Нью-Йорктегі Лена Хорн театрының архитектурасы

Broadway theater in Manhattan, New York

The Lena Horne Theatre is at 258 West 47th Street, on the south sidewalk between Eighth Avenue and Broadway, near Times Square in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The square land lot covers , with a frontage of 100 feet (30 m) on 47th Street and a depth of 100 feet. The theater was originally named for British actor Richard Mansfield (1857–1907). From 1960 to 2022, Since 2022, The Lena Horne is operated by the Nederlander Organization. The western section, which contains the stage house, is four stories high and contains a brick facade. The third story of the auditorium is on an intermediate level between the third and fourth stories of the stage house. On the upper stories, the auditorium is arranged into three sections from left to right. The auditorium's outermost openings, on the second and third stories, have a single six over six sash window on either story. Lunettes with rosettes are placed above each of these windows. These windows are surrounded by a brick band, which is laid in a pattern resembling an arch. At the top of this arch is a molding with corbels, as well as a brick panel with bond work in a basket weave pattern. Above this are terracotta friezes with fleur de lis and rosette patterns, topped by a brick parapet. According to the Nederlander Organization, the auditorium has 1,069 seats; meanwhile, The Broadway League cites a capacity of 1,094 seats and Playbill cites 1,045 seats. The Lena Horne Theatre is designed in a Spanish style and originally had a seating capacity of 1,125.

The rear (east) end of the orchestra contains a promenade with paneled walls and a molded cornice. The orchestra is raked, sloping down toward the stage. Bronze lighting sconces are placed along the walls of the orchestra and its promenade. The balcony level is divided into front and rear sections by an aisle halfway across the depth. On either side of the proscenium is a curved wall section with three arches, each of which corresponds to a box at balcony level. 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. The Chanin brothers developed another grouping of theaters in the mid 1920s. Though the Chanins largely specialized in real estate rather than theaters, Irwin Chanin had become interested in theater when he was an impoverished student at the Cooper Union. He subsequently recalled that he had been "humiliated" by having to use a separate door whenever he bought cheap seats in an upper balcony level.

Irwin Chanin was a newcomer to the Broadway theater industry when he was developing his first theater, the 46th Street (now Richard Rodgers). Chanin hired Herbert Krapp, an experienced architect who had designed multiple Broadway theaters for the Shubert brothers. The 46th Street Theatre opened in early 1925 as Chanin's first Broadway theater. Chanin retained Krapp to design the Biltmore and Mansfield theaters on 47th Street, which at the time was a largely residential street. Irwin Chanin, who built the theater with his brother Henry, acquired the property title to the two theater sites on 47th Street in March 1925. Though the Biltmore was completed that December, the Mansfield was not finished until early the following year. Later that night, the theater opened with the melodrama The Night Duel. Generally, the Mansfield's early productions were flops. The Night Duel lasted for 17 performances before closing, and three similarly short lived shows followed. and had 92 performances. The Ladder with Antoinette Perry opened at the Mansfield the next month, running for several hundred performances across numerous theaters. This was followed by a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon. At the end of the year, the Mansfield staged three Hebrew language plays performed by the Habima Players of Moscow, including The Dybbuk. A revival of the Henrik Ibsen play Ghosts, with Minnie Maddern Fiske, had 24 performances at the beginning of 1927. That April, the Mansfield was sold to Irving Lewine, who leased the theater back to the Chanins for 63 years. In August 1927, Charles L. Wagner arranged to operate the Mansfield for a year. Just before Wagner was scheduled to assume operation that October, Lew Fields took over the lease and Wagner's shows were relocated to another theater. Fields planned to stage at least four shows and rename the theater for himself. The beginning of 1928 saw short runs of the plays Mongolia and Atlas and Eva. The first Fields production at the Mansfield was the Rodgers and Hart musical Present Arms in April 1928, which ran for 147 performances. Rodgers and Hart also wrote the music for Chee Chee, which was much less popular than Present Arms. At the end of the year, Lew Fields starred in Hello, Daddy, which was produced by his children Dorothy and Herbert Fields; it had 198 performances. The theater reverted to its original name in March 1929 with the opening of the flop Indiscretion.

