Brooklyn Theater Fire
Brooklyn Theatre from Johnson Street, shortly after December 5, 1876, fire
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| Time | 23:17 local time |
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| Date | December 5, 1876 |
| Location | the site of what is now 271 Cadman Plaza Brooklyn, NY 11201 United States |
| 278–300+ (estimated range) | |
Coordinates: 40°41′42″N 73°59′24″W / 40.695°N 73.99°W
The Brooklyn Theatre Fire was a catastrophic theatre fire that broke out on the evening of December 5, 1876, in the then-city of Brooklyn, now a borough of New York City, New York, United States. The conflagration killed at least 278 individuals, with some accounts reporting more than 300 dead. One hundred and three unidentified victims were interred in a common grave at Green-Wood Cemetery. An obelisk near the main entrance at Fifth Avenue and 25th Street marks the burial site. More than two dozen identified victims were interred individually in separate sections at the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn Theatre Fire ranks third in fatalities among fires occurring in theatres and other public assembly buildings in the United States, falling behind the 1942 Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire and the 1903 Iroquois Theatre fire.
Fatalities mainly arose in the family circle, typically the highest tier of seats in a theatre and offering the least expensive seating. Only one stairway served this gallery, which sustained extreme temperatures and dense, suffocating smoke early in the conflagration. The stairway jammed with people, cutting off the escape of more than half of the gallery's occupants, who quickly succumbed to smoke inhalation.
The Brooklyn Theatre opened on October 2, 1871, and stood near the southeast corner of Washington and Johnson streets, one block north of what was then Brooklyn's City Hall. It was owned by The Brooklyn Building Association, a partnership of affluent Brooklyn residents including Abner C. Keeney, William Kingsley, and Judge Alexander McCue. After its destruction, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle called it Brooklyn's "principal theatre." Up until the last twenty months of its existence, the theatre had been managed by Sara and Frederick B. Conway, a couple long involved in New York and Brooklyn theatre and who had managed Brooklyn's Park Theatre from 1864 to 1871. Sara Conway died in April 1875, about a half a year after her husband. Following an unsuccessful management stint by their children, Minnie, Lillian and Frederick Jr.,Albert M. Palmer and Sheridan Shook, respectively, manager and proprietor of New York's Union Square Theatre, assumed a new lease on the Brooklyn Theatre in August 1875 and managed it until the catastrophe took place.
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