Hudson Theatre

The Hudson Theatre on West 44th Street is one of the oldest playhouses on Broadway. It opened in October 1903, spent much of the next century doing other jobs, and came back to Broadway in 2017. Its 970 seats are spread over three levels. ATG Entertainment runs the house, while the building belongs to Millennium & Copthorne Hotels: the theater is wedged into the Millennium Times Square New York hotel, whose two wings flank it. Every guest needs a ticket, whatever their age, and lap seats for small children are not offered.

Producer Henry B. Harris commissioned the Hudson as a New York base for his stars, his shows and his business office, and he meant it for drawing-room comedy. The first curtain went up on October 19, 1903: Ethel Barrymore starred in Cousin Kate. Harris died in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. His widow, Renee Harris, kept the theater going, making her one of Broadway's earliest female producers, until the Depression cost her the building in 1932.

What followed was a long series of new roles. CBS used it as a radio studio between 1934 and 1937. Plays came back, and in 1944 Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, the producers of Arsenic and Old Lace, bought the theater; their State of the Union, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for 1946, gave 765 performances here. NBC took over in 1950, and Steve Allen and Jack Paar hosted The Tonight Show from the theater. Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic opened in 1960. Then came a burlesque show in 1965, adult films under the name Avon-Hudson from 1968, a movie house from 1975 and, from 1981, the Savoy nightclub, where James Taylor and Miles Davis played.

On November 17, 1987, the city made the exterior and the interior official landmarks. Harry Macklowe, a developer, then built a hotel around the theater and used it as a conference hall; in 1990 it hosted the World Chess Championship between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov.

ATG leased the building in 2015, and it joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. In February 2017 the Hudson reopened with Sunday in the Park with George, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford, as the 41st Broadway theater, at once the newest and the oldest. Later tenants included David Byrne's American Utopia, Plaza Suite and Waiting for Godot. The 2023 revival of Merrily We Roll Along earned four Tonys, Best Revival of a Musical among them.

Two firms shaped the building. J. B. McElfatrick & Son, a company that specialized in theaters, drew the first plans, but by January 1903 Israels & Harder had taken over; no other theater by them is known. The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission reads the cantilevered balconies as a sign that the second firm designed the interior, since McElfatrick still propped its balconies on columns.

The Beaux-Arts front is restrained: four stories of tan brick over a rusticated limestone base, kept a little lower than it is wide to suit what was then a mostly residential street. Tall pilasters end in capitals carved as masks, and a lyre and a carved head, probably Apollo, fill the pediment over the middle window. The marquee, installed in 1990, follows the design of the original.

Indoors, the decoration grows far richer. Three linked lobbies stretch about 100 feet from the street; in 1903 no lobby in New York was wider. The ticket lobby wears dark green marble veined with gold under a ceiling of 264 coffers, and the foyer beyond it has mirrored arches, a marble fireplace and three Tiffany stained-glass domes. In the auditorium, Tiffany mosaic and mother-of-pearl tiles trim the proscenium, a coffered sounding board curves above it, and curved boxes framed by fluted Corinthian columns flank the stage.

Wheelchair locations are sold both online and at the box office. An elevator serves the Dress Circle level, although a few steps lead to its bar and seats; the Balcony can be reached only by stairs. You can borrow an assisted listening device from the coat check near the box office, and the theater works with KultureCity on sensory accessibility.