Anne E. Conable, St. James Hall and the Buffalo Library History - One M&T Plaza site
Saint James Hall
 Illustration source: The Picture Book of Earlier Buffalo,
Frank H. Severance, ed. Buffalo Historical Society
Publications,Vol. 16, 1912, p. 232 Buffalo's first theater building, the Eagle
Street Theater, was built by Albert Brisbane
of Batavia on the southwest corner of Washington and Eagle.
Opened on July 20,1835, it was constructed in the style of
the leading theaters of Europe. (A log cabin was built in 1840 on the southeast corner of Main and Eagle [next door to the east of the Eagle Street Theater]. It was part of the successful Whig campaign to elect William Henry Harrison as President and John Tyler, Vice President. Over the cabin was a banner, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too.") The Eagle Street Theater
was destroyed by fire on May 11, 1852. The walls of the
building were used in construction of
St.
James Hall in 1853.
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Eagle Street Theater In the same year the railroad was built, 1836,
Buffalo got a new theater The press hailed the new Eagle
Street Theatre as the city's "grandest building, grand
enough for a metropolis," and indeed it was.
The Eagle served a dual purpose in the city of 16,000, accommodating not only theatrical performances but the fashionable balls of Buffalo's social elite Well-heeled patrons owned their own boxes, which they draped in blue damask and comfortably furnished with upholstered sofas and chairs. The theater season was in the summer months, when canal and lake were fully navigable and their torrent of business filled the city's streets with pleasure seekers. Theater gave way to the gavotte in the winter months, when the busy navigation season had ended and the social season for the seasonally idled rich was in full swing. Shakespeare played to full houses during the theater season at the Eagle But the fare was varied. The theater had a couple of enterprising, audience-wise managers who, after bringing in Othello for a week's run, outrageously burlesqued it the following week with Othello, the Noblest Nigger of Dem All, and then kept the theatrical pot boiling by staging something as absurdly monstrous and strictly local as The Three Thieves of Tonawanda. - Text source: "Buffalo: Lake City in Niagara Land,"by Richard C. Brown and Bob Watson. USA: Windsor Publications, 1981, pp. 54-55, |
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St. James Hall /
Bunnell's Museum
The Eagle
Street Theater, was destroyed by
fire on May 11, 1852. The walls of the building were used in
construction of St. James Hall
in 1853.
The
hall was used for all manner of entertainments from poultry
shows to grand opera. Many famous men, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Henry Ward Beecher, Kentucky's Tom Marshall and a host of
others spoke from its platforms. Old Settlers' dances were
held there as well as firemen's balls and sparring matches. In
its last six years it was known as Bunnell's Museum until it
burned in 1887.
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Abraham
Lincoln in St. James Hall in 1861
Early in the evening, Millard Fillmore and Asaph Bemis returned to the American Hotel and took Lincoln to a 7:30 P.M. lecture at St. James Hall. The Hall was located on Eagle Street between Main and Washington, the present site of M & T Bank. Father John Beeson was going to talk about the Native Americans and their plight. He
had lived among the tribes on the plains and in Oregon and was
now on a lecture tour visiting various cities throughout the
United States. "The
celebrated Father Beeson, late of Oregon, is now in our city,
endeavoring to direct public attention towards adopting measures
to ameliorate the condition of the Indians." He had already held a meeting Thursday evening at the Old Court house. At that time, he introduced a young white man who had lived 18 years among the tribes. Father Beeson then spoke. "He narrated a little of his own experience among the tribe on the plains and in Oregon, and drew a thrilling picture of the fiendish cruelty with which they are treated. He demonstrated that they were inclined to peace, but were goaded to very desperation by the outrages of a class of white ruffians, who always make capital out of an Indian war. He referred to the mock treaties made with them by government agents." He then submitted a paper to the meeting to give to the Senator of the district. There was a plan for a general meeting the following week in Boston and he hoped that the Six Nations (Iroquois) would be sending delegates. Several others spoke before the meeting came to an end. Father
Beeson preached at two churches on Sunday. At 10:00 A.M., he was
at the United Presbyterian Church on Washington St., and at 3:00
P.M., the Baptist Church on Michigan Street. Finally, he spoke
at St. James Hall at 7:30 P.M., in the presence of the
President-elect. A fee of ten cents was charged at the door.
There was a respectable crowd at the Hall, but it was not
overcrowded. Although Lincoln had been invited, it was not known
that he would attend. The
lecture was probably similar to the one given at the Old Court
House on Thursday evening. "Mr. Lincoln listened with much
apparent interest in Father B's recitation of the wrongs which
the Indians suffer, unredressed by the Government, which assumes
their protection." Father Beeson gave a benediction on behalf of
the President-elect and at the end, "the audience gathered at
the door to shake hands with him."9 One significant reason for the stop in Buffalo was the President-elect's desire to see Mr. Fillmore. Lincoln had great respect for him, despite the fact that Fillmore's anti – Republican views were well known to him. There
was one final communication between the two men. In November
1861, Lincoln, now the President, received a letter from
Fillmore regarding the appointment of his nephew, George M.
Fillmore, as a lieutenant in the Army. Lincoln endorsed the
letter, sending it to the Secretary of War remarking that, "… it
be very agreeable to me for Mr. Fillmore to be obliged."10 Text source: , John Fagant, "Abraham Lincoln in Western New York"
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Abraham
Lincoln in St. James Hall in 1865
On Thursday, April 27, 1865, Abraham
Lincoln lay in state in St. James Hall on the
site of One M&T Plaza. A report of the times estimates
that 100,000 heartsick Buffalonians passed through the hall to
view the body of the martyred President. Lincoln's funeral
staff told Buffalo leaders that the reception here was the
most favored accorded the President on his last, long trip.
Half-hour guns were fired
by a battery in Court
House Park (Lafayette
Square)
throughout the day, and during the marching of the
funeral procession to and from the hall minute guns were
fired. The cortege moved from the Exchange Street Station in
Exchange Street to Main, up Main to Niagara, to Delaware, to
Tupper, to Main, to Eagle, and to the hall. Samuel
F.
Pratt, Warren Bryant, Gibson T. Williams,
Thomas J. Dudley, George R. Babcock, William Wildeson, Jacob
Heimlich and Isaac Holloway were the pall bearers. Among the
citizens whose carriages were used to accompany the escort
guarding the remains were these incorporators and first
directors of the Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company: Stephen
V.R.
Watson, Myron
P. Bush, Pascal
P.
Pratt and Sherman
S.
Jewett.
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 Illustration source: The Picture Book of Earlier Buffalo, Frank H. Severance, ed. Buffalo Historical Society Publications,Vol. 16, 1912, p. 233  Illustration source: The Picture Book of Earlier Buffalo, Frank H. Severance, ed. Buffalo Historical Society Publications,Vol. 16, 1912, p. 159 The
St.
James Hotel was built on the southeast corner
of Main and Eagle in 1855.
Another floor was added to St. James Hotel and the
name was changed to Richmond
Hotel. It was ready for guests on February 20, 1887, and
was destroyed by fire, along with St. James Hall on March 18,
1887, with a loss of 22 lives. The hall at the time was
occupied by Bunnell's Museum.
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