Hooley’s Theatre

Richard Martin Hooley (April 13, 1822 – September 8, 1893) was an American theatre manager, minstrelsy manager, and one of the earliest theatre managers in Chicago.

Hooley was born in Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland, and educated in Manchester before first coming to the United States in 1844. After being associated for two years with Christy's Minstrels, he organized a blackface minstrel company and toured England, returning to the United States by 1853. In 1855 he traveled to California and took over the management of Maguire's Opera House in San Francisco.

Hooley returned to New York around 1858, and opened a theatre in Brooklyn with Hooley's Minstrels in 1862. It was located at the southwest corner of Court and Remsen streets. Hooley sold his interest in the Brooklyn theatre (known as Hooley's Theatre or other names at other times) in 1878; the building was later demolished and replaced by Dime Savings Bank, which remained at that location until 1908.

Hooley moved to Chicago around 1870 and opened Hooley's Opera House in January 1871. It was successful but destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire only ninth months later. He then opened Hooley's Theatre in a new location in 1872, on Randolph Street east of LaSalle Street.

Hooley also organized a theatre stock company that featured actors including William Henry Crane and James O'Neill.

Business manager Harry J. Powers took over Hooley's Theatre in Chicago after Hooley's death in 1893. In 1898 he became full owner and renamed it as Powers' Theatre. That year, a history of Hooley's Theatre by Lyman B. Glover was published. The theatre stood until 1924, when it was demolished to accommodate an expansion of the Sherman House hotel. The site is currently part of the land on which the James R. Thompson Center now sits.

Hooley was affectionately called "Uncle Dick". He married Rosina Cramer in 1856, and died at his house in Chicago on September 8, 1893, survived by two daughters. He was buried in Calvary cemetery in that city.

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