The Vauxhall Gardens was a pleasure garden and theater in New York City. It was named for the Vauxhall Gardens of London.

Venue: New York Vauxhall Gardens
Town: Manhattan, US

The Vauxhall Gardens was a pleasure garden and theater in New York City. It was named for the Vauxhall Gardens of London. Though the venue passed through a long list of owners, and suffered buyouts, closings, relocations, and re-openings, it lasted until the mid-19th century. In the mid-1760s, out-of-town taverns, such as John Clapp's in the Bowery, had become popular in Colonial New York, taking advantage of the "Sunset Strip-like" jurisdiction, two miles from the post office,. At a site called "Bowling Green" since 1722, Samuel Fraunces opened a pleasure garden, first called the Vaux-Hall Gardens, in New York, in 1767 and it received a chief competitor in the much larger Ranelagh Gardens, (named after Ranelagh Gardens, Chelsea, London), both appear on Bernard Ratzer's map of New York of 1767 occupying a wooded rise of ground just north of the northernmost city houses, on the south side of Duane Street; the site overlooked Lispenard's Meadows and the riverfront road to Greenwich Village. The original Vauxhall Gardens was located in a smaller site on Greenwich Street near the Hudson River between what later became Warren and Chambers streets in the fashionable Sixth Ward; Public School 234 stands at the site today. Ratzer's map shows its square garden plot, conventionally divided in four by walks. Fraunces operated Vaux-Hall through Summer 1773; in October, he auctioned its contents and sold the property. His notice mentioned two large gardens, a house with four rooms per floor and twelve fireplaces, and a dining hall that was 56 feet (17 m) long and 26 feet (7.9 m) wide, with a kitchen below. The Vauxhall offered light summer concerts and featured an outdoor wax museum. For the summer 1768 season, it hosted an exhibit on the life of Scipio Africanus that included a grove with a reconstruction of the military leader at his tent. The Vauxhall remained popular throughout the Colonial period of New York and to the end of the 18th century. By this point, the gardens had