Todd Haimes Theatre
The Todd Haimes Theatre is a Broadway theater at 227 West 42nd Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Built in 1918, it was designed by George Keister and developed by brothers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn, for whom the theater was originally named. The theater is owned by the city and state governments of New York and leased to New 42nd Street. It has 740 seats across two levels and is operated by Roundabout Theatre Company.
The Selwyn Theatre was designed in the Italian Renaissance style, with a brick-and-terracotta facade. The auditorium, which is on 43rd Street, had been accessed from the six-story Selwyn Building on 42nd Street, which collapsed at the end of 1997. The modern theater is accessed through the ten-story New 42nd Street Building, which has an illuminated steel-and-glass facade. The fan-shaped auditorium is designed in a blue-and-gold color scheme and has a shallow balcony, box seats, and murals. There are lounges for Roundabout subscribers above the auditorium and technical spaces in the basement. In addition, the New 42nd Street Building contains offices, rehearsal rooms, and an off-Broadway theater above the lobby.
The theater opened on October 2, 1918, with Jane Cowl's Information Please, and it initially hosted legitimate musical and dramatic productions. Arch Selwyn presented revues such as Wake Up and Dream and Three's a Crowd. After Arch Selwyn's bankruptcy in 1934, the Selwyn became a cinema; the Brandt family took over the theater in 1937 and operated it for the next five decades. The Selwyn largely showed movies, except in 1949–1950, when legitimate plays alternated with film screenings. There were several proposals to redevelop theaters along 42nd Street in the 1980s. New 42nd Street took over the Selwyn and several neighboring theaters in 1990, leasing the Selwyn to the Roundabout Theatre Company in 1997. Following the collapse of the Selwyn Building, the theater was redesigned as part of the New 42nd Street Building. The theater reopened on June 30, 2000, after being renamed for American Airlines, which had bought the theater's naming rights. In June 2023, Roundabout announced that the theater would be renamed after Roundabout's artistic director, Todd Haimes, who had died in April of that year.
Site
The Todd Haimes Theatre is at 229 West 42nd Street, on the northern sidewalk between Eighth Avenue and Seventh Avenue, at the southern end of Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. The theater occupies two land lots. The main entrance and lobby are in the New 42nd Street Building on 42nd Street, while the auditorium is on a separate lot to the north on 43rd Street. The New 42nd Street Building occupies a rectangular lot covering around, with a frontage of on 42nd Street and a depth of. The auditorium is also on a rectangular lot covering, with a frontage of on 43rd Street and a depth of 100 feet 5 inches. Originally, the theater had a frontage of on 42nd Street and 96 feet on 43rd Street, with a depth of 100 feet from both streets.The theater shares the block with the Hotel Carter building to the west, as well as the Lyric, Times Square, and New Victory theaters and 3 Times Square to the east. Other nearby buildings include 255 West 43rd Street, the St. James Theatre, and the Hayes Theater to the northwest; 229 West 43rd Street and 1501 Broadway to the north; 5 Times Square and the New Amsterdam Theatre to the southeast; and the Candler Building to the south.
The surrounding area is part of Manhattan's Theater District and contains many Broadway theaters. In the first two decades of the 20th century, eleven venues for Legitimate theatre were built within one block of West 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. The New Amsterdam, Harris, Liberty, Eltinge, and Lew Fields theaters occupied the south side of the street. The original Lyric and Apollo theaters, as well as the Times Square, Victory, Selwyn, and Victoria theaters, occupied the north side. These venues were mostly converted to movie theaters by the 1930s, and many of them had been relegated to showing pornography by the 1970s.
Design
The Todd Haimes Theatre was originally named the Selwyn Theatre, designed by George Keister and constructed in 1918 for brothers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn. The Selwyn was originally decorated in the Italian Renaissance style. The original design plans are preserved at the Shuger Archives. The current design dates to a late-1990s renovation, when the New 42nd Street Building was constructed around it. The Todd Haimes is one of three Broadway theaters operated by the nonprofit Roundabout Theatre Company; the others are Studio 54 and the Stephen Sondheim Theatre.Facade
Original facade
The theater had originally been accessed from the six-story Selwyn Building on 42nd Street, which collapsed at the end of 1997. The building's 42nd Street elevation was made of brick with terracotta trim. One architectural publication described the building as also containing "generous glass surfaces to light the interior". A marquee overhung the theater's entrance on 42nd Street. Six windows on the second story, directly above the marquee, were grouped together within a wide window frame. On each of the third through fifth stories, the windows were divided vertically into five bays, with the center bay being separated from the outer two bays on each side by piers. The windows on different stories were separated by decorated spandrels. An entablature with the words "Selwyn Building" ran above the fifth story, with a triangular pediment in the center. The sixth story was grouped into two bays of three windows, and a sign with the letter "S" was hung in between these windows. Above was a cornice with modillions, as well as a stone balustrade.The 43rd Street elevation of the theater retains its original facade. Like the original Selwyn Building, it has brick, terracotta, and stonework. This elevation contains exit-only doors; the main entrance is through the current New 42nd Street Building. The stage door is also on 43rd Street.
