Katharine Cornell

Katharine Cornell - Table of Contents

Katharine Cornell
"The First Lady of American Theater"
TEXT Beneath Illustrations

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174 Mariner St.	174 Mariner St.	174 Mariner St.	174 Mariner St.

	Katherine's family lived at 174 Mariner St.	Queen Anne feature: asymmetrical façade

	Oval window with simple tracery	Queen Anne features: Palladian window Brackets supporting gable

	Pedimented dormer	Pedimented dormer Fish scale wooden shingles Queen Anne brackets	Rectangular windows originally were rounded at top

		Katherine's grandfather, S. Douglas Cornell, whose attic theater productions influenced the young child	Katherine's grandfather's house at 484 Delaware Avenue featured an attic theater

Audition print taken by Buffalo photographer Howard Beach on display outside Katherine Cornell Theater at SUNY at Buffalo in 2003	Audition print by Howard Beach	Audition print by Howard Beach	Audition print by Howard Beach

Photo by Yousuf Karsh		On display at SUNY at Buffalo in 2003	On display at SUNY at Buffalo in 2003

On display at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in 2005

Buffalo Studio Club parlor theater 508 Franklin St.	508 Franklin St.	508 Franklin St.	508 Franklin St.

Katherine performed at the Buffalo Studio Club parlor theater at 508 Franklin St., in which the proscenium arch from the original stage still stands in the living room	Note flat headed stone lintels and sills		Flat headed stone lintel over entrance

Detail from previous photo: wooden panels	Flat headed stone lintels and sills ... 6 over 6 lights	Italianate brackets supporting overhanging eaves ... Dentil molding	Wall encloses Twentieth Century Club garden

508 Franklin is the house in which Katharine Cornell "performed as a girl, along with a number of enthusiastic Allentown amateurs, including civic leader Olive Williams. The proscenium arch from the original stage still stands in the living room." -- "A Field Guide to the Architecture and History of Allentown," 1987

The text below is excerpted from
Buffalo's Delaware Avenue: Mansions and Families, by Edward T. Dunn. Pub. by Canisius College Press 2003

Peter C. Cornell, son of S. Douglas Cornell, studied medicine and married Alice Gardner Plimpton. They resided in Berlin, Germany, while Peter pursued graduate studies in medicine, and their daughter, Katherine, was born there in 1893.

Six months later the family returned to Buffalo where they resided on Mariner Street (photos above).

At thirty-six Peter abandoned his medical practice to manage the Star Theatre.

Neither Katherine nor her father had ever lived at #484 Delaware, but the plays on the fourth floor of the mansion played a part in shaping her career. She wrote in 1938:

Acting is in my blood. The feeling for it was absolutely born in me. My first memories, however, are not of actors but of the theatre - a stage; the curve of a proscenium; a curtain with something wonderful behind it, which might lift at any moment. That was in my grandfather Cornell's house in Buffalo. 1 never got to act there, of course, I was just a very small child sitting on the steps watching rehearsals. My grandfather was a gifted amateur actor, a brilliant director. John Drew, his good friend, always considered him one of the best. 1 can't remember his acting. In my day he was always directing.

My father was an exceptionally fine amateur player - my aunt was too. Even at our summer home in Cobourg, Ontario - a grand old-fashioned house built round a rotunda like a state capital - there was a long gallery at the back near the garden where they used to put on plays. 1 did too.

I think it was the advent of Maude Adams' Peter Pan in my father's theatre [in 1907] that first made me know that I wanted to devote my life to the stage. I had looked forward to Maude Adams with such eagerness that, when the time came, it was sheer agony At first I hid my face in the curtains of the box because I couldn't bear to look. Then, afterward, utter enchantment; particularly the flying part.

She lived in Buffalo long enough to graduate from St. Margaret's School, dismissed by Horton as a foundation under Episcopal auspices for genteel young ladies of Protestant faith at North and Franklin Streets opened in 1884 which flourished for three decades then faded away.

Her childhood was unhappy. A tyrannical father, an alcoholic mother, and awareness that she was not beautiful contributed to her feelings of inadequacy.

After St. Margaret's, she was sent to Oaksmere, a finishing school in Westchester, from which she graduated in 1911. Her first success was in the role of Jo in the London production of Little Women. Her first big hit in the United States was Clemence Dane's Bill of Divorcement (1921) followed by Candida (1924), The Green Hat (1925), The Barretts of Wimpole Street, (1931), Romeo and Juliet (1934), and Antigone (1946). She was one of the great actresses of her day.