Times Square Church

 church, interesting place

4-story church completed in 1930 as a movie theater. Designed by Thomas W. Lamb for Warner Brothers, it opened as the Warner Bros. Hollywood Theatre on April 22, 1930 with the Warner Technicolor musical film Hold Everything starring Winnie Lightner and Joe E. Brown. Although built as a cinema, the theater's stage, one of the largest on Broadway, was designed with the capacity to present large musical shows. As early as 1934 the Hollywood began presenting legitimate Broadway musicals, returning to films between live engagements. In 1948 it was purchased by the wealthy producer Anthony Brady Farrell, who had the house completely renovated with the intention of making it a full-time Broadway legitimate theater. He renamed the theater in honor of Mark Hellinger, a noted Broadway journalist and critic who had recently died. Under its new name the theater reopened on January 22, 1949, with the Farrell produced musical All for Love. The venue had its greatest success with the smash hit My Fair Lady which ran from 1956 to 1962 for 2,717 performances.

The Nederlander Organization purchased the theater in 1970. Jesus Christ Superstar played at the Hellinger from 1971 to 1973 for a total of 711 performances. Throughout the 1980s, the Hellinger continued to showcase musicals, most of which were unsuccessful. In 1991, the Nederlander Organization sold the theater to the Times Square Church, which had leased it since 1989. The Times Square Church has maintained the theater's historic interior decor intact and it is open to the public regularly for services and tours.

Times Square Church is a non-denominational church, founded by Pastor David Wilkerson in 1987. At the time, Times Square was known as a center of X-rated films, strip clubs, prostitution, and drug addiction. Volunteers from the congregation participate in over forty ministries, ranging from feeding the homeless in New York City to staffing an orphanage in South Africa. A major emphasis at Times Square Church is giving aid to the disadvantaged.

The theater building has a long, asymmetrically organized modernistic facade, which is divided into two sections - a towered portion encompassing the entrance and a lower portion expressing the wall of the auditorium and stage house. The two portions are linked by the use of patterned brickwork and vertical design motifs. The towered entrance portion contains five pairs of bronze-and-glass entrance doors set below transoms and a modern marquee. The entrance opening is flanked by tall, stylized herm-like figures holding lanterns in the form of globes. The wall rising above the marquee takes the form of a tower and is expressed in brick in shades of gold and brown set in vertical patterns. Terra-cotta panels with vertical fluting terminating in stylized urns holding plant forms above cast-stone panels further accentuate the vertical qualities of the tower. This is terminated by a zigzag-edged parapet. Ribbed brickwork flanking the tower steps towards the auditorium wall at the west and the adjacent building at the east. Display boxes are placed on the ribbed brickwork at ground floor level.

To the west of the entrance the auditorium and stage house wall are articulated as a unit. The brick base, set on a black granite water table continuing from the tower portion, is articulated by horizontal bands of dark-brown brick. The horizontality is interrupted by two openings for exits, original display boxes framed in surrounds of stepped brick headers, an office door, a freight entrance, the former stage door, and windows in the stage house area. Above the base the wall of the auditorium is indicated by a large panel created by brick set in soldier courses. Above the panel a copper cornice with abstract ornament is carried on long stylized brackets, also executed in brick, flanking octagonal stone panels. A sloping roof rises behind the cornice. The wall portions flanking the large panel are punctuated by blind openings with grilles on the east and window openings on the west and terminate in ribbed brickwork. The brickwork of the shorter westernmost portion of the facade beyond the stage door takes the form of shallow piers, flanking window openings. The upper portion of the stage house is set back from the facade and faced with plain brick.

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