The next success at the Mansfield was Marc Connelly's The Green Pastures, which opened in February 1930. With a cast composed entirely of Black actors, it ultimately ran 640 performances. The Chanins ultimately lost control of the Mansfield and their other theaters during the Depression. In October 1931, the Chanins relinquished their lease on the Mansfield to Irving Lewine. first staging 1931 and then The House of Connelly. The Mutual Life Insurance Company subsequently foreclosed on the theater, and it was purchased by Nyamco Associates Inc. in October 1932 for $354,000. In the foreclosure process, all the theater's furnishings were removed. The same month as Nyamco's acquisition, Ray K. Bartlett and Edgar Allen took over the Mansfield for two years and reinstalled the furnishings. The Mansfield reopened in December 1932 with the Shuffle Along of 1933, which closed after just 17 performances. The theater did not have any particularly distinguished shows in 1933 or 1934, This was followed in 1937 by Antony and Cleopatra featuring Tallulah Bankhead, In 1938, the Shuberts proposed leasing the Mansfield at $14,000 a year, an extremely favorable rate compared to other theaters; they ultimately took the theater for a year and renovated it. The theater then hosted a transfer of the long running What a Life in 1939,

In 1940, the Mansfield hosted a revival of Juno and the Paycock, a transfer of the long running comedy Separate Rooms, and the popular revue Meet the People. The theater staged In Time to Come in 1941, as well as a revival of Shakespeare's As You Like It. The theater mostly hosted short runs during 1942 and 1943, and producer Michael Myerberg signed a three year lease for the Mansfield in June 1943. The comedy Janie was staged at the Mansfield for a short period during late 1943 and early 1944. Myerberg bought the theater outright in March 1944, starring Hilda Simms for 957 performances. which ran for 206 performances. For the most part, the Mansfield hosted short runs during 1947. and ran for two weeks. followed in April by the Billie Holiday Revue. The Mansfield's final productions of the decade included Red Gloves in 1948 and Lend an Ear in 1949. The Mansfield hosted All You Need Is One Good Break in February 1950, and the Jean Anouilh play Peacock ran just two performances that April.

The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) leased the Mansfield in August 1950 for five years, paying a very favorable annual rental of between $85,000 and $100,000. CBS also used the theater for shows such as Showcase, which showed actors in short clips. In 1958, Roger L. Stevens considered leasing the Mansfield Theatre from Myerberg, who still owned it. Myerberg announced in mid 1960 that the former Mansfield Theatre would be renovated and reopened as a legitimate theater. The Mansfield was renamed after Brooks Atkinson, who had then recently retired as the theatrical critic for The New York Times. The Brooks Atkinson would be the first Broadway theater to be named for a theatre critic, as well as the second named for a newspaper writer, beside the Mark Hellinger Theatre.

The first production at the Brooks Atkinson was David Merrick's Vintage 60, which opened on September 12, 1960, and lasted just eight performances. This was followed the same year by Send Me No Flowers, which featured David Wayne and Nancy Olson for 40 performances. The next year, the theater hosted a success with Neil Simon's first play, Come Blow Your Horn, which ran for 677 performances. and in 1963 by Peter Ustinov's Photo Finish. In early 1964, the Brooks Atkinson staged a five performance run of Tennessee Williams's The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore and solo appearances by Josephine Baker. The theater then hosted the controversial drama The Deputy, which ran for 318 performances for much of the same year. followed in 1965 by a 176 performance revival of The Glass Menagerie. To combat the theater's unprofitability, The next year, the Brooks Atkinson hosted Peter Nichols's A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, followed by Renée Taylor and Joseph Bologna's Lovers and Other Strangers. Subsequently, Dustin Hoffman appeared in Jimmy Shine during late 1968 and early 1969. The Brooks Atkinson did not see another hit until 1971, that ran for 453 performances. The Negro Ensemble Company moved their off Broadway production of The River Niger to the Brooks Atkinson in 1973, where it had 280 performances. and the Nederlanders bought his half interest in the Brooks Atkinson's ownership. My Fat Friend with George Rose and Lynn Redgrave; and Of Mice and Men with James Earl Jones, Kevin Conway, and Pamela Blair. The two character comedy Same Time, Next Year opened at the Brooks Atkinson in 1975. The theater celebrated its 50th anniversary in December 1976, ten months after the actual anniversary, because no one had noticed the date beforehand. Same Time, Next Year transferred to another theater in May 1978 and ultimately ran for over 1,400 total performances. as well as the comedy Bedroom Farce and the drama Teibele and Her Demon in 1979.