Current facade
The new facade on 42nd Street is part of the New 42nd Street Building. Initial plans for the building in 1997 had called for the original terracotta facade of the Selwyn Building to be preserved as a separate structure. The New 42nd Street facade would have been constructed as a glass box with two setbacks, contrasting with the Selwyn's facade, which rose straight from the street. The building's 42nd Street elevation would have been covered with a projecting angular steel-and-glass "armature". Lighting designer Anne Militello had also been hired to design color-changing illumination for the New 42nd Street Building. A marquee and entrance to the Selwyn Theatre, as well as a storefront, would have been placed at the base of the building. Plans for the facade of the New 42nd Street Building were modified slightly after the Selwyn Building's facade collapsed.The facade is illuminated by 300 computer-controlled lamps, part of an illumination scheme created by Anne Militello. The building's 42nd Street elevation is covered in stainless steel bars, which act as brises soleil, screening the southern elevation from sunlight. The steel bars contain uplights that can be illuminated in many colors; these reflect onto a blue background. There are 54 rows of bars in total. Behind the bars is the building's glass curtain wall, which overlooks the studios inside. The leftmost portion of the second through fourth stories, marking the former site of the Selwyn Building, is left bare. This section measures across and consists of translucent and reflective glass panels. It uses dichroic glass, which can change colors based on the lighting conditions. There is a "light pipe" along the western part of the facade, measuring tall; it was designed by James Carpenter.
The building's illumination scheme allows it to blend in with other structures with billboards on Times Square. Under a zoning ordinance, the developers of new buildings had to install large signs facing Times Square, but New 42nd Street had not wanted to install a large billboard. Joseph Giovaninni of New York magazine wrote of the design: "The architects may have designed only what is, in the end, a familiar glass box, but with their totally original use of light they infused it with new life." Elaine Louie of The New York Times wrote that the structure "proves that a glass building can have a 21st-century reason for its transparency and not just be a nod to old-fashioned Modernism".
Interior
Auditorium
The Todd Haimes Theatre has a fan-shaped layout, which led one critic to observe that "a whisper in the farthest part of the stage may be heard at the most remote seat". While the theater originally had 1,180 seats, it has had 740 seats since the late 1990s. The modern theater has wider seats than the original Selwyn, necessitating the reduction in the number of seats. The original upholstery was replaced with vinyl in the mid-20th century, then changed to dark red in the late 1990s. The Selwyn was originally decorated in old Italian blue and antique gold. The theater had also contained Alps-green and Pavanazzo marbles, as well as murals and gold-leaf ornamentation. In the mid-20th century, the theater was repainted in red and cream. It was later renovated to feature a dark red color scheme, with hues of blue and green from the murals.The orchestra level seats are arranged in 14 rows. The orchestra is more steeply raked than in the original design, and it contains two layers of sound insulation under the back rows. Two side aisles divide the orchestra seating into three sections. The Todd Haimes has a single balcony. At the time of the Selwyn's construction, many new theaters were being built with one balcony, rather than two, to make it appear more cozy. The balcony is even shallower than the orchestra, with seven rows of 40 seats each, or 280 seats in total. It has a continental seating configuration without any intermediate aisles. A technical booth is installed on the rear wall. The orchestra and balcony were connected by stairs with carved yellow marble balustrades. The walls were wainscoted in blue-veined marble. When the theater was renovated in 2000, it had 23 wheelchair-accessible seating locations; this was increased to 28 accessible seats as part of a 2025 renovation.
At mezzanine level, there are box seats within arched openings on either side of the auditorium; the rear box is higher than the front box. Above the boxes, sail vaults ride to the ceiling. There were five Italianate murals above the boxes and the proscenium opening. Arthur Brounet had painted the murals, which depicted various performers in classical garb, such as jesters. The murals were painted over in the mid-20th century before EverGreene Architectural Arts restored them in the late 1990s. The murals on house right were restored using historical photographs, as no trace existed of the murals there. A New York Daily News critic said the restored murals have "a graciousness modern design seldom achieves".
The stage measures deep and wide. The stage contains traps and three removable sections. The front of the stage can be disassembled to accommodate an orchestra pit measuring or a row of orchestra seating. A red house curtain and a fire curtain were also installed. The auditorium's roof is supported by four columns, two each in the front and in the back. When the theater was rebuilt in the 1990s, the columns were extended upward by to support two additional stories. The auditorium's dome is suspended from two trusses that run between the front and rear pairs of columns. The dome is painted blue and has a chandelier at its center. Smaller blue domes are placed near the rear of the ceiling. In front of the proscenium is a truss and rigging points for theatrical equipment. The rigging system includes 35 line sets. The front of the theater contains a safety beam that can accommodate up to of equipment; two motors can pull the beam along a truss measuring wide.