The Richard Rodgers Theatre (formerly Chanin's 46th Street Theatre and the 46th Street Theatre) is a Broadway theater at 226 West 46th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Opened in 1925, it was designed by Herbert J. Krapp and was constructed for Irwin Chanin. It has approximately 1,400 seats across two levels and is operated by the Nederlander Organization. Both the facade and the auditorium interior are New York City landmarks.
The facade is divided into two sections. The eastern section, containing the auditorium, is designed in the neo-Renaissance style with white brick and terracotta. The auditorium's ground floor has an entrance under a marquee, above which is a loggia of three double-height arches, as well as a entablature and balustrade at the top. The facade's western section, comprising the stage house, is seven stories high and is faced in buff-colored brick. The auditorium contains neo-Renaissance detailing, steep stadium seating in the orchestra level, a large balcony, and a shallow domed ceiling. Due to the slope of the seats, the rear of the orchestra is one story above ground. There are also box seats near the front of the auditorium on two tiers.
Chanin's 46th Street Theatre was the first Broadway theater developed by Irwin S. Chanin, and it was immediately leased to the Shubert brothers when it opened. The Shuberts bought the building outright in 1931 and renamed it the 46th Street Theatre. In 1945, the theater was taken over by Robert W. Dowling of the City Investing Company. In 1960, it was purchased by the producer Lester Osterman, who sold it to producers Stephen R. Friedman and Irwin Meyer in 1978. The Nederlander Organization purchased the venue in 1981 and renamed it to honor the composer Richard Rodgers in 1990. Over the years, the Richard Rodgers has hosted eleven Tony Award-winning productions: Guys and Dolls, Redhead, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, 1776, Raisin, Nine, Fences, Lost in Yonkers, In the Heights, and Hamilton. Other long-running shows at the theater have included Panama Hattie and One Touch of Venus.
Site The Richard Rodgers Theatre is on 226 West 46th Street, on the south sidewalk between Eighth Avenue and Broadway, near Times Square in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. The square land lot covers . The theater has a frontage of on 46th Street and a depth of .
The Richard Rodgers shares the block with the Music Box Theatre to the south, the Imperial Theatre to the west, and the New York Marriott Marquis to the east. Other nearby buildings include the Paramount Hotel (including Sony Hall) and Lena Horne Theatre to the northwest; the Hotel Edison and Lunt-Fontanne Theatre to the north; One Astor Plaza to the southeast; the Booth and Gerald Schoenfeld Theatres to the south; and the Bernard B. Jacobs, and John Golden Theatres to the southwest. Prior to the theater's construction, the site was occupied by six brownstone residences.
Design The Richard Rodgers Theatre, originally the 46th Street Theatre, was designed by Herbert J. Krapp in the neo-Renaissance style and was constructed in 1924 for the Chanin brothers. The exterior and interior designs were particularly ornate, even when compared with other Broadway theaters, because the 46th Street was the first theater developed by Irwin Chanin. Since 1990, the theater has been named after composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979). It is operated by the Nederlander Organization.
Facade The facade consists of two sections. The eastern section is wider and is symmetrical, containing the auditorium entrance. It is made of glazed white brick with white terracotta decorations. The upper stories of the auditorium-entrance section are designed as a colonnade with a central loggia. The western section, which contains the stage house, is seven stories high and contains a buff-brick facade. Early sources cite the theater facade as also containing limestone.
Auditorium section The first story of the auditorium facade is symmetrically arranged, though the eastern section is shorter than its width. There is a water table made of terrazzo, above which are rusticated blocks. On the eastern side of the ground-floor facade, a double metal door connects to a service alley. To the right, or west, are three glass-and-aluminum double doors connecting with the box office lobby. Next to that, terrazzo steps lead to emergency-exit doors from the auditorium. The westernmost opening consists of a metal stage door. The ground story has wooden display boxes and is topped by a cornice. A marquee hangs over the center three openings; it replaced the original marquee, which has since been removed.
The auditorium's second and third stories contain outer bays that flank a loggia with three arches. Each arch has a keystone with a console bracket, and they are flanked by pilasters with Corinthian-style capitals with terracotta swans. The bottoms of the central bays contain an iron railing. Behind the arches is a fire stair and a brick wall with terracotta lyres, swags, and bellflowers. The outer bays contain white-brick wall sections, which are topped by swags and rectangular panels with masks. There are pilasters next to each of the outer bays, and a sign with the theater's name is suspended from the easternmost bay. Running above the facade is a entablature, containing a frieze with panels, shields, and rinceaux, as well as a cornice supported by terracotta modillions. The roof of the auditorium has a terracotta balustrade with urns that divide it into bays. The center three bays of the balustrade have latticework while the outer bays have shields and foliate decorations. Another brick parapet, with terracotta coping, runs behind the terracotta balustrade.
