Theatre Row Theaters (New York City, New York)

USA / New Jersey / West New York / New York City, New York / West 42nd Street, 410

5-story theater building originally completed in the 1880s as a tenement. It was rebuilt behind the facade in 2002 with five individual off-Broadway theater companies inside that share a common entrance and an upper level concession stand, but separate box offices and stages. They are the Acorn (199 seats), for more commercial productions; the Rodney Kirk, the Harold Clurman and the Samuel Beckett (each with 99 seats); and on the main level The Lion (88 seats), for more low budget showcase work.

The building was also extended through the block to 41st Street. The front facade on 42nd Street, divided into two almost-symmetrical halves, is clad in red brick above a ground floor of grey cast-iron piers, and glass and black metal infill. Above the row of doorways is an entablature with a cornice and black band with the names of the theaters is neon script, each a different color: The Acorn in yellow; The Beckett in blue, The Clurman in green; The Kirk in pink; and the Lion in red.

At the upper floors, each side has four windows. The middle bay of each half has paired windows - on the west half this bay is slightly recessed, while at the east half, it is slightly projecting. Both of these middle bays are flanked by single-window bays. At the 2nd & 3rd floors the windows have hooded lintels (except for the 2nd-floor middle bay on the west side), connected by white stone bands on teh 3rd floor. The top two floors have white stone lintel courses, and narrow, continuous stone sill courses. Between the single-window bays of the 2nd-3rd floors there are red terra-cotta panels with foliate designs. Below the 4th-floor sill course, there is a patterned terra-cotta band course, except at the recessed middle bay of the west half. Between the 4th and 5th floors the single-window bays have terra-cotta spandrels with more intricate designs, and below the roof cornice there are more terra-cotta panels, wide ones at the single-window bays and three smaller ones at the paired-window bays. The cream-colored roof cornice has simple brackets and modillions, and two stepped-up areas, above each paired-window bay. The only difference in the two halves of the cornice is in the stepped-up areas, where the west side has a fan shape with two roundels on each side, and the east side has foliate patterning.

The rear facade on 41st Street has a grey concrete ground floor with a metal service entrance. There are no other openings, and the upper floors are faced in tan, beige, and olive shades of stucco, with squares of grey stone where the various bands intersect, scored into smaller squares. Both ends of this facade rise to three floors, while the middle is the full five floors high.
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Coordinates:   40°45'30"N   73°59'36"W
This article was last modified 4 years ago