ANIMALS ON STAGE
No amateur productions were mounted in 1859, but operas and road
companies continued to visit, including Signor Donetti’s troupe of “Educated
Dogs, Monkeys, and Goats.”
They were the first animals to appear on Thalian Hall’s stage, but
certainly not the last. In 1869, actress Kate Raymond, scantily clad, rode
her horse, Black Bess, across the
stage in an adaptation of Byron’s
epic poem Mazeppa. In the
1890s, an arctic play featured
reindeer, sled dogs, three live
bears and two St. Bernard
dogs. Trained dogs often
appeared and, in 1909 a circus
play included three ponies, a
trained donkey and a horse.
As interests changed, so did Thalian’s
offerings. The mid-19th century had
seen the rise of panoramas, and the
Hall hosted Dr. Beale’s Wonderful
UNCOVERING HISTORY
Who Built Thalian
THE 2009-2010 renovation
brought the original framing of
Thalian Hall to light, including
a complicated piece of joinery
supporting the center of the balcony. Called a
“valley joist,” all the connections are made by
mortise and tenon construction, with no nails.
Every joint meets perfectly with no gaps. And
everything was cut with hand tools.
Who were these master carpenters? Accord-ing
to Beverly Tetterton, curator of the North
Carolina room at the New Hanover Public
Library, they were African slaves. “They built
Thalian Hall, Fort Fisher, the Market House,
as well as most of the finer homes in downtown
Wilmington,” she said at that time.
Hired out by their masters to work on large
construction projects, the slaves did the work
and the masters were paid. Quartered in “slave
yards” next to the construction site, these men
were sent to Wilmington from plantations all
over Southeastern North Carolina.
Top: A notice from the local paper on
Oct. 12, 1858, of Thalian Hall’s opening
with John Tobin’s The Honey Moon, a
romantic play in blank verse similar to
The Taming of the Shrew.
32 september 2022
WBM
THALIAN HALL ARCHIVE COLLECTION AND NEW HANOVER COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
A slide of a postcard depicting City Hall and the Opera House (Thalian Hall)
from North Third Street in April 1906. The main entrance to the Hall was from
Princess Street.
NEW HANOVER COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY/DR. ROBERT M. FALES COLLECTION