Lena Horne Theatre

The Lena Horne Theatre is one of the nine Broadway theaters owned and run by the Nederlander Organization. The owner counts 1,069 seats on two levels: a sloping orchestra and a single mezzanine.

It opened as the Mansfield Theatre, honoring the British-born actor Richard Mansfield. In 1960 it took the name of Brooks Atkinson, longtime critic of The New York Times, and on November 1, 2022, it was renamed for Lena Horne, the singer and actress who also campaigned for civil rights. No Broadway house had carried a Black woman's name before.

Irwin Chanin and his brother Henry built the Mansfield as Irwin's third Broadway theater, after the 46th Street Theatre (now the Richard Rodgers Theatre) and the Biltmore (now the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre) across 47th Street. It opened on February 15, 1926, with The Night Duel, which closed after 17 performances. Marc Connelly's The Green Pastures, performed entirely by Black actors, managed 640 performances from 1930, and Anna Lucasta, starring Hilda Simms, reached 957 after opening in 1944.

The Chanins gave up the theater during the Depression. Producer Michael Myerberg leased it in 1943 and bought it a year later. From 1950 it served CBS as Studio 59, the television home of What's My Line? and I've Got a Secret. Myerberg returned it to live theater in 1960, renaming it on September 7 for the recently retired Atkinson, the first critic honored this way on Broadway.

Come Blow Your Horn, the first play by Neil Simon, ran 677 performances from 1961. The Nederlanders bought a half share in 1967 and the rest in 1974. Later tenants included Lenny (1971), the original Noises Off (1983), Peter and the Starcatcher (2012) and Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening (2015). Waitress (2016) gave 1,544 performances. In June 2025, Six, which began performances here in September 2021, overtook it as the building's longest-running production.

Horne, who had worked with the Nederlanders on her 1981 show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, received the honor after the Nederlanders and two other owners pledged, during the pandemic shutdown, to dedicate a theater to a Black stage artist.

The city made the street front and the auditorium official landmarks on November 4, 1987, and the courts upheld that protection in 1992.

Herbert J. Krapp, the district's most prolific theater architect, designed the building. He and Chanin dropped the neo-Classical look of their first two houses for an eclectic manner they called modern Spanish, then repeated it on their next three.

The auditorium wing's facade is three stories of yellow-beige brick, trimmed in white terracotta. Three Palladian windows framed by twisted Corinthian columns fill the second floor, lyre medallions sit between the windows above, and the roof is covered in Spanish tile. West of this wing, the stage house is a plainer block of buff brick, one story taller.

Chanin brought in Roman Melzer, who had served Czar Nicholas II as architect and decorator, to advise on the ornament. The hall is broad rather than deep, so seats sit relatively close to the stage. Joseph F. Dujat designed the low-relief plaster decoration. Three bow-fronted boxes curve around either side of the stage opening beneath murals of muses and commedia dell'arte figures by A. Battisti and G. Troombul, and the coved ceiling holds a crystal chandelier at its center.

A 2000 renovation by Sachs Morgan Studio refreshed the murals and lobbies, replaced the seating and brought the original chandelier back from storage after more than 40 years.

As of October 2026, there is no elevator or escalator: the mezzanine and boxes are reached only by stairs, while every orchestra seat is step-free. Wheelchair spaces are in the orchestra, and an order can include one wheelchair space with up to three companion seats. Both levels have aisle transfer seats with movable armrests, and orchestra row A has accessible seats for guests with low vision or hearing loss.

One wheelchair-accessible restroom is on the orchestra level. Sound-amplifying headsets are free, audio description and handheld I-Caption captioning devices are offered subject to availability, and the GalaPro app adds captions and translation on your phone. Service animals, including guide dogs, are allowed.