Union a general wish was expressed that the great actor should have a new theater in some of our large cities, and one which should be worthy of his genius. Mr. Booth had chosen the city of New York for his permanent home, and after the destruction of the Winter Garden Theater began to arrange his plans for the erection of a new building of his own, which he was resolved should be the most magnificent and the best appointed theater in the world. The site chosen was the south-eastern corner of the Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street in New York, and in the summer of 1867 the work of clearing away the old buildings and digging the foundations of the new theater was begun. It was carried forward steadily, and the building was completed and opened to the public in January, 1869.
It is in the Rennaissance style of architecture, and stands seventy feet high from the sidewalk to the main cornice, crowning which is a Mansard roof of twenty-four feet. "The theater proper fronts one hundred and forty-nine feet on Twenty-third Street, and is divided into three parts, so combined as to form an almost perfect whole, with arched