Carter Barron Amphitheater
View from the house.
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 Carter Barron Amphitheatre
Location within Washington, D.C.
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| Address | 4850 Colorado Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. United States |
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| Coordinates | 38°57′00″N 77°02′31″W / 38.95°N 77.042°W |
| Opened | August 5, 1950 |
| Website | |
| http://www.nps.gov/rocr/planyourvisit/cbarron.htm | |
The Carter Barron Amphitheatre is a 4,000-seat outdoor performance venue in Washington, D.C., U.S. Located in Rock Creek Park, the amphitheatre opened in 1950 in honor of the 150th Anniversary of Washington, DC as the nation's capital. The National Park Service operates Carter Barron, offering a variety of quality performances, including reggae, Latin, classical, gospel, musicals, pop, R&B, jazz, new age, theater, and dance. Many of the performances are provided free of charge. The adjacent William H. G. Fitzgerald tennis stadium is part of the Carter Barron recreational facility.
The Carter Barron Amphitheatre (CBA) is located in Rock Creek Park. Initial plans for an amphitheatre in the Brightwood area of Washington, DC began in 1943 when Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. reviewed and commented on the site selection for an amphitheatre. The original plan called for benches to seat about 1,500 and a stage equipped with a movie screen.
This plan was expanded upon by Carter T. Barron in 1947 as a way to memorialize the 150th Anniversary of Washington, DC as the Nation's Capital. As Vice Chairman of the Sesquicentennial Commission, Barron envisioned an amphitheatre where "all persons of every race, color and creed" in Washington could attend musical, ballet, theater and other performing arts productions. The Commission approved the drawings of National Capital Parks (now known as the National Capital Region of the National Park Service (NPS)) Architect William M. Hausman for the new 4,200-seat Sesquicentennial Amphitheatre. Plans called for outfitting the amphitheatre with state-of-the-art technology including a communication system which allowed the stage manager to speak to any actor or stagehand from his desk and the best lighting and sound equipment available at the time. (The original construction cost estimate was $200,000 but the actual cost totaled $563,676.90.)
The amphitheatre opened on August 5, 1950. Paul Green, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and author of the symphonic outdoor drama "The Lost Colony", was commissioned to write the opening season production. "Faith of Our Fathers"was a tribute to George Washington. It met with mixed reviews while the press and theater professionals hailed the Sesquicentennial Amphitheatre itself as the best outdoor theater ever seen. The placement of the amphitheatre maximized the natural acoustics of the bowl of the hill and it quickly became known as a theater with "not a bad seat in the house."
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