It wasn’t the biggest theater in New Orleans. It wasn’t the most modern, either.
But from 1875 to the early 1890s, the venerable playhouse on St. Charles Avenue between Canal and Poydras streets was the center of the universe for a nation’s worth of dreamers.
It was the Academy of Music at 414 St. Charles Ave., and it was where the Louisiana State Lottery Company — the old, notoriously corrupt enterprise known as “the Golden Octopus” for its method of getting into the pocketbooks of families from coast to coast — staged a regular spectacle at which winning numbers were drawn.
“Not many institutions can claim a record for more joy, suffering, delight, madness, greed or charity than the famous lottery exercised in its twenty-five years of existence,” The Times-Picayune wrote in a 1920 article reflecting on the lottery’s legacy. “Its patrons and supporters stretched across the continent. In Montreal and Seattle men and women bought tickets as feverishly as they did in St. Charles street and at every cigar store in the city of New Orleans, or from the ticket peddlers who cried their wares on the streets.”
An image of the old Academy of Music theater on St. Charles, as published in 1873 in ‘Jewell’s Crescent City Illustrated.’ The old theater, which would later be renamed the Audubon Theatre, was the site of major drawings for the Louisiana State Lottery, a stage spectacle eagerly monitored by hopeful ticketholders around the country.
A major spectacle
The drawing of the winning numbers was a show most ticketholders wouldn’t witness in person; the theater had room for only 1,800 souls. But it was nonetheless an electrifying bit of stagecraft.
Early in the lottery’s history, drawings were held in various theaters around town or in the lottery’s three-story office building on St. Charles, on the site of the present-day United Fruit Building, where lottery organizers built out a hall to host their small-stakes daily drawings.
But for the more lucrative “golden” drawings — with grand prizes of $100,000 or more — they needed a suitably grand stage. For that, they chose the nearby Academy of Music.
It would for years be a place where dreams were made — and shattered.
“There would be a rustle as the whole audience leaned forward tensely, and a sigh as the winner was announced,” The Times-Picayune wrote.
A sketch published in 1893 in The Times-Picayune shows one of the box seats in the newly refurbished Academy of Music theater on St. Charles Avenue.
Made of brick with Moorish-influenced elements, the three-story theater building was built in 1853 by George C. Lawrason for theater impresario David Bidwell.
Starting with a circus
In its first season, The Amphitheater, as it was originally known, was largely turned over to circus man Dan Rice, who, in addition to booking traditional shows on the theater’s portable stage, also hosted equestrian performances.
The next year, Bidwell transformed it into a proper show hall. “The sawdust was swept out and the stage remodeled, the name Amphitheater changed to Pelican Theater, and the already popular playhouse became the home of comedy,” The Picayune wrote.
In 1856, coinciding with Bidwell’s taking on of new partners, it was rechristened the Academy of Music, which — in addition to a small second-story museum of curiosities and natural oddities — also boasted a fancy new steam-powered air-conditioning system.
In addition to being popular, it was conveniently located almost directly across the street from the lottery building. So, in December 1875, lottery brass installed their massive new twin-wheeled drawing contraption in the theater for a grand Christmas Day drawing. Some 2,580 prizes were distributed that day, including a $100,000 grand prize.
1800s-style tech
It was a showman’s fever dream.
Both wheels were hollow and made of glass. The larger, measuring 5 feet across, was filled with 100,000 numbered, rolled-up slips of paper. The smaller wheel was filled with additional rolled-up slips, each with a prize amount written on it.
When the time came to pick numbers, the wheels were spun around and around by a man of imposing size as a band played. In an attempt to lend it all an air of credibility, two former Confederate generals — P.G.T. Beauregard and Jubal A. Early — were hired to oversee the affair.
“The theater would be filled to the doors on these occasions, with the wealthy and the elite, gorgeously garbed, making a gala festival of the occasion,” The Picayune wrote. “Up near the roof, the poorer patrons crowded, revealing more frankly the tense suspense and coventousness that the social eclat concealed beneath a veneer of form.”
Then, the spinning wheels were stopped and two blindfolded boys from a local orphanage were led out. At a signal, each plunged a hand into one of the wheels and extracted a slip.
Those ticketholders holding the same number as that on the first slip would win the prize indicated on the second slip.
The drawings would continue for hours, until the prize wheel was exhausted, at which point the winning numbers were wired across the country.
As dramatic as it was, that version of the Louisiana Lottery was also exceedingly corrupt. By the time its initial 25-year charter was up in 1893, public opinion had soured and it was stopped.
An image of the Audubon Theatre, previously the old Academy of Music theater on St. Charles, as published in 1902 in photographer John N. Teunisson’s ‘Photographic Glimpses of New Orleans.’ During the days of the old Louisiana State Lottery, the building hosted spectacular drawings for the lottery’s bigger prizes.
A short reprise
The Academy of Music building, remodeled in 1893, would continue hosting shows into the new century, even after getting new owners and a new name, the Audubon Theatre, around 1901.
Then, on Feb. 11, 1903, a fire erupted backstage shortly before 7 p.m. The old theater would go out with one last spectacle.
“The last curtain of the old Academy of Music came down last night in a great red blaze,” The Picayune wrote in the following morning’s editions, “and now there are only embers and puffed brick walls and black splinters.”
After sitting vacant for two years, the remnants of the building — as well as those of the Phoenix House restaurant next door — were finally cleared away. In their place, the German-themed Rathskeller restaurant opened in 1905, which was a popular nightspot for years — until it became a victim of Prohibition in 1921.
Today, the site is occupied by the InterContinental New Orleans hotel.
Sources: The Times-Picayune archive; “Jewell’s Crescent City Illustrated;” “History of New Orleans,” by John Kendall.
Know of a New Orleans building worth profiling in this column, or just curious about one? Contact Mike Scott at moviegoermike@gmail.com.
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