The off Broadway play Talley's Folly moved to the Brooks Atkinson in 1980. The Dresser opened later in 1981 and ultimately ran 200 performances. This was followed in 1982 by a short run of the off Broadway show Beyond Therapy, another revival of Ghosts with John Neville and Liv Ullmann, and the comedy Steaming with Judith Ivey. In 1983, the Brooks Atkinson hosted the mountain climbing drama K2 as well as the solo show Edmund Kean with Ben Kingsley. At the end of 1983, the Brooks Atkinson staged Noises Off, which ran for one and a half years. and Benefactors both opened at the Brooks Atkinson in 1985. This was followed in December 1986 by comedian Jackie Mason's solo show The World According to Me!. Mason's show ran for two years,

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) had started to consider protecting the Brooks Atkinson as a landmark in 1982, with discussions continuing over the next several years. The LPC designated the Brooks Atkinson's facade and interior as landmarks on November 4, 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 Nederlanders, the Shuberts, and Jujamcyn collectively sued the LPC in June 1988 to overturn the landmark designations of 22 theaters, including the Brooks Atkinson, 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. The Brooks Atkinson staged Cafe Crown with Anne Jackson and Eli Wallach in 1989. The same year, the theater had limited appearances by musicians Victor Borge, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Stephanie Mills. This was followed in 1990 by a two month long run of The Cemetery Club and an adaptation of William Nicholson's Shadowlands with Jane Alexander and Nigel Hawthorne. The Brooks Atkinson hosted Death and the Maiden with Glenn Close, Richard Dreyfuss, and Gene Hackman in 1992, then the Roundabout Theatre Company's version of She Loves Me in 1993. The theater had two flops in the mid 1990s: and Budd Schulberg and Stan Silverman's On the Waterfront, which had just eight performances in 1995. The Steppenwolf Theatre Company's production of Buried Child was produced at the Brooks Atkinson in 1996, as was the play Taking Sides with Daniel Massey and Ed Harris. The musical Play On! was hosted in 1997, The theatrical adaptation of Wait Until Dark, which featured film actress Marisa Tomei in her Broadway debut, ran for 97 performances in 1998. The next year, the theater hosted a transfer of a West End revival of The Iceman Cometh, featuring Kevin Spacey.

In early 2000, the theater hosted the Roundabout Theatre Company's production of Uncle Vanya. From July to September of that year, Sachs Morgan Studio renovated the theater The original chandelier was retrieved from storage and reinstalled; the murals, lobbies, and restrooms were refurbished; and the seats, carpets, and drapes were replaced. The Brooks Atkinson reopened in December 2000 with the musical Jane Eyre, which closed after a short run. two decades after the original production, ran for 348 performances. as well as the revue The Look of Love and Jackie Mason's short lived Laughing Room Only. The Brooks Atkinson hosted the dramas Jumpers and Democracy in 2004, as well as limited runs of the solo shows Mark Twain Tonight! and The Blonde in the Thunderbird in 2005. and the show ultimately ran for 554 performances over the next year and a half. It was immediately followed by a transfer of the off Broadway rock musical Rock of Ages, which opened in April 2009 and ran for nearly two years before transferring. The Brooks Atkinson hosted the comedy It Shoulda Been You in 2015, Waitress became the Brooks Atkinson's longest running production in 2019, and it ran through early 2020. Six premiered when the Brooks Atkinson reopened on September 17, 2021. During the COVID 19 shutdown, the Shuberts, Nederlanders, and Jujamcyn had pledged to increase racial and cultural diversity in their theaters, including naming at least one theater for a Black theatrical personality. Accordingly, in June 2022, the Nederlanders announced that the Brooks Atkinson would be renamed for singer and actress Lena Horne. The venue became the first Broadway theater named for a Black woman, as well as the third Broadway theater named after a Black theatrical personality. efn|The August Wilson Theatre was renamed after playwright August Wilson in 2005, and the James Earl Jones Theatre was renamed after actor James Earl Jones in early 2022.

Waitress set a box office record for the theater in 2018, grossing $1,626,478 over eight performances for the week ending on January 28, 2018. This was surpassed by Six, which grossed $1,649,206 over eight performances for the week ending January 1, 2023.