Бродвей театрының сәулеті мен тарихы: Корт театры мысалы

Broadway theater in Manhattan, New York

The entrance lobby is a rectangular space accessed from 48th Street. The lobby is laid in white Pavanozza marble with plasterwork panels. The box office's metalwork originally was made of bronze with gold and enamel reliefs.

The auditorium has an orchestra level, two balconies, boxes, and a stage behind the proscenium arch. The auditorium is square in layout and is designed with plaster decorations in high relief. The Jones's operator The Shubert Organization cites the auditorium as having 1,092 seats; and Playbill gives a figure of 1,049.

The rear (north) end of the orchestra contains a promenade, which has doorways with eared architraves on the rear wall, as well as plain doorways on the side walls. The orchestra has a raked floor and wainscoted walls, with paneling above the wainscoting. The orchestra level is wheelchair accessible via the main doors, but the balcony levels could only be accessed by steps prior to the annex's construction. The balcony levels have doorways with eared architraves on the side walls. The second balcony's walls are topped by friezes with swags and cameo panels. The balconies have floral moldings on the fronts of their undersides, with crystal light fixtures underneath. Air conditioning grilles are placed below the balconies.

The proscenium arch measures 29 feet (9 m) high and 37 feet (11 m) wide. The annex has accessible bathrooms, concession areas, lounge, dressing rooms, and rehearsal space. A grand staircase connects the lounges on three stories of the annex, with views of 48th Street. An elevator is being placed in the annex to allow wheelchair access into the auditorium's balconies. With the construction of the annex, the stage left wing was also expanded into the annex.

Times Square became the epicenter for large scale theater productions between 1900 and the Great Depression. Manhattan's theater district had begun to shift from Union Square and Madison Square during the first decade of the 20th century. From 1901 to 1920, forty three theaters were built around Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, including the Cort Theatre. John Cort was a theatrical operator who had become highly successful on the West Coast of the United States, with 150 theaters at his peak, and came to New York City in 1905. Cort had, in 1910, become president of the National Theatre Owners' Association, a group of circuits that tried to break away from the New York based syndicates like the Klaw and Erlanger circuit. Thomas Lamb was hired to design a theater there. That March, Cort announced that he would erect two theaters in New York City: the Cort Theatre on 48th Street and the Illington Theatre on 46th Street. The design of the Cort was so important that the specifications for the theater's design were encoded in the lease agreement. The opening of the theater was originally scheduled for November 1912. Theatrical critics of the time considered the Cort to be physically on the "wrong side" of Broadway; whereas most contemporary theaters were west of that street, the Cort was to the east. Peg o' My Heart had over 600 performances, a major accomplishment for the time, when 100 performances constituted a hit. In 1913, Cort gave Oliver Morosco the exclusive rights to show plays at his namesake theater for five years. After Peg o' My Heart ended, the Mutual Film Corporation temporarily used the Cort as a cinema in mid 1914. The venue then hosted two hit productions: Under Cover, which opened in 1914, and The Princess Pat, which opened in 1915. Molly O and Upstairs and Down, as well as the hit The Yellow Jacket, performed at the Cort during 1916. The Cort then hosted several of Shakespeare's plays in early 1918. The theater's final hit of the 1910s was Abraham Lincoln, These included Jim Jam Jems (1920), with Joe E. Brown; Captain Applejack (1921); with Basil Rathbone and Eva Le Gallienne. Other events of the early 1920s included a seance performed by John Armstrong Chaloner in 1921, as well as benefit performances such as Mu Lan (1921) and Book of Job (1922). The theater had a series of short lived productions in 1924. These were followed by another set of productions with short runs. A dispute arose in October 1925 when three producers sued each other, alleging that Cort had granted each of them the right to use the theater during the same time period. Judge Thomas D. Thacher, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, issued two injunctions: one granting production rights to Jane, Our Stranger, and another that canceled that production after four performances. Other hits of the mid 1920s included The Jazz Singer, which was transferred to the Cort in late 1925, as well as The Little Spitfire, which opened in 1926. The 1926 play Beyond Evil, which discussed interracial marriage, nearly prompted a riot when it was performed at the Cort.

