With a seating capacity of 5300 and a stage that could accommodate 1000 performers, the New York Hippodrome was a unique entertainment venue. Promoted as the largest playhouse in the world, it hosted circuses, sporting events, musical extravaganzas, operas, motion pictures and in the mid Nineteen-twenties, under the auspices of the Keith-Albee organization, vaudeville productions. It was on the Hippodrome stage where Harry Houdini once made an elephant disappear.
The building’s size made it popular with circus acts. Management at the Hippodrome were more indulgent of the spectacular physical feats that were the stock and trade of circus artists. In 1924, 1925 and 1926, Leitzel made multiple appearances at the Hippodrome. For one week’s appearance there she even played the piano onstage as a prelude to her aerial acrobatics.