Hamblin began his tenure as manager of New York's Bowery Theatre with partner James H. Hackett in 1830. Hackett left a month later, and Hamblin obtained the lease and rebuilt when the theatre burnt down later that year. Hamblin catered to the tastes of the rowdy audiences of New York's Bowery district. These "Bowery B'hoys" were working class, primarily male, and socially conservative., and Hamblin accordingly staged blackface performances, circus acts, English farce, American melodrama, and Shakespeare to please them. Hamblin himself preferred upper-class entertainments like ballet and opera; nevertheless, he relegated these to infrequent bookings. Under Hamblin, American working-class theatre, emphasising brilliant spectacle and plot-based narrative, emerged as a form in its own right.