ENCORE EPISODE - Forrest of Philadelphia, Part Three (NEW and IMPROVED!)

Hi Everyone . . this is our final Encore Episode for July 2026. But  it’s also a NEW and IMPROVED episode. Over this summer I’ve been going back and revising, editing and re-scoring some earlier episodes of the podcast, and this is one of those. It’s the third of our series about the great 19th Century Philadelphia actor Edwin Forrest. It’s got new music, new sound effects and I’ve tightened up the narrative. So, I wanted to share it again with all of you. I’ll be back again next month, I promise, with some brand new episodes and interviews. So, here we go  . . Forrest of Philadelphia, Part Three.

In July of 1855 Edwin Forrest was taking a walk in Philadelphia. He started out from the brownstone at 144 N. 10th St., the house he had bought for his mother and sisters in the 1820s. His mother had died in 1847, but his three sisters Henrietta, Eleanora, and Caroline still made it their home. They always kept a room prepared for him, and he usually stayed there whenever he returned to his native city. This morning, he purposefully made his way to Broad Street and then started walking North.

As Forrest crossed Vine Street, he must have noted that that was no longer the city limits, as it had been all his life.  Philadelphia had consolidated with all its neighboring boroughs in 1854, and now the entirety of Philadelphia County was one municipality, with one city council, one police force, and one mayor. In fact Robert T. Conrad, the author of the play Jack Cade, had been elected to the office, and was now administering the huge metropolis. The population of the city, which had barely topped 100,000 at the beginning of the decade of the 1850s, would surpass half a million by 1860 - and then keep growing.

Broad Street, which for 150 years had only been the notional center of the city’s north-south axis, was finally becoming lined with major buildings. In fact, the groundbreaking ceremony for the grand new Academy of Music, at Locust and South Broad, had just occurred in June 1855. But it was up North Broad where Forrest strode that day in July, wearing his customary plain coat and loosely knotted tie. He passed quickly by the coal and lumber yards along the railroad lines that crossed Broad Street above Center Square. Beyond Poplar Street, however, North Broad was showing signs of becoming what it would be in decades to come: the favorite street of Philadelphia’s nouveau riche elite - the factory owners, the brewmeisters, the surging mercantile class. This wide thoroughfare was abuzz already with building projects: churches, banks, and huge houses. Forrest had made many real estate investments in the city over the years. Some of the lots he had purchased on speculation in what was now North Philadelphia were now clearly paying off.

Forrest stopped walking and paused at the corner of Broad and Master Street, suddenly struck by what he saw there. On an otherwise empty block, a large and elegant three story brownstone mansion was rising at the corner. He liked the look of it. He asked the workmen who it was being built for. Frederick Gaul, they told him, the man who owned one of the biggest breweries in the city. By that afternoon Forrest marched into Gaul’s office at the brewery and offered him $23,000 cash for that unfinished house. Mr. Gaul accepted, and the deal was done. Forrest had only one stipulation: the property deed for the mansion was to be registered in the name of his three sisters, not his. You see, he didn’t want his ex-wife’s lawyers to be able to make a claim on it. 

The previous two decades of Forrest’s life had been eventful and tumultuous, to say the least. Flush with the earnings of his early years, he had traveled all over Europe from  the years 1834 to 1836. He had seen Paris, Rome, Moscow, Odessa, Istanbul and Athens. Returning to America to perform again for his adoring fans, he immediately announced he was crossing the Atlantic again to bring his new American style of acting to England. In England he had wooed and won the affections of the 18 year-old beauty Catherine Norton Sinclair, married her, and he had brought her back to America. Settling his wife in a lovely townhome in New York City, he plunged back into his career. With the proceeds he bought real estate. Taking Catherine along with him on a tour of the American West, he showed her the hillside along the south bank of the Ohio River where as a teenager had once sat forlorn and poverty-stricken, but found inspiration and a new determination to succeed. He bought that hillside, too - kept it his entire life. He bought another hillside along the Hudson River north of New York, and started planning a medieval dream palace where he imagined he could settle down and wrap himself and his wife in protective luxury. 

