The Imperial Theatre is a Broadway theater at 249 West 45th Street (George Abbott Way) in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Opened in 1923, the Imperial Theatre was designed by Herbert J. Krapp and was constructed for the Shubert brothers. It has 1,457 seats across two levels and is operated by The Shubert Organization. The auditorium interior is a New York City designated landmark.
The theater is largely situated on 46th Street. A narrow lobby extends to the main entrance on 45th Street, where there is a three-story facade of white terracotta. The 46th Street facade, which is made of buff-colored brick, was intended as the carriage entrance. The lobby, originally decorated in dark and white tiles, leads to the rear of the theater's orchestra level. The auditorium contains Adam-style detailing, a large balcony, and box seats with carved panels above them. The flat proscenium arch above the stage is topped by a curved sounding board.
The Shubert Organization's fiftieth venue in New York City, the Imperial was constructed in 1923 to replace the outdated Lyric Theatre. The Imperial opened on December 25, 1923, with the musical Mary Jane McKane. Since then, it has hosted numerous long-running musicals, including Annie Get Your Gun, Fiddler on the Roof, Dreamgirls, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Les Misérables, and Billy Elliot the Musical. The Imperial has also hosted plays, with Chapter Two being the theater's longest-running play.
Site The Imperial Theatre is on 249 West 45th Street, on the north 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 land lot covers , with a frontage of on 45th Street and a depth of . The portion of the lot on 45th Street is narrower than the section on 46th Street, where the auditorium is situated.; The auditorium section, spanning the lots at 238 to 250 West 46th Street, measures wide by deep.
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 Imperial shares the block with the Richard Rodgers Theatre and Music Box Theatre to the east, as well as the New York Marriott Marquis to the east. Other nearby buildings include the Paramount Hotel and Lena Horne Theatre 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 site was historically part of the Astor family estate, which acquired the lots in 1803.
Design The Imperial Theatre was designed by Herbert J. Krapp and was constructed in 1923 for the Shubert brothers. It was the fiftieth theater to be developed by the Shuberts in the New York metropolitan area. The O'Day Construction Company built the theater, and several other contractors were involved in the construction process. The Imperial is operated by the Shubert Organization.
Facade The theater includes a narrow wing extending south to 45th Street, though the auditorium is on 46th Street. The main entrance of the theater is through 45th Street, where there is a white terracotta facade. The 45th Street entrance is a three-story building. It is extremely narrow because it was wedged between the now-demolished Klaw Theatre to the west and the Music Box Theatre to the east. Aside from signs on the facade, it is designed in a plain style. This was characteristic of most post-World War I theaters that Krapp designed for the Shuberts, such as the Ambassador Theatre and the Ritz (now Walter Kerr) Theatre. The facade of the auditorium is made of buff-colored brick and faces 46th Street. This facade, being much wider, was used as a carriage entrance and exit, alleviating congestion on 45th Street. The design of the 46th Street facade contains diaper-patterned brick, similar to the facades of the Ambassador, the Ritz, and the now-demolished Morosco. A stage door is placed on the eastern section of the facade, next to the Richard Rodgers Theatre. According to theatrical historian William Morrison, both of the Imperial's facades "cannot be said to be particularly distinguished".
Auditorium The auditorium has an orchestra level, one balcony, boxes, and a stage behind the proscenium arch. 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 1,457 seats; meanwhile, The Broadway League cites a capacity of 1,443 seats and Playbill cites 1,424 seats. The physical seats are divided into 759 seats in the orchestra, 283 in the front balcony, 377 in the rear balcony, and 20 in the boxes. The orchestra seating includes 18 seats in the orchestra pit at the front of the stage. Originally, the theater was designed with 1,650 seats: 950 on the balcony and 700 in the orchestra. It is largely designed in the Adam style.
Seating areas
A passageway from the 45th Street entrance, measuring wide, leads to a promenade at the rear (west) end of the orchestra. The entrance passageway was originally designed with a light-and-dark tiled floor, marble wainscoting, and white travertine wall panels; the travertine was subsequently replaced with red-brown and gray marble. The orchestra promenade has a pair of columns topped by Tuscan-style capitals, as well as a paneled ceiling with bands in the Adam style. Two staircases lead from the promenade to the balcony level above. The orchestra floor is raked, while its side walls curve inward toward the proscenium. The orchestra's side walls contain wainscoting on their lower sections, with paneling above. On the north (left) wall are exit doors leading to 46th Street, above which is a frieze. The seating was arranged in a shallow, fan-shaped layout to increase acoustics.
