#467 The Brooklyn Theatre Fire: The Forgotten Gilded Age Tragedy

On the evening of December 5, 1876, the glorious Brooklyn Theatre caught fire, trapping its audience in a nightmare of flame and smoke. The theater sat near Brooklyn City Hall (today's Brooklyn Borough Hall), and the blaze which destroyed it could be seen as far away as Prospect Park.

The terrible truth emerged by the morning -- almost 300 people died in this disaster. To this day, it remains the worst disaster in Brooklyn's history in terms of lives lost. Of individual one-day disasters in New York City, only the attacks on the World Trade Center and the General Slocum disaster have taken more lives.

But you wouldn't know it from walking through Cadman Plaza today, a bustling public area popular with skateboarders and office workers on lunch breaks. Several historic monuments decorate the plaza today -- but none mark this troubling event in Brooklyn's history.

It's a tragic story that also gives us a glimpse into daily life in Gilded Age Brooklyn. And this is a story of the theater world as well -- of a popular play which took American culture by storm, and of an actress whose reputation would be forever linked with the disaster. Why was star Kate Claxton unfairly called "the fire witch" in the press?

Visit our website for many images and illustrations from this tragic event.

This episode was edited by Kieran Gannon.