This list of amusements comes near being exhaustive, and the Park Theater was always the center of attraction. The building, fronting on Park Row, had been completed in 1798 at a cost placed by the _Evening Post_--no doubt an overestimate--at $130,500. The charge was $1 for box seats, of which there were at first three full circle tiers, and after 1807 four; 75 cents to the pit, and 50 cents to the gallery. Early in the century performances began at 6:30, and at 9:30; the first play was usually followed by a farcical after-piece. Washington Irving as a lad used to pretend to go to bed after prayers, descend to the ground by way of the roof of a woodshed, and slip away to see this final performance. The _Evening Post_ gives us a good deal of information about the management of the theater, which was under Dunlap until 1808, and then under Cooper and Price. In its first issue Dunlap appealed to his patrons against the dangerous practice of “smoaking,” saying that the use of cigars was a constant topic for ridicule by European travelers. From Coleman’s later comments we learn that no woman would for a moment have thought of sitting anywhere but in the boxes, and that no gentleman would have shared the gallery with the rough crowd that filled it. Even the pit, with its dirty, broken floor, its backless benches, and its incursions of rats from crannies under the stage, would now be considered hardly tolerable. About the entrance there always clustered a set of idle boys and disorderly adults who, when spectators left during an intermission or before the after-piece, set up a clamor for the return checks. Efforts to stop the gift or sale of these checks were in general futile. The interior was renovated in 1807, enlargements were made to give a total of 2,372 seats, patent lamps were installed, and a room above the lobby was fitted up as a bar and restaurant. Still further improvements were made in 1809.