The story
The Dock Street Theatre in Charleston's French Quarter stands where the original Dock Street Theatre of 1736 — often called the first building in America built solely for theatrical performance — once stood; the present structure was built around 1809 as the Planter's Hotel, gaining its ironwork balcony and brownstone columns in the 1830s, and was converted into today's theatre inside the hotel's shell as a Depression-era WPA project, reopening again in 2010 after a major city renovation. Its haunted reputation is among Charleston's best known. One legend concerns the actor Junius Brutus Booth, father of John Wilkes Booth, a hotel guest in its rowdy heyday who is said to linger; another tells of a woman called Nettie, said in folklore to have died on the site when struck by lightning, whose figure is reported gliding through the building. Visitors and staff also describe footsteps, voices and figures in the balcony. These stories are folklore, the deaths within them should be handled with care, and the accounts presented as reports rather than fact. Current tour and performance details should be confirmed before publishing.