Bowery v broadway

The Bowery Theater's next play, The days of Pompeii, which included a fake volcano on the stage, pulled in almost 10,000 dollars within its first week. .
             Broadway too had it's beginning's in providing people with shows of mass spectacles and unbelievable feats. One of the first places of entertainment to be built on Broadway was the Circus. The first one was built shortly after the Revolution and was only a temporary institution. One of Broadway's most permanent Circus's was called West's, and ran for almost a decade. P.T. Barnum had his beginnings on the Bowery, with a cheap dime museum where he showed off an alleged 161-year-old women who he claimed was in fact George Washington's nurse. He eventually moved his institution to Broadway, expanding the attraction. After Barnum moved, other people imitated his idea on Bowery, bringing the circus back to its beginning's . Some dime museums showed grotesque sights and sometimes even pornographic material. These entertainments also slowly mad their way uptown and provided even the upper class with amusement and delight. .
             One of Broadway's first hit plays was called the Black Crook. It was five and a half hours long and Luc Sante, author of the book Lowlife, describes it as ".the most preposterous concatenation of ill-fitting elements." Although it lacked some of the audaciousness of Bowery plays, it did feature scantily dressed young ballerinas, which provided the main attraction to the audience. .
             Over time, and as the demand for such entertainment grew, more and more theaters began opening on the Bowery. A prime attraction of that time was the idea of the minstrel show, in which white men wore black face paint and acted out racist stereotypes in a crude comical form. Although racism has always been prevalent where African-Americans were concerned, black bands played in most Bowery dives. The Bowery suffered more from anti-English hatred, than it did from resentment towards African Americans.