But they were never to live in that castle. Over the years their marriage faltered badly, never recovering from the dashed hopes of four pregnancies. Each of Edwin and Catherine Forrest’s four babies died shortly after their births. Not many relationships could survive such sadness, and the couple drifted apart. Forrest’s tour of Great Britain in 1845 had  also gone awry, and had cemented the deep hatred and rivalry with the English actor William Charles Macready. This rivalry was to come to a head in 1849 as Forrest pursued him from city to city as the English actor conducted his own tour of American theaters. It all ended with the Astor Place Riots of May 1849. 

Forrest’s marriage ended shortly afterwards. He accused Catherine of infidelity, and she, with much more justification, accused him of even more infidelity and overwhelmingly cruel behavior. She filed for divorce in 1851, and the resulting trial became a huge public sensation and a scandal. Eventually, the divorce was granted, but according to the ruling Edwin Forrest had to pay Catherine a huge alimony - half his acquired fortune. Well, Forrest refused to pay, and appealed the decision over and over to higher and higher courts. He lost all the appeals. He sold the castle on the Hudson, he sold the townhouse in New York, and announced that he was even going to stop performing.

That is why in 1855 Forrest was buying a house in Philadelphia: he was both coming home again, and also laying up for legal siege. He wanted to get away from everything that reminded him of his former wife, whom he now despised. She herself, actually began to go on the stage, though she had never acted before. She needed the money, because Forrest was never going to pay her a dime, he swore. Never, never, never, never, never. Like every character he had ever played on the stage, he would rather die than compromise his principles. He dispatched his lawyers again and again to dispute every judgment against him. Really, there’s nothing less admirable about the life of Edwin Forrest than the way he behaved in the matter. He was vindictive, controlling, and ruthlessly vengeful to the very end.

But his new home on Broad and Master Streets became his refuge. He planted a garden and he stocked the library with thousands of books which he read voraciously. He even purchased a First Folio of Shakespeare, which he displayed to his friends proudly. He built an extension to the south of the house for his collection of pictures, and there was even a small theater too. He did start performing publicly again in 1860, when he realized he was likely to need extra cash to pay the huge judgment against him. He found his audiences would still flock to see him. Oh, he performed at the huge Niblo’s Garden in New York, doing all his major roles three nights a week - returning home to Philadelphia every weekend.

He performed in Boston, where his dearest friend, James Oakes, lived, and where Forrest would visit a young lady friend whom he referred to only as “Nahmeokee'', the name of the wife from the play Metamora. He did shows in Philadelphia, too, of course. In 1861, as the oncoming Civil War loomed over the country, Forrest offered the city several weeks of performances from his long-standing and familiar repertory of roles: Hamlet, Damon & Pythias, Richelieu, Virginius, Metamora, Jack Cade, Othello, Macbeth, and Richard III.

He returned to the Academy of Music again late in 1864 in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, with a production so elaborate that management advertised that it was seeking “ONE HUNDRED YOUNG MEN” as extras to fill out the Academy’s large stage. Though the city was already sending thousands of its young men into real battles, this recruiting call for an onstage army had no trouble filling the ranks, and the management easily filled the seats with an audience eager for ancient military spectacle. In fact, the opening night was given special help by Nature herself, for as Forrest thundered away to an audience of over three thousand people in the Academy, a true thunderstorm battered away at the building from the outside. Altogether, reported the Philadelphia Public Ledger, “it was one of the most dramatically complete evenings the theater had ever seen.”

Earlier that same year Forrest commissioned the Boston artist Thomas Ball to make a larger-than-life marble sculpture of him in the role of Coriolanus. Though Coriolanus was a role he had not done often over the course of his career (with its anti-democratic rants against mob rule by the title character, it didn’t really fit his persona). But now he felt it totally appealed to him. With his calipers, Ball made measurements of Forrest’s still-massive calves and shoulders, though they did quibble a bit about the facial hair. “Coriolanus lived in an era before Romans began shaving their faces!” Forrest insisted, and Ball finally agreed, took his preliminary model with its whiskers and its toga and its sandals, and he went off to Italy to select and shape the proper piece of stone for it.

