Weber and Fields' Broadway Music Hall

Joe Weber and Lew Fields, two childhood friends from the Lower East Side, turned this venue on Twenty-ninth Street into the epicenter of New York comedy at the turn of the twentieth century. Before they arrived in 1896, the building operated as the Imperial Music Hall, but under their management, it became a laboratory for high-energy musical burlesque. The duo built their reputation on a Dutch act, a style of performance that used thick, stereotypical German accents and constant physical slapstick to portray the struggles of immigrant life. Their shows became a fixture of the neighborhood, drawing audiences who came to see the pair engage in stylized brawls that involved eye-gouging, kicking, and braining each other with canes.