Step Inside Broadway’s Longacre Theatre

Named after the nearby Longacre Square (the crossroads long since rechristened as Times Square), the theatre was built by H. H. Frazee in 1913.

Longacre Theatre box office

Longacre Theatre auditorium — Designed by architect Henry Hearts, the theatre was created to specialized in the staging of musical comedies while still feeling intimate to the audience despite its 1,400 seating capacity, now reduced to 1,095. Marc J. Franklin

Designed by architect Henry Hearts, the theatre was created to specialized in the staging of musical comedies while still feeling intimate to the audience despite its 1,400 seating capacity, now reduced to 1,095.

Even though it was created to specialize in musical comedies, it opened with a farce called Are You a Crook, starring Marguerite Clark. The show would only run a dozen performances – Frazee fared much better with musical shows.

Longacre Theatre auditorium

In 1944, the theatre was leased as a radio and television studio. It would be a reopen as a legitimate theatre 9 years later in 1953 with a production of The Ladies of the Corridor, by Dorothy Parker and Arnaud d’Usseau.