Meanwhile, the tours went on. Everywhere Forrest performed in these final years, fathers brought their children and their grandchildren to come see the man who had meant so much to them in their youth. Though younger theater fans and the American intelligentsia now much preferred the more intellectual and sophisticated Edwin Booth, who also was performing pretty regularly in Philadelphia these days, Edwin Forrest retained the hold on his old fans. It was a little like the final years of a 20th Century rock and roll band, still packing the seats in the arenas of the 21st Century, everyone showing up, wanting to hear all the old hits.

But time would not stand still. One by one, Edwin Forrest’s three sisters passed away in the house on Broad Street. He was alone with only two loyal servants, and the visits of friends. In his sixties, Forrest’s health increasingly failed him. His huge body began to break down. Gout, sciatica, rheumatism all hobbled him and nearly paralyzed one hand. When he performed Damon in Damon and Pythias now - a youthful role - he could no longer make the final leap up onto the high platform to save his friend from execution. The stage hands set the platform lower and then lower, and then even lower . . .  until finally it was only a few inches higher than the stage floor.

When he played Lear or Cardinal Richelieu in Edwin Bulwer-Lytton's play, he no longer needed to imitate the infirmities of old age. “I am Lear,” he growled at a friend one day. At last, Forrest was reduced to only sitting on a chair - a few audience members who had still assembled to see him read from the plays of Shakespeare. His loyal audience was deserting him. On October 15th, 1872, he played the Academy of Music in Philadelphia for the last time, reading to a sea of mostly empty chairs.

He gave his final reading in Boston in early December 1872. Returning to Philadelphia, he tried to gather his strength again. But on the morning of December 12th, 1872, his maid found him stricken in his bedroom on the second floor of the huge house on Broad Street. Forrest was fully dressed, his exercise weights on the floor near him, an open copy of Hamlet on the bedside table . . and an angry red streak ran across the side of his head - undoubtedly the sign of a stroke. He could not speak. By the time the doctor arrived, he was gone.

But there are many reminders of Edwin Forrest’s life and career still left in Philadelphia. Most notably the Shubert Organization built the huge Forrest Theatre on South Broad Street in 1906. It was demolished and replaced in the 1920s by the second Forrest Theatre on Walnut Street, which still stands and still hosts touring Broadway shows. Another Edwin Forrest Theatre was built in New York, though it is now called the Eugene O’Neill Theatre. But what else remains? Well, Edwin Forrest had prepared for what would happen after his death carefully. He knew how to make a final exit, after all. 

Having at the end no wife, no living children, and no living relatives, he longed for some way to keep his name alive, at least. He arranged for an official biography to be written, which was eventually completed by the Unitarian minister William Alger - with a bit of help from his nephew Horatio Alger, a writer who thereafter became associated with rags-to-riches stories such as Edwin Forrest’s. 

Although Forrest also had contemplated many arrangements for his money, such as establishing a drama academy, what he eventually decided on was endowing what he termed a “Home for Decayed Actors”.

As early as December 1829, we can see that Forrest was involved in charitable efforts in Philadelphia to establish something called The Theatrical Fund. Remember how we found that this era of the late 1820s early 30s was a particularly rocky one for members of the theatrical profession? Actors were frequently not paid at all when managers were forced to cater to the demands of stars and landlords first. During this period we again see evidence of actors joining in ‘commonwealths’ and “actors republics”, trying to find some more equitable method of sharing box office proceeds with each other. As usual, unfortunately, these efforts generally failed, and many actors and stagehands too found themselves quite destitute, especially at the end of their careers.

