Booth Theatre
The Booth Theatre is a Broadway theater at 222 West 45th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Opened in 1913, the theater was designed by Henry Beaumont Herts in the Italian Renaissance style and was built for the Shubert brothers. The venue was originally operated by Winthrop Ames, who named it for 19th-century American actor Edwin Booth. It has 800 seats across two levels and is operated by The Shubert Organization. The facade and parts of the interior are New York City landmarks.
The Booth's facade is made of brick and terracotta, with sgraffito decorations designed in stucco. Three arches face north onto 45th 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, one balcony, box seats, and a coved ceiling. The walls are decorated with wooden paneling with windows above, an unusual design for Broadway theaters, and there is an elliptical proscenium arch at the front of the auditorium. The stage house to the south is shared with the Shubert Theatre, and a gift shop occupies some of the former dressing rooms.
The Shubert brothers developed the Booth and Shubert theaters as their first venues on the block. It opened on October 16, 1913, with Arnold Bennett's play The Great Adventure. Ames leased the theater and showed many of his own productions until 1932, when the Shuberts took over. Many of the Booth's initial productions had short runs, particularly in the 1930s, but longer runs began to predominate by the 1940s. Long-running productions have included Luv, Butterflies Are Free, That Championship Season, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, and The Elephant Man.
Site
The Booth Theatre is on 224 West 45th Street, on the north sidewalk between Eighth Avenue and Seventh Avenue, near Times Square in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. It shares a land lot with the Shubert Theatre directly to the south, though the theaters are separate buildings. The lot covers, with a frontage of on 44th and 45th Streets and on Shubert Alley to the east. The Booth Theatre building takes up of the Shubert Alley frontage.The Booth is part of the largest concentration of Broadway theaters on a single block. The adjoining block of 45th Street is also known as George Abbott Way, and foot traffic on the street increases box-office totals for the theaters there. The Booth adjoins six other theaters: the Majestic and Broadhurst to the southwest; the John Golden, Bernard B. Jacobs, and Gerald Schoenfeld to the west; and the Shubert to the south. Other nearby structures include the Row NYC Hotel to the west; the Music Box Theatre, Imperial Theatre, and Richard Rodgers Theatre to the north; One Astor Plaza to the east; 1501 Broadway to the southeast; and the Hayes Theater and St. James Theatre one block south. The Broadhurst, Schoenfeld, Booth, and Shubert theaters were all developed by the Shubert brothers between 44th and 45th Streets, occupying land previously owned by the Astor family. The Shuberts bought the land under all four theaters from the Astors in 1948.
The Shubert and Booth theaters were developed as a pair and are the oldest theaters on the block. The site was previously occupied by several houses on 44th and 45th Street. The adjacent Shubert Alley, built along with the Shubert and Booth theaters, was originally a fire escape passage. Shubert Alley's presence not only allowed the theaters to meet fire regulations but also enabled the structures to be designed as corner lots. Originally, the theaters faced the Hotel Astor, now the location of One Astor Plaza, across the alley. Another private alley runs to the west, between the Booth/Shubert and Broadhurst/Schoenfeld theaters. The Broadhurst and Schoenfeld were also built as a pair, occupying land left over from the development of the Shubert and Booth; these too are designed with curved corners facing Broadway.
