Irene Lewisohn

Irene Lewisohn (September 5, 1886 - April 4, 1944) was the founder of the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Museum of Costume Art.

She was the daughter of Rosalie Jacobs and Leonard Lewisohn. In 1905 she and her sister, Alice Lewisohn, began classes and club work at the Henry Street Settlement House in New York. They produced performances with both dance and drama. In 1915, they opened the Neighborhood Playhouse on the corner of Grand and Pitt Streets. There they offered training in both dance and drama to children and teenagers. Irene was in charge of the dance training and production, with the assistance of Blanche Talmud. Alice Lewisohn was in charge of the dramatic arts. In 1928 they opened The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre at 16 West Forty-sixth Street. Irene Lewisohn died in 1944.

• The Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• "The Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2008-12-16. The Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library is one of the world's foremost fashion libraries. Its collection includes approximately thirty thousand noncirculating monographs, rare books, and periodicals, as well as design archives, sketchbooks, photographs, drawings, prints, and extensive files of clippings pertaining to the history and study of the arts of adornment throughout the world. The library maintains fifty current fashion periodical subscriptions, including a wide range of international magazines and scholarly journals. 

• Irene Lewisohn at the Internet Broadway Database