The Broadway theatres

A Broadway house is defined by arithmetic and geography rather than by reputation: 500 seats or more, inside the box bounded by 41st and 54th Streets and Sixth and Eighth Avenues, running mostly legitimate theatre under an Actors' Equity production or LORT contract. What follows tracks the buildings themselves, the names they carried before the current one, who holds the lease, how many people the room takes and which show has stayed longest. The Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center breaks the geography and is kept on the list anyway, which is how the rule has always been written.

Places in this collection

  • Palace Theatre — Opened in 1913 as a vaudeville house and reopened in 2024 after the whole 1,743-seat auditorium was lifted 29 feet to free up commercial sp…
  • New Amsterdam Theatre — One of three houses still in use from 1903, listed on the National Register and restored by Disney Theatrical Group, which has run it since…
  • Nederlander Theatre — The southernmost of the active Broadway houses, opened in 1921 as the National, then the Billy Rose, then briefly the Trafalgar before taki…
  • Minskoff Theatre — A 1973 house built into the base of One Astor Plaza rather than as a freestanding building, with 1,710 seats reached by escalator from the…
  • Lyric Theatre — The most recently constructed Broadway house, built in 1998 as the Ford Center for the Performing Arts and then renamed twice, to the Hilto…
  • Lyceum Theatre — Herts and Tallant built it in the Beaux-Arts style in 1903, briefly billed as the New Lyceum, and it is one of the three surviving houses f…
  • Lunt-Fontanne Theatre — Opened in 1910 as the Globe with The Old Town, and renamed in 1957 for the married acting pair Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. The Beaux-Art…
  • Longacre Theatre — Henry B. Herts designed it in 1913 and named it for Longacre Square, which had already been renamed Times Square nine years earlier. The Sh…
  • Lena Horne Theatre — Krapp built it for Irwin Chanin as the Mansfield in 1926; it went dark from 1950, reopened in 1960 as the Brooks Atkinson, and was renamed…
  • James Earl Jones Theatre — Thomas W. Lamb built it for producer John Cort in 1912, and it carried the Cort name for 110 years before the Shubert Organization renamed…
  • Imperial Theatre — Herbert J. Krapp built it for the Shubert brothers as their fiftieth theatre, opening on Christmas Day 1923 with Mary Jane McKane. The 1,44…
  • Hudson Theatre — Built between 1902 and 1903 by producer Henry B. Harris with architect J.B. McElfatrick, and one of three houses still in use from that yea…
  • Eugene O'Neill Theatre — Opened in 1925 as the Forrest, became the Coronet in 1945, and took the playwright's name in 1959. The 1,066-seat ATG house has been occupi…
  • Circle in the Square Theatre — Built into the base of a 1972 office tower and reached by descending from street level, an unusual arrangement among Broadway houses, with…
  • Booth Theatre — The smallest of the Shubert houses on West 45th Street at 766 seats, opened in 1913 with The Great Adventure and named for the actor Edwin…
  • Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre — Herbert J. Krapp designed it as the Royale in 1927; it spent six years as the John Golden Theatre, went back to Royale, and took its presen…
  • Belasco Theatre — Opened in 1907 as the Stuyvesant, renamed three years later for David Belasco, who kept a duplex apartment above the auditorium. At 1,018 s…
  • August Wilson Theatre — Five names in a century: Guild Theatre from 1925, WOR Mutual Radio through the 1940s, ANTA Playhouse, then the American Academy of Dramatic…
  • Ambassador Theatre — A 1,125-seat Shubert house that opened in 1921 with The Rose Girl and spent 1980 briefly rebranded as the New Ambassador. Chicago has been…
  • Al Hirschfeld Theatre — Opened in 1924 as the Martin Beck Theatre and renamed in 2003 for the caricaturist whose line drawings ran alongside Broadway reviews. The…

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