ABSTRACT
Even before the 1880–81 season was completed, Harrigan and Hart had been apprised of the closing of 514 Broadway, and the pair began searching for a site for a new Theatre Comique. They latched on to another church-turned-theater building uptown, at 728–30 Broadway, which was slated for transformation into a block of retail stores, and began negotiations with Judge Hilton, who represented the Alexander Turney Stewart estate, to which the property belonged. An agreement was reached whereby Harrigan and Hart would lease the site for a minimum of seven years at sixteen thousand dollars per year, with the Stewart estate agreeing to construct the front wall of the theater at a cost of thirty thousand dollars, leaving the responsibility for rebuilding the interior to the managers, each putting up another thirty thousand dollars.
