August Wilson Theatre (New York City, New York)

 theatre, Mission Revival (architecture)

4-story Tuscan-style theater building completed in 1925. Designed by C. Howard Crane and Kenneth M. Franzheim and constructed by the Theater Guild, it opened as the Guild Theater with a revival of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. In 1943, the building was leased to WOR-Mutual Radio as a studio. The American National Theater and Academy purchased it in 1950 and renamed it the ANTA Theater. In 1981, the theater was purchased by Jujamcyn Theaters and named the Virginia Theater for owner and Jujamcyn Board member Virginia McKnight Binger. After her husband James H. Binger's death in 2004, producer and president of Jujamcyn Rocco Landesman announced that he planned to buy Jujamcyn. He told the New York Times he had a long-standing understanding with Binger that he would buy the corporation's five playhouses. The theaters had an estimated net asset value of $30 million.On October 16, 2005, fourteen days after American playwright August Wilson's death, the theater was renamed in his honor.

The theater has a 15th-century Tuscan-style facade, which is wider than it is tall. It is designed somewhat in the manner of an overscaled residence and is faced in sand-colored stucco with light-grey stone trim, flanked by stone quoins at the edges. At the ground floor are a series of doors, those of wood and glass in the narrower openings leading into the lobby, those metal ones in the wider openings functioning as exit doors. Three openings in the western section provide access to the stage. The round-arched opening at the eastern of three bays has limestone voussoirs and is topped by a decorated cartouche with images of tragedy, music, and the arts. It contains wood and glass doors below a fanlight and is approached by two low steps with wrought-iron railings. Display boards flank the lobby doors. Two of these set in large frames carried on console brackets and surmounted by cornices are original. A large, modern marquee is suspended above the lobby doors and the exit doors; it is painted dark-grey and has script lettering spelling out "August Wilson", larger on the front than the sides of the marquee.

Above the ground floor base, the facade is punctuated by a series of window openings. At the 2nd floor paired casement windows are flanked by dark-green louvered wooden shutters. At the 3rd floor five French windows are framed by stone blocks keyed to the wall surface and topped by triangular pediments. Small stone balconies with wrought-iron railings project from the bases of these windows. A triple arcade to the right of these windows, shielded by a wrought-iron railing, marks the presence of a fire escape; the two stone columns of the arcade are Doric. Smaller stone-enframed windows at the western section of the 3rd floor open onto dressing rooms.

The 4th floor has regularly spaced window openings flanked by louvered shutters extending the width of the facade. The facade is crowned by a small dark-green tiled roof overhang carried on brackets. The stage housing encased in plain brick rises above the roof line at the west. A projecting sign with the name of the theater and the current show is hung on the western section of the facade at the 2nd-3rd floors.

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