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New York
Lee Avenue Baptist Church
Friday, May 12, 1882
The Decorative Arts
Newspaper report
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 13, 1882
Previous chronologies mistakenly recorded the venue of this lecture as Williamsburg, VA. The correct Williamsburg is a district of Brooklyn, NY.
Lee Avenue Baptist Church, AKA: South Baptist Church
Lee Avenue between Wilson and Taylor Streets, Brooklyn, NY (now 27 Lee Avenue between Wilson and Roebling Streets)
Built: 1872 (Rev. J. Hyatt Smith, pastor)
Construction: corrugated iron and wood; laid out from designs by Lawrence B. Valk, architect
Audience Room: the church retained an audience room from a previous brick church building on the same site for use as a lecture hall*
Seating capacity: c. 1000
Closed: July 1881
Remodeled: 1882, as a music hall
Reopened: October 1882
Seating capacity: 1700
Closed: 1895
Also known variously as Lee Avenue or Williamsburg Academy of Music, the Lee Avenue Academy #7, Phoebus Theatre (for one season), and the Lee Avenue Music Academy
Renovated: 1900, as Corse Payton’s Lee Avenue Theater
Demolished: 1916
* After the church closed in July 1881 (services moved to the All Souls' Universalist Church), it did not reopen officially as a theater until October 1882. Wilde lectured in the old audience room of the church.
Oscar Wilde In America | © John Cooper, 2025
