Longacre Theatre
The Longacre Theatre is a Broadway theater at 220 West 48th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States. Opened in 1913, it was designed by Henry B. Herts and was named for Longacre Square, now known as Times Square. The Longacre has 1,077 seats and is operated by The Shubert Organization. Both the facade and the auditorium's interior are New York City designated landmarks.
The ground-floor facade is made of rusticated blocks of terracotta. The theater's main entrance is shielded by a marquee. The upper stories are divided vertically into five bays, which contain niches on either side of three large windows. The auditorium contains ornamental plasterwork, a sloped orchestra level, two balconies, and a coved ceiling. The balcony level contains box seats topped by flat arches, and the proscenium opening is also a flat arch. In addition, the Longacre contains two lounges, and the top story formerly had offices.
Theatrical personality Harry Frazee acquired the site in 1911 and developed the Longacre Theatre to accommodate musicals. The Longacre opened on May 1, 1913, with the play Are You a Crook?, but the theater housed several flops in its early years. Frazee, who co-owned the theater with G. M. Anderson, sold his ownership stake in 1917 to focus on baseball. The Shubert brothers acquired the Longacre in 1924 and operated it for two decades before leasing it as a radio and television studio in 1944. The Shuberts returned the Longacre to legitimate theatrical use in 1953. The theater gained a reputation for hosting few successful productions in the late 20th century and was nearly converted to a court in the early 1990s. The Longacre was renovated in 2008.
Site[edit]
The Longacre Theatre is on 220 West 48th Street, on the south sidewalk between Eighth Avenue and Broadway, near Times Square in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City.[3][4] The square land lot covers 9,990 square feet (928 m2), with a frontage of about 100 feet (30 m) on 48th Street and a depth of 100 feet.[4] The Longacre shares the block with the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre to the west, the Ethel Barrymore Theatre to the south, and the Morgan Stanley Building to the east. Other nearby buildings include the Eugene O'Neill Theatre and Walter Kerr Theatre to the north; Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan to the northeast; 20 Times Square to the east; the Hotel Edison and Lunt-Fontanne Theatre to the south; and the Lena Horne Theatre and Paramount Hotel to the southwest.[4]
Before the Longacre Theatre was developed, the surrounding area generally had a mixture of low-rise residences and industrial buildings.[5][6] The site of the Longacre Theatre was previously occupied by a row of four residences, each of which was three stories high.[5] At the time of the theater's construction, the site to the east contained a carriage factory, while the Union Methodist Church was across 48th Street.[7]