Gaslight illuminates Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street Theatre. Patrons are living in an age of wonders: lights that burn “without wick or oil.”
Most lighting then relied on candles or whale-oil lamps. Merchant Charles Kugler wanted to bring to Philadelphia the modern marvel that illuminated posh London streets. But he felt that manufacturing gas from coal produced such a bad smell that it “could not, with propriety, be established but at a distance from the city.” And coal was often expensive or scarce. Kugler replaced coal with pitch, which came from America’s abundant trees. Pitch was also largely free of the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulfide. Turpentine (also from trees) dissolved the pitch, which was heated in a sealed chamber separate from the firebox beneath it. A chemical bath removed tars and odor-causing chemicals. The gas was collected under an adjustable hood that kept it under pressure to feed the lighting fixtures.
Kugler installed the furnace and storage tanks next to the auditorium of the theater building. Inspired by London’s famous Covent Garden Theatre, the Chestnut Street Theatre was the young nation’s first purpose-built theater. Its architects included Benjamin Latrobe, early designer of the U.S. Capitol.
Some Philadelphians denounced the gasworks as a danger to public health and safety, insisting it would emit an unpleasant, unhealthy stench. Furthermore, they said, gaslight would use up oxygen and affect the lungs of theatergoers. And an explosion would kill or maim people.
Amid this display of brotherly love, theater managers announced they were “happy to be the first to introduce this system of lighting theaters and flatter themselves that its superior safety, brilliancy and neatness will be satisfactorily expressed by the audience.” And so it was. Until the Chestnut Street Theatre burned to the ground in 1820. It may have been arson.—RA