American Theater Directories

by Derek Miller

This site collects ongoing research gathering, parsing, organizing, and visualizing data from directories of American theater since the nineteenth century. I focus on primary sources such as guides developed for theatrical managers, actors, and students. The work here supplements and expands my current research on Visualizing Broadway.

All code and, more importantly, data is available on my GitHub pages.

Currently, I am working on some simple mapping. You can explore:

• The Theatrical Syndicate’s Theaters
• American Theaters, 1902 & 1913
• Black Theaters in the United States, 1922
• Theaters in the Western United States, 1907
• Three Touring Routes for Harry Miner’s Specialty Company
• Summer Stock Theaters

All of this work is provisional and under development. Please do not cite without permission.

Most data sets were all published prior to 1924, and thus are out of copyright (if they were ever actually copyright eligible).