Broadway Theatre

Few Broadway houses actually sit on Broadway; this one does, in Midtown Manhattan's Theater District. The Shubert Organization owns and operates it, and its 1,763 seats on two levels make it a natural home for big musicals.

Its large stage has long attracted hit musicals moving over from smaller houses. Others began their Broadway lives here: Evita, Les Misérables and Miss Saigon each stayed for years.

The name is the street's own: B. S. Moss chose it in 1930, after an older Broadway Theatre on 41st Street was demolished.

Moss built the place as a cinema, the Colony, which opened on December 25, 1924, with The Thief of Bagdad; Universal Pictures held the first lease. Mickey Mouse made his public debut on its screen in November 1928, in Steamboat Willie.

In 1930 Moss gutted and enlarged the building and reopened it on December 8 as the Broadway Theatre, with Cole Porter's The New Yorkers starring Jimmy Durante. It was then Broadway's largest theater. A restless decade followed, with films, vaudeville and new names: Earl Carroll's Broadway Theatre in 1932, Gus Edwards' Sho-Window in 1936 and, from 1937, the Ciné Roma, an Italian film house.

Lee Shubert and Clifford Fischer took over in December 1939, and the Shubert family has owned the theater since the 1940s. In 1940 Too Many Girls, a Rodgers and Hart musical, moved over from the Imperial, starting a long tradition of transfers. Carmen Jones followed in 1943 and ran 503 performances. Films came back for spells too, under a United Artists lease in 1947 and as a Cinerama screen from September 30, 1952, until live shows returned in June 1953.

Ethel Merman opened Gypsy here in 1959. Funny Girl, Cabaret and Mame all moved in between 1966 and 1969, and the original Fiddler on the Roof ended its run here in 1972, by then the longest-running show in Broadway history. The 26th Tony Awards took place here on April 23, 1972.

Evita arrived on September 25, 1979, with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin, and stayed for 1,568 performances. Yul Brynner said farewell to Broadway here in The King and I in 1985, and Big Deal, Bob Fosse's last Broadway show, opened in 1986. Les Misérables started its Broadway run on this stage on March 12, 1987, then moved elsewhere so that Miss Saigon could open on April 11, 1991. Miss Saigon stayed for 4,095 performances, through January 28, 2001.

In 1987 the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission chose not to designate the building, inside or out, which leaves it the only Shubert theater on Broadway without landmark status. In the 1990s and 2000s, Late Show with David Letterman, taped nearby at the Ed Sullivan Theater, often staged stunts outside the theater's 53rd Street side.

Later bookings included The Color Purple, Shrek The Musical, Sister Act, Cinderella and revivals of Fiddler on the Roof, Miss Saigon and West Side Story. Closed by the pandemic on March 12, 2020, the theater reopened on April 11, 2022, with The Little Prince.

Eugene De Rosa designed the Colony in the Italian Renaissance style, with a brick and terracotta front and a marble-and-bronze interior in white, gold and gray. A girder resting on the side walls carries the balcony, so no columns block the view.

The modern exterior dates from the late 1980s, when the Rudin Organization put up the 1675 Broadway office tower, designed by Fox & Fowle, on land leased from the Shuberts. Trusses on the tower's seventh and eighth floors hold its higher floors above the auditorium, and the theater front was refaced in polished granite with an Art Deco marquee.

Inside, the auditorium had turned blue by mid-century; in 1986 the designer Oliver Smith redid it in red. The stage, enlarged in 1930, has a proscenium opening 46 feet 6 inches wide and 27 feet high, and in the 2000s the orchestra pit ranked among Broadway's largest.

The theater is not fully wheelchair accessible. The orchestra is reachable without steps, and all seven wheelchair locations are there; the house also has 18 aisle seats with movable armrests. There is no elevator, and the mezzanine is 31 steps up. A unisex accessible restroom is on the lobby level.

Infrared assistive listening devices are offered at every performance. From four weeks after a show's official opening, hand-held audio description and captioning devices are free; earlier, live CART captioning can be requested two weeks ahead. Shubert Audience Services staffs a help kiosk at each performance.