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Radio City Music Hall
1260 6th Ave, New York, NY 10020 – – The Music Hall opened to the public on December 27, 1932, with a lavish stage show featuring numbers including Ray Bolger, Doc Rockwell, Martha Graham, The Mirthquakers, and Patricia Bowman. The opening was meant to be a return to high-class variety entertainment. However, the opening was not a success: the program was very long, spanning from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. of the next day, and a multitude of acts were crammed onto the world’s largest stage, ensuring that individual acts were lost in the cavernous hall. As the premiere went on, audience members, including John Rockefeller Jr, waited in the…
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Neil Simon Theatre
250 W 52ND ST, NEW YORK, NY 10019 – – The facade is divided into two sections: the six-story stage house to the west and the five-story auditorium to the east. The ground floor is clad with terracotta blocks and contains an entrance with a marquee. The upper stories of both sections are made of brick and terracotta; the auditorium facade has arched windows, niches, and a central pediment, while the stage house is plainer in design. The interior is designed in the Adam style and includes two lobbies and a mezzanine-level lounge. The auditorium consists of a ground-level orchestra and one balcony with boxes. The theater interiors are decorated…
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Music Box Theatre
239 W 45th St, New York, NY 10036 – – The facade is made of limestone and is symmetrically arranged, with both Palladian and neo-Georgian motifs. At ground level, the eastern portion of the facade contains the theater’s entrance, with a marquee over it, while the stage door is to the west. A double-height central colonnade at the second and third floors conceals a fire-escape staircase; it is flanked by windows in the outer bays. The auditorium contains Adam style detailing, a large balcony, and two outwardly curved box seats within ornate archways. The theater was also designed with a comparatively small lobby, a lounge in the basement, and mezzanine-level…
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New Amsterdam Theatre
214 W 42nd St, New York, NY 10036 – – On October 26, 1903, the opening of the New Amsterdam Theatre was a highly anticipated New York City event. Designers Henry Herts and Hugh Tallent set out to build the most spectacular theatre in New York. They were so confident in their endeavor that they designed the theatre’s interior specifically for her inaugural production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The following morning’s review in The New York Times spoke little of the play, but hailed the New Amsterdam Theatre as “The House Beautiful,” a nickname that still holds true today. Over 113 years later, the New Amsterdam is the oldest…
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Apollo Theater
253 W 125th St. New York, NY 10027 – – The Apollo is a commissioner and presenter; catalyst for new artists, audiences, and creative workforce; and partner in the projection of the African American narrative and its role in the development of American and global culture. The Apollo Theater is a music hall in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is a noted venue for African-American performers, and is the home of Showtime at the Apollo, a nationally syndicated television variety show which showcased new talent, from 1987 to 2008, encompassing 1,093 episodes; the show was rebooted in 2018. The theater, which has a capacity of…
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The Shubert Theatre
225 W 44th St, New York, NY 10036 – – The Shubert’s facade is made of brick and terracotta, with sgraffito decorations designed in stucco. Three arches face south onto 44th Street, and a curved corner faces east toward Broadway. To the east, the Shubert Alley facade includes doors to the lobby and the stage house. The auditorium contains an orchestra level, two balconies, and a flat ceiling. The space is decorated with mythological murals throughout. Near the front of the auditorium, flanking the elliptical proscenium arch, are box seats at balcony level. The upper levels contain offices formerly occupied by the Shubert brothers, and the stage house to the north is shared with the Booth Theatre. The Shubert is part of the largest…
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Winter Garden Theatre
1634 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, NY 10019 – – Shubert has owned the Winter Garden Theatre longer than any of its other venues. The playhouse occupies the second American Horse Exchange, built by William K. Vanderbilt in 1896, when Longacre (now Times Square) was the center of the horse and carriage trade. By 1911, when the Shuberts leased the Exchange, horses had given way to the automobile and legitimate stage was making inroads north of 42nd St. The Winter Garden was converted into a theatre in 1911, and had brief interludes as a movie house from 1928 to 1933 when Warner Brothers leased it, and again in 1945, when United Artists…
