America's Longest Run: A History of the Walnut Street Theatre (Andrew Davis, 2010)

Abstract

On February 2, 1909, Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre was midway through a run of a farcical play called Brewster's Millions. Despite being the centennial of the nation's oldest continuously running theatre, the milestone went unacknowledged. In many ways, Andrew Davis's America's Longest Run: A History of the Walnut Street Theatre is a repudiation of such neglect, and an effort to show that "the Walnut has been at or near the center of American theatrical activity since Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States." In this ambitious work, Davis chronicles the history of the titular institution, a history that he asserts "is also the history of the American stage."