EP 6.13

EP 6.13

So what happened to the Opera House? Well, as I’ve mentioned before, it was turned into a place of commerce, and purely commerce. Plays ran for close to another year, and this is where the newspaper records get really fuzzy. Some say plays are still going, and some say that construction has started on the building already, overlapping in dates and not making a lot of sense. As far as I can tell the building was finally sold to the New York Mercantile Library association around June of 1853, purchasing the furniture along with the building, and by late 1854 patrons were storming the building ready to discover what lay in its depths. Of course, not anyone with a job though, as this Libraries hours were even more restrictive than the Astor Library and it was a membership only Library for a long time, including its time it occupied the Astor Place Opera House, that the association would rename to “Clinton Hall”, an interesting name I have never found an explanation for. This association chose to fill their new building with some even more interesting “Societies” of the time, such as, the American Bible Society, the American Board of commissioners for foreign Missions, the American Home Missionary Society, the Episcopal Foreign Mission Board, and the last society that I find very, VERY interesting. The Children’s Aid Society, who’s secretary was Charles Loring Brace. You may have heard of him and the Children’s Aid Society, the organization still in operation today and often credited with forming the Child Welfare System as we know it, for better, or worse. Another thing they are also known for, in certain corners of the internet, is something colloquially known as the “Orphan Trains”. A system of Child Welfare in operation from 1854 to 1929, when it was finally stopped because of public scrutiny. But during those 70 years, this one organization alone accomplished to traffic an estimated 250,000 children from the American east, to the American Mid-West, mostly funded by the NPC Class and United States Government.