9. The first Brooklyn Academy of Music concert took place in 1861
The Brooklyn Academy of Music predates many quintessential New York City concert venues, including Carnegie Hall. Opened in 1861, Brooklyn Academy of Music has long been a center for progressive and avant-garde performance, beginning operations at its present location in 1908. The idea for the Academy was put forward in 1858 during a meeting at the Polytechnic Institute, now NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering. The original building housed a 2,100-seat theater, designed by Leopold Eidlitz, perhaps better known for his work on the New York State Capitol.
At the 1861 opening concert, an orchestra performed the overture to Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz, followed by other arias and opera excerpts including William Tell. In the next few years, figures such as Fritz Kreisler and Edwin Booth (brother of John Wilkes Booth and founder of the Players Club on Gramercy Park) performed there. However, a fire burned the building to the ground in 1903, but the cornerstone for a new building was placed in 1906. Opening concerts in 1908 featured the famed Geraldine Farrar and Enrico Caruso in a Metropolitan Opera production of Charles Gounod’s Faust.