Which catastrophic event in 1876, in Brooklyn, resulted in the death of 278 individuals and which destroyed the former Park Theatre, leased to Sarah Crocker Conway at that time but who continued in the lease on the new building in which her husband played leading parts?
Sarah Crocker Conway Sarah Crocker Conway (b. Ridgefield, Connecticut, 1834; d. Brooklyn, New York, April 28, 1875) was an actress. She was a sister of Elizabeth Crocker Bowers, also an actress. She made her debut in Baltimore, Maryland in 1849, playing Parthenia and other leading parts. In May 1852, she married the actor Frederick B. Conway, and the two thenceforward acted together. In 1859, they opened Pike's Opera House in Cincinnati, Ohio with a first-class company, but the engagement was not profitable, and they returned to the east. In 1861, they visited England, and filled a short engagement at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London. After their return, they became star actors, and made an extensive and profitable tour. In 1864 Sarah leased the Park Theatre in Brooklyn, and subsequently the new Brooklyn Theatre, in which for nine years her husband played leading parts. Sarah Conway possessed a tall and graceful figure and an expressive countenance, and was a versatile actress and a popular theatre manager.
Irvin C. Miller Irvin Colloden Miller (February 19, 1884 – February 27, 1975) was an African-American actor, playwright and vaudeville show writer and producer. He was responsible for successful theater shows including "Broadway Rastus" (1921), "Liza" (1922), "Dinah" (1923), which introduced the wildly popular black bottom dance, and "Desires of 1927" starring Adelaide Hall. For thirty years he directed the popular review, "Brown Skin Models", influenced by the "Ziegfeld Follies" but exclusively using black performers. "In the 1920s and 1930s, he was arguably the most well-established and successful producer of black musical comedy."