Odeon, Boston

The Odeon (1835-c. 1846) of Boston, Massachusetts, was a lecture and concert hall on Federal Street in the building also known as the Boston Theatre.[1][2] The 1,300-seat auditorium measured "50 feet square" with "red moreen"-upholstered "seats arranged in a circular order, and above them ... spacious galleries."[3] The Boston Academy of Music occupied the Odeon in the 1830s and 1840s[4] Notable events at the Odeon included "the first performance in Boston of a Beethoven symphony."[5]

Odeon, Boston, 19th century

Detail of 1838 map of Boston, showing Odeon on Federal St.

Events

1830s

• Samuel A. Elliot opening address[3]
• Joseph Story "on the life and professional character of the late Chief Justice Marshall"[6]
• William Apess lecture[7]
• James Madison memorial[6]
• William Ellery Channing lecture[8]
• Charles Zeuner concert
• Edward Everett lecture[9]
• A.E. Grimké lecture[10]
• Samuel J. May lecture[10]
• Ralph Waldo Emerson lecture[10][11]
• Society for the Prevention of Pauperism meeting[6]

1840s

• Musical Convention[12]
• Boston Children's Friend Society fundraiser[6]
• Massachusetts Temperance Union meeting[6]
• Boston Brigade Band concert[13]
• George Lunt presentation[14]
• Edgar Allan Poe reading[15]

References

1. Boston Athenaeum. "Theater History: Boston Theatre (1794-1852), Federal and Franklin Streets". Retrieved 2012-03-27.
2. Boston Almanac. 1841
3. "The Boston Academy of Music". The Family Minstrel. 1 (15). Sep 1, 1835.
4. Boston Academy of Music. Annual Report. 1836, 1844
5. Samuel A. Eliot (1936–1941). "Being Mayor of Boston a Hundred Years Ago". Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Third Series. 66.
6. American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series 1
7. Eulogy on King Philip, as pronounced at the Odeon, in Federal Street, Boston, by the Rev. William Apess, an Indian, January 8, 1836 (2nd ed.), Boston: The author, 1837, OCLC 4332979, OL 24166555M
8. Sponsored by the Massachusetts Temperance Society. Larry A. Carlson. "Bronson Alcott's 'Journal for 1837' (Part One)." Studies in the American Renaissance, (1981), pp. 27-132
9. Edward Everett (1838). An address, delivered before the Mercantile Library Association, at the Odeon in Boston, September 13, 1838. Boston: W. D. Ticknor.
10. Larry A. Carlson. "Bronson Alcott's 'Journal for 1838' (Part One)." Studies in the American Renaissance, (1993), pp. 161-244
11. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1924). War : an address before the American Peace Society at the Odeon, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1838. Washington, D.C.: American Peace Society.
12. The Musical Magazine (Boston) no.38, June 6, 1840
13. Boston Daily Atlas, Feb. 16, 1843
14. George Lunt. Culture: a poem delivered before the Mercantile Library Association, at the Odeon, in Boston, October 3, 1843. Boston, W. D. Ticknor & Company, 1843.
15. Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8154-1038-7

Further reading

• Bowen, Abel (1838), Bowen's Picture of Boston, Boston: Otis, Broaders and company, OCLC 5204074, OL 6905756M
• Michael Broyles. "Music and Class Structure in Antebellum Boston." Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 451–493