The Walter Kerr Theatre (New York City, New York)

 theatre, 1921_construction

4-story theater completed in 1921 as the Ritz Theatre. Designed by Herbert J. Krapp for the Shubert family, it was operated by ABC as a radio and then television studio between 1943 and 1965, and remained vacant from 1965 to 1971, when it reopened with the musical Soon, which closed after three performances. It housed a number of productions in the next two years and even screened adult films for a period before it became a children's theater named in honor of Robert F. Kennedy in 1973. Jujamcyn managing company acquired the property in 1980 The last production to staged at the Ritz was Chu Chem. After it closed, Jujamcyn hired EverGreene Architectural Arts to renovate the interior. In 1990 it reopened, now renamed for theater critic Walter Kerr, with August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. Since then it has housed seven winners of the Tony Award for Best Play: Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, Angels in America: Perestroika, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Proof, Take Me Out, Doubt, and Clybourne Park. It also housed one winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical: A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder.

It is clad in buff-colored brick with a grey granite water table. On the east end of the ground floor are two pairs of glass-and-bronze double-doors, with another three pairs to the left, separated by a pier with a narrow poster box. Larger double poster boxes flank the main entrances. To the left of the west poster box is a bronze double stage door. All of these doors are covered by a copper marquee with lights along the bottom and finials edging the top. Further west is another double poster box, a single bronze stage door and a loading dock at the far west end.

The 2nd & 3rd floors have six bays, offset to the east. At the 2nd floor, four of these bays have single-windows, and the western and 3rd-from-west have metal doors opening onto a projecting, gold-colored metal balcony, with decorative metal piers that divide it into three sections spanning the west four bays. The balcony continues on the 3rd floor, where it stretches farther to the east, with five sections covering all six bays. These bays all have single-windows, except for the west bay with a metal door. A metal roof encloses the balcony at the 3rd floor.

A band of diamond shapes in the brickwork frames the balcony section on the left, right, and top, spaced farther out on the left. A vertical groove with a brick border runs up the west edge of the facade, with a square sign projecting out from it near the middle. A larger, angled sign is mounted at the east end of the facade, at the 3rd-4th floors. The attic level is set off by a corbelled and ribbed brick band course. There are no openings at this floor, only alternating wide and narrow recessed panels in the brick facade. A taller section at the west end, the stagehouse, rises above the rest of the roof line, with a field of decorative brickwork in the form of joined diamond shapes. Another projecting, vertical is mounted to the west edge of the stagehouse.

One of the smaller auditoriums in the theater district, it seats 975.