Scope and arrangement
The Ernest A. Meriney scrapbooks, dated 1885 to 1907, were compiled by him to document theatrical productions in New Orleans. The scrapbooks hold clippings, playbills, postcards, telegrams, ticket stubs and a photograph. The playbills are the dominant feature of the scrapbooks. The playbills were generated for productions performed at local theatres, particularly the Audubon Theatre, Crescent Theatre, French Opera House, St. Charles Orpheum, and the Tulane Theatre.
One scrapbook has seating plans for these major theatres (volume 3).
Production types consist of burlesque, comic opera, drama, minstrel shows, and Shakespeare plays. Performers from around the country and the world travelled to New Orleans to perform on stage, for example, Walter Damrosch, the German-American conductor; Elsie de Wolfe, an American actor; Mary Mannering, an English actor; and Andrew Robson, a Canadian actor.
There are postcards and playbills sent to Meriney from friends who traveled to other cities for work or vacation. Meriney also saved ephemera from his friend Louis F. Fett, a scenic designer for the Baldwin-Melville Stock Company. Other items interfiled in the scrapbooks are poetry, articles about actors, and local and national news stories.
Arrangement
The scrapbooks were arranged chronologically and retain the local call numbers.