Ed Sullivan Theater & Office Building (New York City, New York) | landmark, television studio

 office building, landmark, television studio

150-foot, 13-story Neo-Gothic office building and theater completed in 1927. Designed by Herbert J. Krapp for Arthur Hammerstein, the office portion wraps around the shorter corner building and the theater portion extends to the west along 53rd Street. Both are clad in brown brick and terra-cotta. It opened as Hammerstein's Theater, named for Arthur's father, Oscar Hammerstein. The original neo-Gothic interior contained pointed-arch stained-glass windows with scenes from the elder Hammerstein's operas. Its first production was the three-hour musical Golden Dawn, the second male lead of which was Cary Grant, then still using his birth name, Archie Leach. Arthur Hammerstein went bankrupt in 1931, and lost ownership of the building.

It later went by the name Manhattan Theater, Billy Rose's Music Hall, and the Manhattan once again. In the 1930s, it became a nightclub. After CBS obtained a long-term lease on the property, the radio network began broadcasting from there in 1936, moving in broadcast facilities it had leased at NBC Studios in Radio City. Architect William Lescaze renovated the interior, keeping nearly all of the Krapp design but covering many walls with smooth white panels, his work earning praise from the magazine Architectural Forum. It was converted for television in 1950, when it became CBS-TV Studio 50.

Newspaper columnist and impresario Ed Sullivan, who had started hosting his variety show Toast of the Town, soon renamed The Ed Sullivan Show, from the Maxine Elliott Theatre (CBS Studio 51) on West 39th Street in 1948, moved to Studio 50 a few years later. The theater was officially renamed for Sullivan at the end of his "20th Anniversary Celebration" telecast on December 10, 1967. In the 1960s, Studio 50 was one of CBS' busiest stages, not only for Sullivan's program but also for The Merv Griffin Show, as well as several game shows. In 1965, Studio 50 was converted to color, and the first color episode of The Ed Sullivan Show originated from the theater on October 31, 1965.

The CBS lease on the building expired in 1981 and it became a Reeves Entertainment teletape facility. In 1990, David Niles/1125 Productions signed onto the lease, with the theater to house his HDTV studio and new Broadway show Dreamtime. When David Letterman switched networks from NBC to CBS, CBS bought the theater in February 1993 from Winthrop Financial Associates of Boston for $4.5 million, as the broadcast location for his new show, Late Show with David Letterman. The existing tenant, Niles' Dreamtime, was given four weeks to vacate. The theater was reconfigured into a studio, with lighting and sound adjustments; the number of seats was reduced from 1,200 to 400. Letterman's production company Worldwide Pants had its offices in the theater's office building from 1993 until shortly after the conclusion of Letterman hosting Late Show in 2015.

Letterman's successor, Stephen Colbert, continues to broadcast The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from the Ed Sullivan Theater, although extensive renovations were made between the two hosts' tenures. The theater underwent a full restoration to its original 1927 splendor, including the exposure of the theater's dome, which had been covered up by air ducts and sound buffers, the re-installation of the original stained-glass windows, which had been removed and placed in storage during the Letterman era, and the restoration of a wooden chandelier with individual stained-glass chambers that house its bulbs. New, larger audience seats were installed, reducing the overall capacity to 370 from 461. The theater's new marquee was designed to have a "glitzy" appearance appropriate for Broadway.

The office building section has seven bays of single-windows on the Broadway facade, above a detailed bronze-colored terra-cotta base. There is a pointed-arch office entrance at the south end, with a recessed glass door and transom, and another at the north end, which is an entrance to the ground-floor storefront that has a plate-glass window to the left, set under a shallow pointed-arch. Between the storefront and the office entrance is the recessed main theater entrance. It consists of two sets of paired bronze-and-glass doors at the rear of the recessed area, and another angled set of doors on either side. Each of these entrances is framed by slender pilasters with ornate spirals and vines. Bands above the doorways are accented with terra-cotta flowers and acanthus leaves. The main recessed entry area has a vaulted ceiling with a pattern of bronze and blue flowers. Above this all is the prominent marquee in white metal, lined with bulbs, and having blue signs with red lettering on all three sides. The front of the marquee swells upward toward the center, where smaller black letters read "ED SULLIVAN THEATER". The terra-cotta cladding of the base continues behind the marquee.

The upper floors of this facade have single-windows in the five middle bays, and slightly smaller ones in the end bays. The wider brick piers separating the end bays have projecting Neo-Gothic elements at the 3rd floor, capped by lantern-like spiked capitals at the middle of the 4th floor. The four intermediate piers between the middle bays have additional vertical terra-cotta elements beginning at the top of the 3rd floor and extending to the 5th. The five spandrels at the middle bays between the 3rd & 4th floors have rows of five vertical ribs joined by pointed arched at the tops, overlaying the brick below. The three middle spandrels between the 4th & 5th floors have the same design. There are short, projecting cylinders with decorative tops at the piers on the 11th floor, and vertical ribs on all the spandrels between the 11th & 12th floors. At the top two floors there are double projections on the main outer piers, with Gothic ornament at the tops off all the piers, capped by finials rising just above the roof line. At the north edge of the facade, there is a projecting sign for Angelo's Pizza (which occupies the ground-floor storefront) at the 3rd-4th floors, and above it, a vertical sign with individual panels, each holding a letter and reading "COLBERT" running from the 6th-11th floors. The south-facing elevation of this wing, overlooking the shorter building at the corner, is clad in the same brick and has two bays of paired windows.

The south facade of the office building on 53rd Street is also clad in dark-red brick above a ground floor with terra-cotta tiles. At the east end is a metal service door, next to glass double-doors to the upper office floors, both recessed. To the left is a storefront with a recessed glass door near its center. Above a paneled band course, the upper floors have three bays of paired windows, slightly recessed between the piers. There is much less ornament on this facade, mainly limited to a projecting terra-cotta rod on each pier at the top two floors, and paired terra-cotta panels with ornamental designs above the top-floor windows. The east-facing elevation of this wing is clad in brick, with two bays of single-windows near the back; an octagonal brick chimney with crenelations is also visible rising from the roof. The ground floor of this wing is occupied by the Hello Deli. The west-facing elevation of this office building wing has four bays of paired windows and a bay of single-windows at the north end.

Extending west of this wing is the 4-story theater section and a 7-story stage house with additional offices at the west end. The ground floor of the middle section has six sets of double, black metal exit doors, one set atop a couple stone steps. Above the eastern two doors is a large segmental-arched tripartite window at the 3rd-floor level, with a terra-cotta lintel, and a large black duct running below it and up to its left. A peaked parapet caps this section above the 3rd floor, with the wall of the 4th floor rising set-back behind it. A painted, paneled terra-cotta band covers three of the other four exits, except for the one raised above the steps. Above the ground floor, this section is recessed, with a black metal stage door at the left, and metal stairs with black metal railing ascending up to the right to another stage door at the 3rd floor. A painted terra-cotta roof covers this recessed area at the 3rd floor. The 4th-floor wall rises up behind it, with its three bays clad in a spotted pattern by raised bricks.

The stage house section at the west end has another set of black metal exit door, a single metal door in the center, and a larger, more recessed black metal double-door at the west end. Between each of these doors is a single-window at the ground floor. The upper floors have four bays of single-windows, and a bay of paired windows at the east end, all with terra-cotta sills. There is a wide, peaked parapet above the single-window bays, and the east end extends up to a small mechanical penthouse with two levels of double-windows at its two bays.