Design
The Booth Theatre was designed by Henry Beaumont Herts and constructed in 1913 for the Shubert brothers. Herts was an experienced theatrical architect and had previously led the firm of Herts & Tallant, which designed such theaters as the Lyceum, the New Amsterdam, and the Liberty. The Shubert and Booth theaters are within separate buildings and differ in their interior designs and functions, although they have adjacent stage areas near the center of the block. The Shubert was the larger house, intended to be suitable for musicals, and the Shubert family's offices were placed above the auditorium there. By contrast, the Booth was intended to be smaller and more intimate. The Booth Theatre is operated by The Shubert Organization.Facade
The facades of the two theaters are similar in arrangement, being designed in an Italian Renaissance style. The structures both have curved corners facing Broadway, since most audience members reached the theaters from that direction. The Booth's facade is made of white brick, laid in English-cross bondwork, as well as terracotta. An early source described the theaters' facades as being made of white marble, with stucco and faience panels. The main section of the theater is topped by a cornice with sheet-metal brackets designed to resemble theatrical masks. A balustrade used to run above the cornice. The western wall is plain and has a fire escape. A critic for Architecture magazine wrote that Herts had "discovered an excellent motive for a single facade", although it "would perhaps have been more amusing" if the two theaters had contained different facades.According to the New-York Tribune, the theaters' use of hand-carved sgraffito for decoration made Herts "the first man to have used sgraffito for this purpose". The sgraffito was used because of New York City building codes that prevented decorations from projecting beyond their lot lines. These decorations were colored light-gray, placed on a purple-gray background. The sgraffito on the two theaters is one of the few such examples that remain in New York City. A contemporary source said the theaters' facades were "free from much of the gaudy trappings that has made some of the recent playhouses commonplace in appearance".
45th Street
At ground level, the 45th Street elevation contains a tall water table of painted stone, above which is a band with rusticated blocks of terracotta. There are three arches at the center of the facade, which provide an emergency exit from the lobby. Each archway originally contained a pair of paneled wooden triple doors, but these have since been covered with posters. On either side of the arches are rectangular sign boards topped by broken segmental-arched pediments. Within the archways above the doors are sgraffito paintings, which depict figures. These paintings are partially obscured by a modern marquee that is cantilevered from the wall above. The archways are surrounded by rusticated voissoirs.Above the archways, the theater's facade is made of brick. The words "The Booth Theatre" are placed above the arches in metal letters. The brick section of the facade is surrounded by a stucco band of sgraffito decorations, which is painted beige and contains bas reliefs of classical-style foliate ornamentation. The extreme left and right ends of the facade contain vertical sequences of terracotta quoins; they have Corinthian-style capitals that are decorated with motifs of griffins and shields. The sgraffito band wraps along the top of the brick wall. Above that is a stucco wall section with sgraffito decorations, which depict grotesques holding swags and human figures holding urns and staffs. These sgraffito decorations alternate with octagonal terracotta panels. At the center of the stucco wall section is a terracotta aedicule with a heraldic cartouche, above which is a broken pediment.
Northeast corner
Due to the theater's location at the corner of 45th Street and Shubert Alley, the northeast corner of the facade is curved. This corner section has a doorway at the center, containing glass-and-metal doors; these are shielded by a canopy that extends to the curb on 44th Street. A sign board is to the west of the doorway. There are stucco bas-relief panels on either side of the doorway, which contain foliate decorations. Above the doors is an entablature with a fluted panels and a broken pediment shaped like a segmental arch. The center of the broken pediment has an urn, while the sides of the pediment have carvings of dolphins.A brick wall rises from the doorway. Like on 45th Street, there are vertical quoins with Corinthian capitals on the left and right. At the top of the brick wall, there is a stucco frieze that originally contained sgraffito decorations. There is a window above the frieze, which is flanked by scrolls and console brackets. The window has a broken pediment with swags draped from a theatrical mask in the center. The top of the corner section has a cornice, above which is a metal sign.
Shubert Alley
On Shubert Alley, the facade is divided into the stage house to the left and the auditorium to the right. The auditorium section contains one set of glass-and-metal doors at the far right. Like the elevations on 45th Street and at the northeast corner, the right side of the auditorium facade contains vertical quoins topped by a Corinthian capital. Also similar to the 45th Street elevation, there is a brick wall section above the first floor, surrounded by a stucco sgraffito band with bas-reliefs. At the top of the brick wall is a stucco wall section, containing sgraffito decorations alternating with three octagonal terracotta panels.The stage house section is simpler in design, being made mainly of brick in English cross bond. The ground floor has doorways, metal panels, and sign boards. A band of quoins separates the stage house from the Shubert auditorium to the left and the Booth auditorium to the right. The second to fourth floors have one-over-one sash windows, while the fifth floor has a terracotta shield at the center. The top of the stage house contains a parapet, above which is a sgraffito panel surrounded by bricks. The stage door is within this section.