A crossover aisle divides the balcony into front and rear sections. The balcony's side walls contain flat pilasters, which split the walls into segmentally arched sections. The wall sections include panels with bas-reliefs of dancing figures, as well as doorways with Adam-style friezes. The balcony's walls are topped by a frieze with foliate ornament and a cornice with modillions, which wraps around the front of the auditorium. Light boxes are installed on the front rail of the balcony, which has no ornamentation. The underside of the balcony, over the orchestra, has ornate paneling.
On either side of the proscenium is a wall section with three boxes on the balcony level, which step down toward the stage. The theater was originally designed with boxes on orchestra level as well, though these have been removed. The fronts of the boxes are curved outward and contain molded decorations at the top and bottom. The boxes on each side are set into rectangular openings, which contain a pair of octagonal columns that divide the boxes. Each opening is surrounded by a band of foliate and geometric designs in plasterwork. Above the openings are rectangular plasterwork panels. Within these panels are depictions of winged fairy-like figures, holding theatrical masks that represent comedy and tragedy.
Other design features
Next to the boxes is a flat proscenium arch. The archway is surrounded by a band of floral designs in plasterwork. In addition, on either side of the archway are flat pilasters, topped by decorative capitals. The frieze and cornice, from above the balcony level, continues above the arch. The proscenium measures high and wide. The depth of the auditorium to the proscenium is , while the depth to the front of the stage is .
A sounding board is placed on the ceiling above the proscenium arch. The sounding board contains a band with foliate ornamentation, with a latticework panel at the center. The rest of the ceiling contains a slight curve and shallow coves, which were intended to give the theater an intimate feeling. The ceiling is slightly higher than the sounding board, creating a rib near the front of the auditorium, where the ceiling steps down to the sounding board. The front rib contains Adam-style bas-relief plaster decorations, as well as circular bas-relief medallions. The rest of the ceiling contains panels surrounded by decorative bands, with medallions in the center of each panel. The panels are divided by ribs with decorative bands. Chandeliers were originally suspended from the ceiling panels, and there is low relief decoration throughout. The modern ceiling has replacement chandeliers as well as air-conditioning grates.
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 Shuberts originated from Syracuse, New York, and expanded downstate into New York City in the first decade of the 20th century. The brothers controlled a quarter of all plays and three-quarters of theatrical ticket sales in the U.S. by 1925. The Shubert brothers had leased the Lyric Theatre for their musical productions in 1903, but they were looking for a replacement two decades later, as the Lyric was aging.
Development and early years The Shubert brothers decided to acquire lots along both 45th and 46th Street. While the 45th Street frontage was more desirable (being close to numerous existing theaters), the 46th Street frontage was cheaper. The site was acquired by A. H. Pincus and M. L. Goldstone, who in November 1922 began planning for a two-story office and three-story theater. The Shuberts hired Herbert Krapp to design the theater in January 1923. L. & A. Pincus helped finance the construction, along with the Shuberts and the 45th Street Leasing Company Inc. The Imperial Theatre was not named as such until December 1923, a few weeks before its opening. At that time, Arthur Hammerstein and Vincent Youmans's production Mary Jane McKane was booked for the theater, with a musical score by Oscar Hammerstein II. Arthur had been negotiating with Lee Shubert to name the Imperial Theatre after Arthur's late father Oscar Hammerstein I, but Shubert rejected the proposal.
Mary Jane star Mary Hay formally dedicated the Imperial on December 21, 1923, and the Imperial had its first performance when Mary Jane premiered four days later, December 25. Ultimately, Mary Jane was a hit that ran for 151 performances.; The Moscow Art Theatre performed at the Imperial in May 1924. Another Oscar Hammerstein II score was featured in Rudolf Friml's operetta Rose-Marie, which opened that September and eventually staged over 500 performances. Rose-Marie grossed enough to fund a dedicated memorial theater for Oscar Hammerstein I, which subsequently became Hammerstein's Theatre. The Shuberts proposed expanding the Imperial in 1925, incorporating it into the base of an 15-story residential building designed by Krapp, but this never occurred.
The Imperial's next production, the 1926 musical Sweetheart Time, was moderately successful.; The same year, the Imperial staged Oh, Kay!, featuring Victor Moore and Gertrude Lawrence with music from George and Ira Gershwin.; ; The Imperial then hosted Sigmund Romberg's operetta The New Moon in 1928, with a Hammerstein score; it was among Broadway's last hit operettas, as well as the only Broadway production in the 1928 season to have over 500 performances. The musical Sons o' Guns opened in November 1929 with Lili Damita;; ; it ran 297 performances in spite of the onset of the Great Depression.;
1930s to 1950s