The story of the Sun, New York: 1833-1928 / by Frank M. O'Brien ; with an introduction by Edward Page Mitchell ...

CHAPTER V
NEW YORK LIFE IN THE THIRTIES
A Sprightly City Which Daily Bought Thirty Thousand
Copies of the "Sun." —The Rush to Start Penny
Papers.-Day Sells the "Sun" to Moses Y. Beach
for Forty Thousand Dollars.
O dull city, that New York of Ben Day's time!
Almost a dozen theaters of the first class were
running. The Bowery, the first playhouse in America
to have a stage lighted with gas, had already been twice
burned and rebuilt. The Park, which saw the American
debut of Macready, Edwin Forrest, and James H.
Hackett, was offering such actors as Charles Kean,
Charles and Fanny Kemble, Charles Mathews, Sol Smith,
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wood, and Master Joseph Burke,
the Irish Roscius. Forrest, then talked of as a candidate for Congress, was the favorite of New York. On
his appearance, said a Sun review of his acting in "King
Lear," the audience uttered "the roar of seven thunders."
There was vaudeville to be enjoyed at Niblo's Garden,
a circus at Vauxhall Garden. Drama held the boards at
the Olympic and the National. The Franklin was one
of the new theaters. It was in Chatham Street, between
James and Oliver, and it was there that Barney Williams,
the Sun's pioneer newsboy, made his first stage appearance, as a jig dancer, when he was fifteen years old.
Charlotte Cushman, Hackett, Forrest, and Sol Smith
were the leading American actors of that day, although
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