History:
Built in 1910, the Fitzgerald Theater is Saint Paul's oldest surviving theater space. Originally called the Sam S. Shubert Theater, it was one of four special memorial theaters erected by entertainment-industry magnates Lee and J. J. Shubert after the death of their brother Sam, this was to be a particularly elegant building, patterned after the renowned Maxine Elliot Theater in New York.
The theater was built on the heels of the Industrial Revolution and in the early stages of the Progressive Era. At the time, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and Minnesota’s James J. Hill were some of the most powerful businessmen in the country. When the Shubert Theater was built in 1910, Hill was 72 years old, worth $53 million and living in his mansion on Summit Avenue, a street lined with other Victorian and Georgian Revival-style mansions.
It was a time when industry was expanding and there was an increasingly edgy examination of American society. The Minnesota State Fair hosted the National Conservation Congress where President Taft spoke to thousands of people who gathered to discuss their concern that the country was wasting its natural resources. In addition to conservation, several other social issues dominated public conversation. The middle-class wanted social justice, political reform and better working conditions, and journalists worked to expose corruption.
So, it’s no surprise that the first production staged at the Sam S. Shubert Theater in St. Paul was “The Fourth Estate,” a Joseph Medill Patterson and Harriet Ford play about a reporter working for a major metropolitan newspaper who found himself in court fighting the influence of powerful advertisers.
Full page spreads in St. Paul’s major publications, “The Daily News” and the “St. Paul Pioneer Press,” eagerly anticipated the theater’s opening night on Monday, August 29th, 1910. The articles lauded the theater’s lush and sophisticated design. The Shubert Theater was striving to be “the handsomest, the most safe, the most hygienic and most comfortable in the Northwest.” One reporter wrote that it “succeeded beyond a shadow of a doubt.” It was constructed of concrete and steel with a sandstone facade, complete with 16 dressing rooms, a stage that could be raised or lowered by two feet, a built in vacuum-cleaning system and nearly 2,000 electric lights.
The theater’s dramatic architecture was ideal for vaudeville productions, the most popular form of entertainment in the country. Vaudeville made a commitment to polite entertainment that didn’t offend women and children; comedians, singers, dancers, acrobats, ventriloquists and others captivated audiences with pure showmanship. Theatergoers could pay between a quarter and $1.50 for a seat to see famous stars like Maxine Elliott, E.H. Southern and Julia Marlowe.
While urban areas were booming, out-state areas were struggling. 1910 was a particularly dry year; in Minnesota, a fire destroyed the cities of Baudette, Spooner, Graceton, Pitt, Cedar Spur and Williams, killing 29 people and burning nearly 300,000 acres of land. Across the country, one of the largest fires i recorded U.S. history burned for 2 days across Idaho and Montana, charring more than 3 million acres of land.
