TOUR: The fabulous Broadway theaters – Times Square Reborn

Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Reservations required; click here for information and registration. ($30, $20 for MAS members).

Walk the streets of the Great White Way, as we trace the history of New York’s Broadway theater district from Oscar Hammerstein in the 1890s to Walt Disney in the 1990s. With a century of history behind them, the 40 surviving Broadway theaters stand as stunning works of art in themselves, as well as monuments to the lively history of American theater. Many were built as lavish headquarters for Broadway’s great impresarios, who spared no expense in their decor. The Belasco Theater on 44th Street was designed to the specifications of the extravagant David Belasco, the self-styled “Bishop of Broadway” who, among other eccentricities, wore a clerical collar. The Little Theater, built for aristocratic New England producer Winthrop Ames, originally sat a tiny audience of 300; its precious Georgian style facade looks less like a typical Broadway theater than a Colonial New England manor house. Producer John Cort’s theater was designed as a recreation of the Petit Trianon in Versailles. Today these jewels sparkle among all the brash new skyscrapers that have transformed the once dingy and dangerous Times Square. The tour includes it all: theaters, skyscrapers, and city planning at its most controversial.