HYLAND
It didn't matter that it was a gala performance of a
hit show. The weather wasn't going to cooperate.
The newly renovated Madison Square Theatre had
opened in February 1880 with the melodrama Hazel Kirke.
A tearjerker and a particularly slushy one, it somehow
had captured the fancy of the theatergoing public and
was heading for a record run. But in late May, as the
Madison Square's management was busy advertising
the play's upcoming one-hundredth performance, the
Northeast was gripped by a freak hot spell, with several
days of temperatures topping out in the mid-'90s.
An Excerpt from COOL: Chapter One
The problem of ovrheated theaters: English
caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson's take
of the sweltering "gallery gods" of Covent
Garden. Library of Congress.