Edwin Forrest had gladly donated his services to many benefit performances to help establish the basis of the Theatrical Fund, although eventually the endowment of the organization faltered and failed. Forrest must have seen many former company members of his over the years fall into poverty in their final years. He knew how close his own family had come to the same fate when his father died during his own childhood. 

He was certainly mortified when the retiring longtime comedian at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Joseph Jefferson, held a benefit performance to fund his retirement, and it was almost empty of paying audience, due to competition from a show of Forrest’s at the Walnut Street Theater that same night. Upon learning that he had been the cause of the distinguished actor’s financial embarrassment, Forrest offered to make up the deficit, but the proud Jefferson had icily refused, hurt deeply by what he felt was the rejection from the city where he had labored on the stage so long. Jefferson chose to retire quietly to the countryside outside Harrisburg Pennsylvania. When he died in 1832, there wasn't even enough money for a headstone for his grave, which had to be raised by a public charitable subscription ten years later. 

This and other such stories made Forrest determined to do something. During his lifetime, he often donated or did benefits for New York charities, the General Theatrical Fund and the American Dramatic Fund Association. Though he had nothing but contempt for profligate or dissipated theatricals who had wasted their prime years, he had pity for the “deserving” actors of Philadelphia too, and he wrote in his will that he wanted to “smooth the pillow of the unfortunate in sickness or other disability, or the decay of their declining years.” 

In September of 1865, Edwin Forrest scoured the countryside around Philadelphia and finally chose “Springbrook,” a grand old house on an 111 acre farm, eight miles northeast of the city, which stood along the Bristol Pike. He had known it even in his youth, and was impressed by all the improvements it had received by subsequent owners: greenhouses, serpentine walks, even two indoor bathrooms, an impressive modern convenience for that day. He bought it with a downpayment of $40,000 and spent the next seven years getting it ready, even adorning it with architectural elements he had purchased from the second Chestnut Street Theatre when it was torn down in 1855.

When Forrest died in 1872, his well-laid plans were put into motion, an endowment and trust was established. Though an unfortunate fire in his former mansion on Broad Street had destroyed some of his books, and even his copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the building was sold to an educational institution the Philadelphia College of Art and Design for Women. With these proceeds and with the rest of the accumulated estate, a $300,000 endowment was set up - that’s several million dollars in today’s money. 

Twelve elderly actors who had applied for the honor were installed at Springbrook, with all their daily needs provided for. The only requirement that Forrest stipulated was that they hold a ceremony of remembrance to Shakespeare every March 23rd on The Bard’s birthday - and every Fourth of July they needed to gather for a patriotic oration and a reading of the Declaration of Independence. Forrest’s entire library and many artworks decorated the walls of Springbrook. The marble statue of himself as Coriolanus was installed in the front hall. And when the residents died, well, there was a plot set aside for them at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, just across the Schuylkill River from Philadelphia, where they would be buried in the plot designated for ‘The Guests of Edwin Forrest’ under a granite monument inscribed with the words “All the world’s a Stage, and all the Men and women Merely Players.” And as they made their exits, new applicants would be received into the home, as long as they could prove they had spent at least 10 to 12 years in the theatrical profession.

This arrangement for the Edwin Forrest Home lasted into the 1920s, when finally the spread of Philadelphia’s industrialization reached the broad Northeastern section of the county. By this point Springbrook was feeling a bit old-fashioned, too, and the two bathrooms seemed decided inadequate for the 12 residents and the rest of the staff. The house was sold and then demolished. The grounds were carved up into city blocks, and Philadelphia’s inexorable street grid wiped out almost every trace of the estate. The only remnant of the presence of the former farm are the grounds of the Edwin Forrest Elementary School - which still remains and proudly bears his name. 

