Манхэттендегі Music Box театрының архитектурасы мен тарихы

Broadway theater in Manhattan, New York
the theater in New York City

The adjoining block of 45th Street is also known as George Abbott Way, and foot traffic on the street increases box office totals on the theaters there. The Music Box shares the block with the Richard Rodgers Theatre and Imperial Theatre to the north, as well as the New York Marriott Marquis to the east. Other nearby buildings include the Paramount Hotel to the north; the Hotel Edison and Lunt Fontanne Theatre to the northeast; One Astor Plaza to the southeast; the Gerald Schoenfeld, Booth, Shubert, and Broadhurst Theatres to the south; and the Majestic, Bernard B. Jacobs, and John Golden Theatres to the southwest. The interior was decorated by Crane and William Baumgarten, with many Adam style details. The Longacre Engineering and Construction Company built the theater, with M. X. C. Weinberger as consulting engineer. Numerous other contractors were involved in the theater's development. It is symmetrically arranged, though the theater is shorter than its width. For the design of the facade, Crane drew from both Palladian and neo Georgian motifs. These doors, adjacent to the Imperial Theatre's entrance, constitute the stage doors. Above the ground floor is a horizontal band course with motifs of swags, urns, and vertical bars. There are also three double doorways with stone surrounds, which exit onto the gallery. Above each doorway is a frieze with urns and swags; there is a triangular pediment in the outer doorways and scrolled pediment in the center doorway. with Corinthian capitals atop each pilaster. The auditorium is wider than its depth, and the space is designed with plaster decorations in high relief. According to the Shubert Organization, the auditorium has 1,025 seats; meanwhile, The Broadway League cites a capacity of 1,009 seats and Playbill cites 984 seats. The carpets and curtain were designed in a coral color. The north end of the promenade has a stair that rises to the balcony's foyer, as well as a double stair that leads down to a basement lounge. Both stairs have Adam style railings. No boxes were installed at orchestra level per Harris and Berlin's request. originally ornamented in silver gray. These murals depict classical ruins. The lobby was decorated as a simple space, with pink marble baseboards, marble walls, and a plaster cornice. The cornice was decorated with neo Georgian ornaments. A bronze box office booth was placed in the lobby. Architecture and Building magazine described the lounge as being in the Queen Anne style, "developed more as if in a dwelling than in a club or public place". During the 1900s and 1910s, many theaters in Midtown Manhattan were developed by the Shubert brothers, one of the major theatrical syndicates of the time. Meanwhile, Sam H. Harris was a producer and Irving Berlin was a songwriter. Prior to the development of the Music Box Theatre, Harris had partnered with George Cohan in the development of several theaters and productions in the 1900s and 1910s.

According to one account, the name for the Music Box Theatre arose from a conversation between Sam H. Harris and Irving Berlin in 1919. Harris had suggested building a theater, to which Berlin suggested the name "Music Box". Harris liked the name and suggested that Berlin could write a song for the new theater. They then announced plans to build the Music Box Theatre on the site. By that May, Crane had prepared plans for the theater. and he subsequently ended his long running partnership with George M. Cohan. Hassard Short was named as the first general stage director, spending over $240,000 on the first show. the theater overran its original budget by about $300,000. The Music Box was one of the only Broadway theaters to be built for specific producers' work. The Music Box Theatre opened on September 22, 1921, with performances of Music Box Revue. The new theater was praised by both architectural and theatrical critics, and several architectural publications printed pictures of the theater. These included the American Architect and the Architectural Review, which called the theater's design "remarkable" both in design and layout. In his autobiography, producer Moss Hart said that the Music Box was "everybody's dream of a theatre", enhancing the quality of the productions staged there. Film executive Joseph M. Schenck originally was a partner in the Music Box Theatre with Berlin and Harris, The inaugural edition in 1921 starred Bernard and Berlin. Earl Carroll's Vanities was also staged in 1924, becoming the second production to be presented at the Music Box. Its producer, Earl Carroll, was briefly jailed in November 1924 after showing "obscene" photos outside the Music Box.

