Venue
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.