But the residents of the Edwin Forrest Home (as it was called now . . they dropped the ‘Decayed Actors’ part) were not forgotten (and after all the endowment remained and had even grown over the years). So in 1928 its residents were moved to a new building in West Philadelphia, at 4849 Parkside Avenue, next to the Bala Golf Club. An Elizabethan-style building with modern kitchens and bathrooms, it had a stone plaque over the front door with the words “See The Players Well Bestowed” built into the masonry. The massive statue of Forrest was transferred to preside over the new entrance hall, along with most of the other artworks and books. In 1949 the bequest for the home received a huge and unexpected boost from the estate of Philadelphia theatrical producer John Frederick Zimmerman. Thereafter 12 lucky residents settled in for a fairly comfortable time, all things considered. 

In 1960, the historian Richard Moody was able to wander freely through the home, interviewing residents and poking about its library. He easily plucked from the shelf many amazing artifacts - from the household account books of Forrest’s father, to theatrical swords and other props that the actor had used during his long career. And every year, Moody reported, the residents still duly gathered for the required celebrations of Shakespeare’s birthday and for America’s Independence Day. It was a pretty good deal for all concerned, but by 1988 this home too was getting outdated and it was judged that the wealth of the bequest could be spread more broadly than to care for just a few people. The Edwin Forrest Home was finally combined with a Staten Island institution for retired actors, and today the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey, run by the Actor’s Fund, still boasts an “Edwin Forrest Wing.” 

His former house on Broad Street had an even more interesting history. Though doubled in size, with an extension running along Master Street, It served the Philadelphia School of Design for Women for decades. Generations of female artists and sculptors learned their craft in his former dining room, and exhibited works in his picture gallery, and held graduation ceremonies in his back garden. In 1960, though, the school moved out to become the Moore College of Art and Design. And as North Philadelphia had increasingly become a primary neighborhood for the city’s African American community in the 20th Century, it was a welcome development when in 1968, Edwin Forrest's former house became a real home for theater people once again. It was now the site of the Freedom Theatre, under the leadership of its two founders Robert Leslie and John E. Allen. Though this was certainly a development that Edwin Forrest had never anticipated, the Freedom Theater and its school became a leading arts and training institution for the African American community of Philadelphia.

The massive marble statue that Forrest had commissioned of himself as Coriolanus eventually was purchased by another longstanding Philadelphia theatrical institution, the Walnut Street Theatre (now a non-profit producing organization) inhabiting the building where so many of Forrest’s triumphant performances had taken place over the years. It was installed there by the main staircase to the second floor, and its fierce visage has presided over many an audience and opening night party since then. The Edwin Forrest Society often holds a celebration on his birthday in the lobby, and on occasions afterwards the celebrants make the trek down Walnut to the churchyard of St. Paul’s, to visit the stone that covers the Forrest family crypt where the actor, his mother and most of his siblings are interred.

No further “Guests of Edwin Forrest” have been laid to rest at West Laurel Hill for many years now, but you can visit the lovely site and see the granite monument, as the cemetery is open to the public. Most of the remnants of the Edwin Forrest collection of books, manuscripts, paintings and artifacts went to the Pennsylvania Historical Society, where they are being well curated and preserved, available for perusal by scholars. And the structure of the last Edwin Forrest Home for Retired Actors is still there. It’s actually not far from where I live right now. The stone inscription still marks the front door. “See the Players Well Bestowed,” it still proclaims.

Which was good advice when Shakespeare first wrote it for Hamlet to say, and it's good advice now. See the players well bestowed. Though Edwin Forrest was a vastly complex character during his lifetime, and certainly we can find much to reproach him about, we can hardly ignore the fact that while he was alive and performing, he lit a fire in the hearts of thousands of audience members for many, many years. This has to count for something. He helped to shape the American theater. 

Now that he’s gone and mostly belongs to the histories such as this one, well, to paraphrase Hamlet again, let’s not just use him according to his desert. God’s bodkins, man, let’s use him much better! Use every man after his desert and who shall ’scape whipping? Use him after his own honor and dignity. The less he deserves, the more merit is our bounty. Take him in.

