Music Box Theatre

The Music Box Theatre is a Broadway house on West 45th Street with 1,009 seats on two levels, owned and run by The Shubert Organization. Since the 1940s it has mostly booked plays, a habit that grew out of its modest size, though musicals still arrive from time to time.

By one account, in 1919 the producer Sam H. Harris told Irving Berlin he hoped to build a theater, and the songwriter already had a title for it. The house went up to show Berlin's own revues, making it one of the few Broadway theaters of the 1920s built for a single producing team.

The partners purchased the land in March 1920 and hired the architect C. Howard Crane. The doors opened on September 22, 1921, with Berlin's first Music Box Revue, and a new edition followed each season through 1924.

In the 1930s George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart became the house's main suppliers, starting with their first joint play, a Hollywood satire, in 1930; The Man Who Came to Dinner followed in 1939. Kaufman also co-wrote the book of Of Thee I Sing (1931), the first musical honored with the Pulitzer Prize.

After Harris died in 1941, independent producers rented the theater one show at a time, and plays took over. Marlon Brando made his Broadway debut here in I Remember Mama (1944). William Inge's Picnic (1953), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Bus Stop (1955) and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957) each topped 400 performances. Later long runs included Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth (1970, 1,222 performances) and Ira Levin's thriller Deathtrap, here from 1978 to 1982.

Harris's widow sold her stake, half to Berlin and half to the Shuberts, after which the two owned the building as equal partners. Berlin held his half until his death in 1989, at 101, and his estate sold it to the Shuberts in 2007. On December 8, 1987, the Landmarks Preservation Commission protected the exterior and the auditorium; theater owners challenged the designations in court, and they were upheld in 1992. More recently, Dear Evan Hansen opened on December 4, 2016, and gave 1,672 performances before closing on September 18, 2022.

Crane, a Detroit architect with more than 200 American theaters to his name, worked here with E. George Kiehler. His only other Broadway house is the Guild of 1925, now the August Wilson Theatre.

Crane gave the Music Box the look of a country house rather than a theater, mixing Palladian and neo-Georgian ideas in symmetrical limestone. Four fluted columns with Corinthian-style capitals rise through the second and third stories and screen a recessed gallery that conceals the fire stairs. A Palladian window marks each side bay, and a slate roof with dormers and an iron railing finishes the top.

Indoors, the plaster ornament follows the Adam style, first painted antique ivory with a soft green glaze. Harris and Berlin wanted no boxes at orchestra level, so there is a single rounded box on each side, cantilevered out at balcony height within a tall arch of Corinthian columns. A half-dome above each box carries a painting of classical ruins in a country landscape, and plaster eagles spread their wings in the corners of the arch. Downstairs is a lounge planned more like a room in a home than a public hall.

No steps separate the sidewalk from the theater, and the entire orchestra can be reached without stairs. All wheelchair spaces are in the orchestra, and a wheelchair-accessible restroom is on the main floor; the other restrooms are one flight down. The mezzanine is two flights up (38 steps), and there is no elevator or escalator.

Infrared assistive listening devices are available at every performance. Once a show has been officially open for four weeks, free handheld audio description and captioning devices are offered, also downloadable to your own device; earlier in a run, live CART captioning can be requested two weeks ahead. Children under four are not admitted.