New York Vauxhall Gardens

The New York Vauxhall Gardens was a pleasure garden and theater in New York City. It was named for the Vauxhall Gardens of London. Though the venue passed through a long list of owners, and suffered buyouts, closings, relocations, and re-openings, it lasted until the mid-19th century.

In the mid-1760s, country taverns such as Clapp's had become popular in Colonial New York. Samuel Fraunces opened the New York Vauxhall in 1767 to take advantage of this climate, and it received a chief competitor in the New York Ranelagh Gardens, which appear on Bernard Ratzer's map of New York of 1767 occupying a wooded rise of ground just north of the northernmost city houses, on the south side of Duane Street; the site overlooked Lispenard's Meadows and the riverfront road to Greenwich Village. The original Vauxhall Gardens were located in a more confined space on Greenwich Street near the Hudson River between what later became Warren and Chambers streets in the fashionable Sixth Ward; Public School 234 stands at the site today. Ratzer's map shows its square garden plot, conventionally divided in four by walks. Fraunces operated the venue until 1773, when he offered it for sale. His notice mentioned two large gardens, a house with four rooms per floor and twelve fireplaces, and a dining hall that was 56 feet (17 m) long and 26 feet (7.9 m) wide, with a kitchen below. The Vauxhall offered light summer concerts and featured an outdoor wax museum. For the summer 1768 season, it hosted an exhibit on the life of Scipio Africanus that included a grove with a reconstruction of the military leader at his tent. The Vauxhall remained popular throughout the Colonial period of New York and to the end of the 18th century. By this point, the gardens had two namesake competitors, one of which was primarily popular for its ice cream.

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