Ambassador Theatre

The Ambassador Theatre is a Broadway house on West 49th Street in the Theater District. It holds 1,114 people, standing room included. The Shubert brothers built it to designs by Herbert J. Krapp, it opened in 1921, and the Shubert Organization owns and runs it today.

In January 2003 the 1996 revival of Chicago transferred here from the Shubert Theatre; in 2014 that production became the second-longest-running show in Broadway history. As a house rule, children under four are not admitted.

The Shuberts announced the Ambassador in November 1920 as the first of six theaters they planned for West 48th and 49th Streets after World War I. Four were built and three survive: the Ambassador plus the Eugene O'Neill and Walter Kerr theaters just to the south. Construction reportedly took 82 days. The house opened on February 11, 1921, with The Rose Girl, and that September the operetta Blossom Time, set to melodies by Franz Schubert, became its first hit.

Interwar highlights included a 1926 stage version of The Great Gatsby and Ayn Rand's Night of January 16th (1935), whose jury was drawn from the audience every night. The Straw Hat Revue (1939) brought Danny Kaye to Broadway for the first time.

The Shuberts put it up for sale in 1935, and CBS rented it as a broadcast studio from December 1938. In 1942 Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's administration shut down a burlesque revue, Wine, Women and Song, and the theater lost its license until August 1943. From 1945 it worked mostly as a cinema, and in 1950 the DuMont Television Network leased it as a TV studio.

The Shuberts reclaimed the house in 1956 and reopened it that October with the comedy The Loud Red Patrick. Later tenants included The Diary of Anne Frank (1957) and The Lion in Winter (1966). In April 1980 it briefly went by New Ambassador Theatre, and the Shuberts restored it later that decade.

The Circle (1989) was Rex Harrison's last Broadway appearance, Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk logged 1,130 performances from 1996, and the Pulitzer Prize winner Topdog/Underdog played here in 2002.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated both the facade and the interior on August 6, 1985. That December the Board of Estimate upheld the interior but, in a rare reversal, rejected the facade, so only the inside is a protected landmark.

Krapp, who drew nearly every Shubert theater built after World War I, had a square lot roughly 100 feet on each side. He turned the auditorium on a diagonal, with the stage in the northwest corner and the lobby in the southeast. Press reports in 1921 said this fit about 1,300 seats, against roughly 900 with a conventional plan. The price was a hexagonal room with little wing space beside the stage.

The exterior is modest: gold-beige brick in a diaper pattern supplies nearly all of the decoration, a restraint the landmarks commission linked to tight money after World War I. The main doors sit in a rounded corner angled east toward Broadway.

Inside, Krapp turned to the Adam style, a favorite of his. Fan shapes fill arches on the mezzanine side walls, cameo and swag motifs decorate the walls beside the boxes, and the box fronts carry medallion panels. An oval dome with a chandelier crowns a coffered ceiling, and a curved sounding board sits above the segmental proscenium arch, 44 feet 11 inches wide and 25 feet 3 inches high. At orchestra level the walls and the standing rail are faced in polished marble.

As of October 2026, the Ambassador is not fully wheelchair accessible. The main entrance has two small steps; the side entrance has none, so let the box office know when you arrive. The whole orchestra is step-free and holds all seven wheelchair locations plus 11 aisle seats with folding armrests. There is no elevator: the mezzanine is two flights up, 38 steps, with about two steps per row and handrails at the row ends. An accessible restroom is available.

Infrared assistive listening is offered at every performance. Starting four weeks after a show's official opening, hand-held audio description and captioning devices are free; before then, CART live captioning can be booked with two weeks' notice.