Theatre & dance
Jessie Bonstelle
1871–1932 · theater director, actress, company manager
Pioneering stage director who ran Detroit's Garrick Theatre stock company and in 1925 founded the playhouse that became the Detroit Civic Theatre, today's Bonstelle Theatre.
- Born
Greece, New York- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 60- Birth name
- Laura Justine Bonesteel
- Detroit years
- 1910–1932
- Field
- Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Bonstelle was already a veteran actress and stock-company manager when, in 1910, she took over the summer company at Detroit's Garrick Theatre on Griswold Street, shuttling each week between Detroit and her other house in Buffalo. For fifteen years she gave Detroit a steady diet of recent Broadway plays and trained young players, among them Katharine Cornell and William Powell. In 1924 she sold her stake in the Garrick, and with a backers' syndicate bought Temple Beth El, the former synagogue on Woodward Avenue, which C. Howard Crane remodeled into the Bonstelle Playhouse, opened on January 1, 1925. In 1928 a public fund drive made it the Detroit Civic Theatre, one of the country's first civic theaters, with cheap seats and a repertory from Shakespeare to Ibsen. Ill with cancer, she kept campaigning for it until her death in Detroit in 1932; thousands filed past her coffin in the theater. Wayne State later bought the building and named it for her.
Highlights
- Ran the summer stock company at Detroit's Garrick Theatre from 1910 to 1924
- Opened the Bonstelle Playhouse in the former Temple Beth El on January 1, 1925
- Turned it into the Detroit Civic Theatre in 1928, one of America's first civic theaters
- Trained Katharine Cornell and William Powell, among others
- Wayne State University's Bonstelle Theatre bears her name
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1910–1924
Garrick Theatre
Demolished · 1875–1929
Opened in 1875 as Whitney's Grand Opera House and renamed the Garrick in 1909; Bonstelle's company played here every season. Demolished in 1928–1929. Houdini gave his last performance here in 1926.
Founded · 1925–1932
Bonstelle Theatre
The Albert Kahn synagogue she turned into the Bonstelle Playhouse and Detroit Civic Theatre; Wayne State used it as a stage until 2019, and since 2025 it is an event space beside the AC Hotel.