Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Aug 9, 2026

Odeon, Boston

The Odeon of Boston, Massachusetts, was a lecture and concert hall on Federal Street in the building also known as the Boston Theatre. The 1,300-seat auditorium measured "50 feet square" with "red moreen"-upholstered "seats arranged in a circular order, and above them ... spacious galleries." The Boston Academy of Music occupied the Odeon in the 1830s and 1840s Notable events at the Odeon included "the first performance in Boston of a Beethoven symphony."

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Odeon, Boston, 19th century source ↗
Detail of 1838 map of Boston, showing Odeon on Federal St. source ↗

The Odeon (1835 – c. 1846) of Boston, Massachusetts, was a lecture and concert hall on Federal Street in the building also known as the Boston Theatre.12 The 1,300-seat auditorium measured "50 feet square" with "red moreen"-upholstered "seats arranged in a circular order, and above them ... spacious galleries."3 The Boston Academy of Music occupied the Odeon in the 1830s and 1840s4 Notable events at the Odeon included "the first performance in Boston of a Beethoven symphony."5

Events

1830s

1840s

References

References

  1. Boston Athenaeum. "Theater History: Boston Theatre (1794-1852), Federal and Franklin Streets". Archived from the original on April 14, 2021. Retrieved March 27, 2012.
  2. Boston Almanac. 1841
  3. "The Boston Academy of Music". The Family Minstrel. 1 (15). September 1, 1835.
  4. Boston Academy of Music. Annual Report. 1836, 1844
  5. Samuel A. Eliot (1936–1941). "Being Mayor of Boston a Hundred Years Ago". Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Third Series. 66.
  6. American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series 1
  7. Eulogy on King Philip, as pronounced at the Odeon, in Federal Street, Boston, by the Rev. William Apess, an Indian, January 8, 1836 (2nd ed.), Boston: The author, 1837, OCLC 4332979, OL 24166555M
  8. Sponsored by the Massachusetts Temperance Society. Larry A. Carlson. "Bronson Alcott's 'Journal for 1837' (Part One)." Studies in the American Renaissance, (1981), pp. 27-132
  9. Edward Everett (1838). An address, delivered before the Mercantile Library Association, at the Odeon in Boston, September 13, 1838. Boston: W. D. Ticknor.
  10. Larry A. Carlson. "Bronson Alcott's 'Journal for 1838' (Part One)." Studies in the American Renaissance, (1993), pp. 161-244
  11. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1924). War : an address before the American Peace Society at the Odeon, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1838. Washington, D.C.: American Peace Society.
  12. The Musical Magazine (Boston) no.38, June 6, 1840
  13. Boston Daily Atlas, Feb. 16, 1843
  14. George Lunt. Culture: a poem delivered before the Mercantile Library Association, at the Odeon, in Boston, October 3, 1843. Boston, W. D. Ticknor & Company, 1843.
  15. Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8154-1038-7
Further reading

Further reading

  • Bowen, Abel (1838), Bowen's Picture of Boston, Boston: Otis, Broaders and company, OCLC 5204074, OL 6905756M
  • Michael Broyles. "Music and Class Structure in Antebellum Boston." Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 451–493

42°21′19.97″N 71°3′23.48″W / 42.3555472°N 71.0565222°W / 42.3555472; -71.0565222