Al Hirschfeld Theatre

About

The Al Hirschfeld Theatre, originally the Martin Beck Theatre, is a Broadway theater at 302 West 45th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Opened in 1924, it was designed by G. Albert Lansburgh in a Moorish and Byzantine style and was constructed for vaudevillian Martin Beck. It has 1,404 seats across two levels and is operated by ATG Entertainment. Both the facade and the interior are New York City landmarks. The facades of the Al Hirschfeld's auditorium and stage house are designed as one unit. There is a double-height arcade with cast-stone columns at the base of the theater. The eastern section of the arcade contains the auditorium entrance, the center section includes a staircase with emergency exits, and the western section leads to the stage house. Red brick is used for the upper stories of the facade. Albert Herter, a muralist who frequently collaborated with Lansburgh, oversaw much of the interior design. A square ticket lobby is directly inside the main entrance, leading to a vaulted inner lobby and an L-shaped mezzanine lounge. The auditorium is decorated with ornamental plasterwork and contains a sloped orchestra level, a mezzanine level, and a curved sounding board. In addition, there are box seats at the balcony level, near the front of the auditorium. The auditorium has an octagonal ceiling with a multicolored dome. Beck had proposed the theater in 1923, and it opened with a production of Madame Pompadour on November 11, 1924. It was the only theater in New York City to be owned outright without a mortgage. The Beck was used by several theatrical groups in its early years, including the Theatre Guild. After Martin Beck's death in 1940, the theater was managed by his wife Louise Heims Beck. The theater was purchased in 1966 by William L. McKnight of Jujamcyn Theaters, and it hosted several short runs during the 1970s and 1980s. The theater was renamed for Broadway illustrator Al Hirschfeld in 2003. Throughout the years, the theater has staged long-running productions including The Teahouse of the August Moon, Dracula, Into the Woods, Guys and Dolls, and Kinky Boots. Jujamcyn merged in 2023 with ATG, which continued to operate the theater.

The Al Hirschfeld Theatre is on 302 West 45th Street, on the south sidewalk between Ninth and Eighth Avenues, in the Theater District and Hell's Kitchen neighborhoods of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. The land lot is rectangular. The lot covers 13,389 square feet (1,243.9 m2), with a frontage of 133.33 ft (40.64 m) on 45th Street and a depth of 100.42 ft (31 m). The Al Hirschfeld Theatre shares the city block with the Film Center Building and the off-Broadway Davenport Theatre to the west. Across Eighth Avenue to the east are the Row NYC Hotel and the Majestic, John Golden, and Bernard B. Jacobs theaters. In addition, St. Luke's Lutheran Church, the off-Broadway St. Luke's Theatre, and The Whitby are to the north. The Al Hirschfeld is the westernmost Broadway theater in the Theater District and the only one west of Eighth Avenue. When the venue was constructed in 1925, the block to the east already contained eight theaters. The site of the theater itself, at 302 to 314 West 45th Street, was filled by seven brownstone townhouses of three stories each. Six of the houses, numbers 302 to 312, had been purchased by Nathan Wilson and then sold by Berkley Builders. The seventh house at number 314 was owned by Nellie Clauss.

The Al Hirschfeld Theatre, originally the Martin Beck Theatre, was designed by Gustave Albert Lansburgh in the Byzantine and Romanesque styles. The theater opened in 1924 and was built for Martin Beck (1868–1940), who originally named the venue for himself. The Beck was the only Broadway theater designed in a Byzantine style; most other Broadway theater buildings of the time were designed in a neoclassical style. Furthermore, Lansburgh specialized in designing movie palaces on the West Coast of the United States, including Los Angeles's Hill Street Theatre and San Francisco's Golden Gate Theater. H. H. Oddie Inc. built the theater, and numerous material suppliers and contractors were involved in the project. The Al Hirschfeld is operated by Jujamcyn Theaters.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.