Stage-house section The stage-house wing is utilitarian in design. The first story of the stage house contains a water table made of terrazzo. There are openings for the stage door, as well as larger doors to transport sets and other large items. On the upper stories, there are four window openings on each floor, as well as brick pilasters. Above the stage house's seventh floor is a cornice with modillions; it is made of sheet metal and decorated in the Adam style.
Auditorium The auditorium has an orchestra level, one balcony, boxes, and a stage behind the proscenium arch. The auditorium space is designed with plaster decorations in low relief. According to the Nederlander Organization, the auditorium has 1,319 seats; meanwhile, The Broadway League cites a capacity of 1,400 seats and Playbill cites 1,321 seats. The original configuration had 1,500 seats, composed of 640 in the orchestra and 850 in the balcony, as well as eight boxes. The theater was initially decorated in red and gold. The auditorium's orchestra level and balcony are both accessed from the same lobby. This layout was part of an effort by Irwin Chanin to "democratize" the seating arrangement of the theater. For a similar reason, the Richard Rodgers was designed with a single balcony rather than the typical two, since Chanin perceived second balconies to be too distant.
Seating areas
The rear (east) end of the orchestra contains a promenade with decorative bands on its ceiling. The orchestra is raked, but its rear rows contain stadium seating that is more steeply sloped than the front rows. While the front rows are at ground level, the rearmost level is almost one story higher, allowing the entrance foyer to be placed under the rear of the orchestra. This stadium seating configuration was supposedly used to improve visibility and acoustics, though the rear rows have poor visibility as a result of the steep slope. There is a double staircase to the balcony level from the center of the orchestra's rear section. A partial cross-aisle and a wrought-iron railing separate the orchestra's front and rear portions. There are exit doors from the partial wide aisles. Two aisles lead from the orchestra's front to the rear, connecting with the exit doors. The orchestra and its promenade contain walls with plasterwork paneling. There are arches along the orchestra's side walls, which contain shallow pilasters and moldings.
The balcony is cantilevered over the orchestra, reducing obstructed views from the rear rows of the orchestra. The balcony level is similarly divided into front and rear sections by an aisle halfway across the depth. There are decorative iron railings surrounding the double staircase from the orchestra to the balcony. The rear wall of the balcony promenade contains plasterwork panels, as at orchestra level. A technical booth is also installed on the rear wall. The plasterwork panels continue onto the walls. The balcony's underside has light fixtures, moldings, and plasterwork panels. The front railing has molded wave decorations and friezes with foliate motifs; these are obscured by light boxes.
On either side of the proscenium is a segmentally arched wall section with four boxes, arranged in two tiers. The fronts of the boxes are curved outward and contain molded wave decorations and friezes with foliate motifs. The undersides contain molded decorations with light fixtures. Above each arch is a medallion with swags.
Other design features Next to the boxes is an elliptical proscenium arch. The archway is surrounded by a molded rounded band, containing a motif of a spiral leaf. There is a cartouche above the middle of the proscenium. Backstage, the theater was designed with 16 private rooms and five triple-sized rooms, connected to the stage by an elevator.
A sounding board curves onto the ceiling above the proscenium arch, separated from the proscenium and the ceiling by a pair of ribs. The sounding board is decorated with low relief plasterwork and latticework. The ceiling has a shallow dome surrounded by a molded band. There are bands within the dome itself, dividing the dome's surfaces into panels. The center of the dome has a plasterwork medallion at the center, from which hangs a chandelier. The rest of the ceiling, surrounding the dome, is divided into panels by moldings. These panels contain grilles as well as medallions in low relief.
History Times Square became the epicenter for large-scale theater productions between 1900 and the Great Depression. 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.
Development and early years
Chanin acquired the residences at 226 to 236 West 46th Street in January 1924. Two months later, the Chanin Construction Company filed plans for the construction of a new theater on 46th Street, to cost $1.1 million. Irwin Chanin was a newcomer to the Broadway theater industry, so he hired Herbert Krapp, an experienced architect who had designed multiple Broadway theaters for the Shubert brothers. Krapp designed the theater's facade in a more ornate manner than his previous commissions. Irwin Chanin, who built the theater with his brother Henry, wished to lure visitors with architecture because they did not have the booking chain or an established reputation in the theatrical industry. The New York Times quoted Irwin as saying: "We hope with this particular theater to carry out the new modern thought in the art of the theatrical world."