On Monday, Seventh Street Playhouse begins rehearsals for a full production of Vandergrift! at the Greenbelt Arts Center in June.

In the early 1890’s, steel tycoon George McMurtry, tries to produce a unique marriage between architecture and industrialism to build a workingman's paradise in southwestern Pennsylvania.

But his goal is also to destroy strikers and keep compliant workers happy. He hires Frederick Law Olmsted, the Nation's preeminent architect, to design the town of Vandergrift, named after his partner, Captain Jacob J. Vandergrift. The Vandergrift plant becomes the largest steel mill in the world

Ida Tarbell, who will someday expose J. D. Rockefeller, is intrigued by the idea and visits the town. She and McMurtry clash over his flawed idealism and her subconscious biases.

She revisits the town four times over the next half a century, each time reexamining her own and McMurtry’s ideals as the Nation goes through wars, depressions, the New Deal, the Union movement, and the final collapse of the steel industry.

McMurtry’s dream and Olmsted’s design live on despite the collapse of both the steel industry and almost all large American corporations existing at the time of Vandergrift’s inception.


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The Seventh Street Playhouse LLCis located steps from the Old Eastern Market in the Capitl Hill District in Washington, DC. The Seventh Street Playhouse is a small critically acclaimed, founded in 1998- ld, non-profit ensemble theater company comprised of experienced actors, designers, directors, and theatre technicians performing in both Washington, Boston New York City. Our mission is guided by a statement made by Albert Einstein: "There are two ways to live life. The first is as if nothing is a miracle. The second is as if everything is a miracle."
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PLAYWRIGHT, ANTHONY E. GALLO