The comedy The Cradle Snatchers, with Humphrey Bogart, was the first play to be staged at the Music Box, opening in 1925. More generally, of the productions staged in the Music Box in its first decade, only two flops with less than 100 performances were staged, both of which ran immediately after The Cradle Snatchers closed. while the second was Mozart that November. This was followed by the comedy Chicago, which premiered in late 1926 with Francine Larrimore and Charles Bickford, By the end of 1927, Hassard Short had given up his stake in managing the Music Box. The play Paris Bound also premiered in 1927, followed the next year by the similarly named Paris with Irène Bordoni. The Music Box staged the French play Topaze with Frank Morgan in 1930, followed by the comedy The Third Little Show with Ernest Truex and Beatrice Lillie in 1931. The theater largely hosted works by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, produced either individually or in partnership, during the 1930s. Immediately following Topaze was Hart and Kaufman's first ever collaboration, Once in a Lifetime, which premiered in late 1930. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind collaborated in 1931 for Of Thee I Sing, the first Pulitzer Prize winning musical, which ran 232 performances. which with 400 performances was lengthy for a Great Depression era musical. These were Rain, Ceiling Zero, If This Be Treason, a theatrical version of Pride and Prejudice, and finally Kaufman and Katharine Dayton's collaboration First Lady. Kaufman and Ferber collaborated again in the 1936 production Stage Door. as well as a Kaufman directed adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men. and the original Sing Out the News. The productions in 1939 began with the Noël Coward revue Set to Music, following which was From Vienna, produced by the Refugee Artists Group. The last hit of the 1930s was Hart and Kaufman's The Man Who Came to Dinner, which had 739 performances through 1941.

The Music Box Theater underwent several changes in operation during the 1940s. Sam Harris died in July 1941, and his ownership stake in the theater went to his widow Kathleen Marin, pursuant to his will. Additionally, independent producers began to lease the Music Box. The theater also pivoted away from hosting revues and musicals because of its relatively low seating capacity; instead, it mainly hosted small dramas. The burlesque revue Star and Garter opened in 1942, eventually running 609 performances. which featured Marlon Brando in his Broadway debut. The same year, Marin sold her one third ownership stake in the Music Box Theatre to Harris and the Shuberts. Efn|Some sources have cited Harris's widow as having immediately sold the theater to the Berlins and Shuberts. all of which had over 400 performances. First among these was Picnic, which opened in 1953. as well as Separate Tables in 1956. The next year saw the opening of the comedy The Beauty Part with Bert Lahr, The Music Box staged a more successful production, Dear Me, the Sky Is Falling with Gertrude Berg, the next year. The theater's most successful play of the 1960s was the comedy Any Wednesday, which opened in 1964 and ran for 983 performances. it became the theater's longest running production with 1,222 performances. It was followed the same year by the comparatively more successful Absurd Person Singular. and it hosted a range of Stephen Sondheim songs in the musical Side by Side by Sondheim the next year. Deathtrap was ultimately transferred four years later and ran 1,793 total performances. and had 599 performances with Geraldine Page and Amanda Plummer. The Music Box hosted a revival of Hay Fever in 1985, In 1987, the Music Box staged Sweet Sue with Mary Tyler Moore, and Spoils of War in 1988, as well as Welcome to the Club in 1989. The decade ended with the hit A Few Good Men. Irving Berlin continued to co own the theater until he died in 1989 at the age of 101; in his final years, Berlin would contact the Shuberts to ask them about the theater's receipts. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) had started to consider protecting the Music Box as a landmark in 1982, with discussions continuing over the next several years. The LPC designated the Music Box's facade and interior as a landmark on December 8, 1987. This was part of the commission's wide ranging effort in 1987 to grant landmark status to Broadway theaters. The New York City Board of Estimate ratified the designations in March 1988. The Shuberts, the Nederlanders, and Jujamcyn collectively sued the LPC in June 1988 to overturn the landmark designations of 22 theaters, including the Music Box, on the merit that the designations severely limited the extent to which the theaters could be modified. The lawsuit was escalated to the New York Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of the United States, but these designations were ultimately upheld in 1992. In the 1990s, the Music Box continued to have many relatively short runs. and Park Your Car in Harvard Yard opened the same year with Judith Ivey and Jason Robards. The next year, the Music Box staged A Small Family Business, which ran for a little over one month. and running 893 performances over the next two years. The musical Swinging on a Star opened in 1995. Subsequently, Barrymore ran 238 performances in 1997, and The Diary of Anne Frank opened later that year, running through the next year with 221 performances. Finally, the Music Box staged Closer in 1999, with 173 performances.

Dear Evan Hansen achieved the box office record for the Music Box Theatre. The production grossed $2,119,371 over the eight performances during the week ending December 31, 2017. The same production had also achieved a record earlier in the year, making that record the highest gross for a Broadway house that seats under 1,000.