In May 1927, the Shubert Organization purchased the theater from Edward B. Corey, subject to a mortgage of $210,000. The Shuberts took over the operation from Cort, who retired afterward. Joseph Leblang and his representatives then operated the venue from August 1928 to December 1932. Subsequently, the theater hosted A Most Immoral Lady in 1928 with Alice Brady, as well as Your Uncle Dudley in 1929 with Walter Connolly. The Cort hosted Jed Harris's revival of the play Uncle Vanya in 1930, and a folk song recital in 1930. Richard Aldrich and Alfred De Liagre made their production debut in 1933 with Three Cornered Moon. Two hits followed: The Green Bay Tree in 1933 and Room Service (1937), Several major productions followed, including The White Steed (1939), and A Bell for Adano (1944). During 1946, the Theatre Guild's Shakespearean Repertory Company appeared in The Winter's Tale; and Estelle Winwood and Cornelia Otis Skinner starred in Lady Windermere's Fan. The Theatre Guild returned in 1950, and The Rainmaker (1954). The play Sunrise at Campobello opened in 1958 with Henry Jones, Mary Fickett, and Anne Seymour, as well as James Earl Jones in his Broadway debut; it had well over 500 performances. as well as Purlie Victorious and Sunday in New York in 1961. In May 1962, the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden had a brief engagement with The Father, Long Day's Journey into Night, and Miss Julie in repertory. The next year saw a relatively unsuccessful adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; this was followed in 1965 by The Zulu and the Zayda. The network spent $1 million on renovating the theater to convert it to a television studio. Meanwhile, CBS continued to lease the theater at a high price. Two years into CBS's lease, the construction of the neighboring 1211 Avenue of the Americas caused structural damage to the theater's interior, and two girders were placed on the eastern wall. Because the interior was no longer suitable for television productions, CBS decided to let the lease lapse. The CBS lease from 1969 to 1972 was the only period in which the Cort was used as a television studio rather than as a theater. The Cort then hosted Rose in 1981; Medea and Twice Around the Park in 1982; and A Moon for the Misbegotten and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in 1984. Theatrical historian Ken Bloom, observing several of the Cort's short performances, said: "The Cort's luck seems to have run out." The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) had started considering protecting the Cort as an official city landmark in 1982, with discussions continuing over the next several years. The LPC designated both the facade and the interior as landmarks on November 17, 1987. This was part of the LPC'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 Cort, 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 Cort hosted the hit The Grapes of Wrath in 1990, as well as Lincoln Center Theater's short lived production of Two Shakespearean Actors in 1992. This was followed in 1994 by Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. which ran for over 300 performances. Sex and Longing in 1996 and An American Daughter in 1997. At the end of the decade, productions at the Cort included Freak (1998), The Blue Room (1998), and Kat and the Kings (1999).

In 2000, the Cort hosted a short production of The Green Bird. A Year with Frog and Toad in 2003, and Laugh Whore in 2004. As part of a settlement with the United States Department of Justice in 2003, the Shuberts agreed to improve disabled access at their 16 landmarked Broadway theaters, including the Cort. The theater's other productions in the decade included On Golden Pond (2005), Barefoot in the Park and The Little Dog Laughed (2006), Radio Golf and The Homecoming (2007), The 39 Steps (2008), and You're Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush (2009). The Cort hosted Breakfast at Tiffany's in 2013, and No Man's Land and Waiting for Godot played in repertory the same year. Subsequently, The Cripple of Inishmaan and This is Our Youth played at the Cort in 2014, while Fish in the Dark and Sylvia played in 2015. The Shuberts acquired an adjacent garage to the west and demolished it in 2016. In 2017, the Shuberts received permission from the LPC to construct a 35 foot wide annex west of the existing theater, designed by Kostow Greenwood Architects. Francesca Russo would also design a renovation of the existing theater. The Shuberts also received permission to transfer of air development rights to a 49 story hotel adjoining the theater; The Cort additionally showed two productions in 2017: Indecent and M. Butterfly. Mike Birbiglia performed his one man comedy The New One in 2018, and the productions of King Lear and Derren Brown's one man show Secret were housed at the Cort in 2019.