And that’s our Encore Episode, first released as Episode 16 in our Season One. Go back and listen to Parts One and Two of our “Edwin Forrest in Philadelphia” series, if you want. In fact, I hope you’ve been enjoying all our reprises from the past over the course of this July, one from each of the seasons of the podcast.

For additional information about today’s topic, in the episode notes there is a handy link to a blog post on our website (www.aithpodcast.com) with lots of imagery from the life of Edwin Forrest, along with more insights and explanations, and a bibliography of our sources for this episode. 

As a Postscript, I should perhaps mention that one edit that I made to this episode was to remove a mistaken assertion that pages of Forrest’s copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio had somehow survived the fire that took place in his library after his death. Recent scholarship has proven that this was not the case. 

Forrest owned a great deal of Shakespeariana, and had collected not only a First Folio of Shakespeare, but also a copy of the Bard's Second, Third and Fourth Folios.

But it was that First Folio, that priceless, rare and expensive book, first printed in 1623, that Forrest was most proud of. A photograph exists (we use it as the cover photo for the episode) of the actor sitting in his library on North Broad Street, with the First Folio displayed beside him. Forrest once said to his close friend James Oakes that "were the place to catch fire he would rather the whole house was destroyed than this work should be consumed."

James Oakes was named one of the three executors of Forrest's estate, following his death, and in December 1872 he had hurried down from his home in Boston to see to the funeral arrangements. On December 18th thousands of Philadelphians had filed past the actor's open casket in his front parlor. The casket with his body was then transported to St. Paul's churchyard in Society Hill, where Forrest was laid to rest in his family crypt.

But back to the story of that First Folio. Oakes and another of his executors, Joseph McArdle, had stayed on in Forrest's house after the funeral in order to deal with the enormous physical and legal tasks ahead of them. On January 16th, they were due to file a copy of Forrest’s will in Philadelphia court.

However, at three in the morning of the 15th, the fire broke out. We can read from an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Mr. Oakes, whose room was directly over the library, was awakened by smoke which filled the room. Awakening Mr. McArdle and the servants, an effort was made by them combinedly to save the Shakespearean collection, which was so highly prized by Mr. Forrest.  . . This was found impossible."

When the flames were doused, it seemed that the most valuable books - held in one corner of the library - were all lost. Charred volumes and ashes lay everywhere. Investigators determined that a 'faulty flue' of the house's chimney had caused the blaze.

The great Philadelphia scholar of Shakespeare, Horace Howard Furness himself, was then summoned to look over what was left. The University of Pennsylvania professor made a catalog of what he found, but apparently left carrying under his arm what he thought were a few charred pages of Forrest's First Folio. Furness carefully preserved them, and for many years these ashy scraps of a 17th Century book were displayed in a glass reliquary at the University of Pennsylvania Library. Recent  investigations by the scholars Zachary Lesser and Whitney Trettien, however, have revealed that these pages are actually from a copy of the Third Folio, not the First.

Now, though it was not part of Lesser’s and Trettien’s investigations, there is one final thing that I personally would like to know more about. Because I note in Richard Moody’s biography of Forrest, it’s stated that the day after the fire on January 16th, Forrest’s two maids, Katie and Lizzie, were told that they had not been included in their employer’s of bequests. Oakes offered them only a week's salary, and reportedly the two women immediately and angrily left the house.

I've often wondered if the two sisters somehow had already gotten advance word that they were not provided for in Edwin Forrest’s will - despite all their years of loyal service - and took their revenge. After all, they had been told by Forrest himself exactly what he cared most about in the world - and exactly what he feared the most would happen to it.

I’m Peter Schmitz, and our opening and closing theme music is by Christopher Mark Colucci. Chris also did the sound engineering for the original episode. Additional sound editing for this encore episode was done by My Humble Self, here in our penthouse sound studios, high atop the Tower of Theater History. 

Additional music for this episode was composed by Johannes Brahms, Antonin Dovrak, and Edgar Stillman Kelly. 

Thanks for listening today, and for coming along on another Adventure in Theater History, Philadelphia.