted arts classes in the dining room at the Settlement’s headquarters and in the gym at 303 Henry Street. Students took dance, music, and ceramics lessons. These classes lay the groundwork for future arts education programs at the Abrons Arts Center.
Lilian Wald, the founder of Henry Street Settlement, believed that the arts are essential to well-being, and that all people, regardless of income, should have access to the arts.
Music class in the dining room at Henry Street’s headquarters, 1910. Henry Street Settlement archives
In the first decade of the 20th century, Henry Street Settlement hosted arts classes in the dining room at the Settlement’s headquarters and in the gym at 303 Henry Street. Students took dance, music, and ceramics lessons. These classes lay the groundwork for future arts education programs at the Abrons Arts Center.
Lilian Wald, the founder of Henry Street Settlement, believed that the arts are essential to well-being, and that all people, regardless of income, should have access to the arts.
Music class in the dining room at Henry Street’s headquarters, 1910. Henry Street Settlement archives
In 1915, philanthropist sisters Alice Lewisohn (1883–1972) and Irene Lewisohn (1892–1944) bought a lot on the corner of Grand and Pitt Streets in New York City’s Lower East Side and founded the Neighborhood Playhouse Theater. The modest three-story red brick structure, designed by architects Harry C. Ingalls and F. Burrall Hoffman, Jr., showed both motion pictures and theatrical performances.
Street-view of the Neighborhood Playhouse Theater, Library of Congress
Many of the earliest productions at the Playhouse were in Yiddish, the language of the Settlement’s Jewish neighbors. While some settlements prioritized assimilation into American culture, Henry Street’s founder Lillian Wald believed immigrants' cultures and languages are to be celebrated. Taking a radical approach at the turn of the 20th century, Henry Street provided immigrants with resources and tools to succeed in their new home, but did not push assimilation as the ultimate goal.
Playbill from Aynzame Menshen, 1916, NYPL
In 1917, Harlem Renaissance journalist, teacher, playwright, and poet Angelina Weld Grimké’s play “Rachel” was performed at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Originally funded by the NAACP and known as one of the first plays by a Black playwright with an all-Black cast performed for an integrated audience, “Rachel” primarily aimed to educate white audiences about the truth of racial violence in America.
The NAACP, which had formed 8 years earlier, was connected to Henry Street Settlement's work throughout that decade. In 1909, one of the earliest meetings of the NAACP's founding members took place in the dining room at the Settlement headquarters. Attendees included W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Jane Addams.
Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre collection
By 1920, the Playhouse became renowned for its avant-garde productions, often incorporating dance, music, and poetry, and for its popular revue, The Grand Street Follies. This vibrant, daring satirical production opened in 1922 and returned annually through the end of the decade.
Many early 20th century modern dancers and artists found a professional home at the Neighborhood Playhouse, including Martha Graham and composers Ernest Bloch, Kurt Schindler, and Louis Horst. Other notables whose works were produced at the Neighborhood Playhouse include Agnes de Mille, Laura Elliott, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. This experimental theater and two other off-Broadway “little theaters” (Providence Playhouse and Washington Square Players) were to form the foundation for modern American performance.
Billy Rose Theatre Division, NYPL. "Grand Street Follies" NYPL Digital Collections
The Playhouse acting company officially disbanded in 1927 and the building was renamed the Henry Street Playhouse. The Lewisohn sisters and Rita Wallach Morganthau went on to establish the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in 1928. Irene Lewisohn would also found the Museum of Costume Art in 1937, which would later merge with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is now known famously as the Met Costume Institute.
The interior of the Neighborhood Playhouse Theater at 466 Grand Street. Henry Street Settlement archives
In 1938, it was the site of the premiere of Aaron Copland’s opera The Second Hurricane, directed by Orson Welles.
In 1946, famed folk singer Jean Ritchie teaches music to 8 to 10-year-olds at Henry Street Settlement's music school.
Jean teaches a game at the Henry Street Settlement. George Pickow and Jean Ritchie Collection
In 1948, Alwin Nikolais was appointed director of the Henry Street Playhouse, where he formed the Playhouse Dance Company, later renamed and known as the Nikolais Dance Theatre. It was at Henry Street that Nikolais began to develop his own world of abstract dance theatre, portraying man as part of a total environment. Nikolais redefined dance, as “the art of motion which, left on its own merits, becomes the message as well as the medium”. It was also at the Henry Street Playhouse that Mr. Nikolais was joined by Murray Louis, who was to become a driving force in the Playhouse Company, Nikolais’ leading dancer, and longtime collaborator.
Nikolais & Murray Louis Dance. Henry Street Settlement Archives
In 1970, the New Federal Theatre (NFT) was founded by Woodie King, Jr., originally funded by the Henry Street Settlement along with a small grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. The theatre has maintained its production and training programs at Henry Street Settlement’s Abrons Arts Center.
The 1975 addition to the Abrons Arts Center was designed by architect Lo Yi Chan of the firm Prentice & Chan, Ohlhausen. The architects sought to sensitively respond to the scale, proportion and mass of the older structure without imitating the neo-classical style of the Playhouse.
Henry Street Settlement restored both the interior and exterior of the Playhouse in the 1996 and 2015.
