Times Square became the epicenter for large-scale theater productions between 1900 and the
Great Depression. Manhattan's theater district had begun to shift from
Union Square and
Madison Square during the first decade of the 20th century. From 1901 to 1920, forty-three theaters were built around Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, including the Longacre Theatre.
Harry Frazee was a theatrical personality (and later a baseball executive) from
Peoria, Illinois, who entered the industry as a 16-year-old theater usher in 1896. Frazee subsequently moved to
Chicago, operating theaters and producing several shows.
Development and early years In late 1911, the lots at 220 to 228 West 48th Street were sold to Frazee and George W. Lederer. The site would be redeveloped with a theater known as the Longacre, after Times Square's former name. Several architects had already proposed designs for the theater. and he filed plans for the theater that month with the
New York City Department of Buildings. Frazee planned to house his own musicals at the Longacre. Construction started in May 1912 at an estimated cost of $150,000. The opening was then delayed to November, and the scaffolding in front of the theater was disassembled by October. The theater's completion stalled due to "strikes and contractors' difficulties", including the bankruptcy of a contractor.
Philip Bartholomae made an unsuccessful offer of $400,000 for the theater in December 1912, and work resumed shortly afterward. that closed after 12 performances. It was one of nine theaters to open in Times Square during the 1912–1913 theatrical season. The musical
Adele, which opened in August 1913, was much more successful. In April 1914, the theater went into foreclosure to satisfy an outstanding mortgage of $70,000, though the foreclosure proceeding was subsequently withdrawn. The same year, the Longacre hosted the melodrama
A Pair of Sixes, which lasted 188 performances, which had 207 total performances. During 1915, the Longacre's productions included
Inside the Lines with
Lewis Stone,
A Full House with
May Vokes, and
The Great Lover with
Leo Ditrichstein. In April 1916, Frazee and G. M. Anderson bought the Longacre Theatre; previously, they had leased it from Pincus and Goldstone. The Longacre's next hit was
Nothing but the Truth, which opened in 1916 and starred
William Collier Sr. for 332 performances. In November 1916, during the run of
Nothing but the Truth, Frazee sold his interest in the Longacre to Anderson,
L. Lawrence Weber, and
F. Ray Comstock. Frazee wished to focus on managing the
Boston Red Sox, which he had just acquired. while Bolton and
George Middleton collaborated on
Adam and Eva in 1919.
1920s to early 1940s The Longacre hosted
Pitter Patter with
William T. Kent in 1920 and
The Champion with
Grant Mitchell the next year.
Ethel Barrymore then leased the theater in June 1922, appearing in three plays there:
Rose Bernd,
Romeo and Juliet, and
The Laughing Lady. which ran for 385 performances. The
Shubert brothers acquired the Longacre in May 1924 for $600,000.
William B. Friedlander and
Con Conrad wrote the music for two of the Longacre's next works:
Moonlight and
Mercenary Mary. Also in 1925,
George S. Kaufman produced
The Butter and Egg Man, featuring
Morgan Farley and
Miriam Hopkins for 216 performances, and the comedy
The Command to Love the next year, which ran for 236 performances. The Longacre's offerings in the late 1920s included
Jarnegan with
Richard and
Joan Bennett,
Hawk Island with
Clark Gable, and
A Primer for Lovers with
Alison Skipworth. In general, the Longacre did not hold any long runs in 1930 or 1931. as well as
Nikki in 1931 with
Fay Wray. The next hit came in 1932, when
Blessed Event opened with
Roger Pryor. The Longacre then staged
Nine Pine Street, and ''Wednesday's Child''. The Longacre hosted many flops during the Great Depression, sometimes with a several-month gap between productions. In March 1935, the
Group Theatre premiered
Clifford Odets's
Till the Day I Die and
Waiting for Lefty, which starred Odets,
Elia Kazan, and
Lee J. Cobb for 135 performances.
Artef, a
Yiddish theatre group, was also negotiating for the Longacre. The Longacre's productions during this time included a
Hedda Gabler revival with
Alla Nazimova, followed by
The Lady Has a Heart with
Elissa Landi. The Longacre hosted
Paul Osborn's
On Borrowed Time in 1938, which ran for 321 performances. Another Osborn play, ''
Morning's at Seven in 1939, had a 44-performance run at the Longacre The major exception to this was Three's a Family'', which opened in 1943 and ran for 497 performances. The next month, MBS signed a five-year lease. A year after moving into the theater, MBS added some offices on the Longacre's top story to alleviate crowding at its other buildings. The Longacre also served as the home of AM radio station
WOR, which used the theater for shows like
Broadway Talks Back, The Longacre was the only MBS studio that allowed audiences, but WOR (which was operated by MBS) did not allow audiences at its broadcasts. Because the theater was being used as a studio, the Shuberts refused to comply with a 1948 ordinance that would have required any theater showing legitimate plays to give 2 percent of profits to the city government. By 1949, as a result of a shortage of studios in New York City, MBS rival
CBS had started broadcasting
This is Broadway from the Longacre. Ultimately, the Longacre was used as a radio and television studio for nine and a half years. The first production at the newly reopened Longacre was
Dorothy Parker and
Arnaud d'Usseau's
Ladies of the Corridor, which opened in October 1953.
Ladies of the Corridor was not a success, and neither was
Jean Anouilh's
Mademoiselle Colombe in 1954. More successful was
Lillian Hellman's version of Anouilh's
The Lark, which opened in 1955 and featured
Julie Harris,
Boris Karloff, and
Christopher Plummer. Another hit at the Longacre was
Samuel Taylor's 1958 comedy
The Pleasure of His Company, which featured
Cornelia Otis Skinner,
Walter Abel,
Dolores Hart,
George Peppard,
Cyril Ritchard, and
Charlie Ruggles.
Eugène Ionesco's
Rhinoceros opened at the Longacre in 1961 and featured
Zero Mostel. A transfer of
Ossie Davis's
Purlie Victorious followed at the end of the same year. The Longacre also hosted
Henry Denker's
A Case of Libel in 1963, with
Sidney Blackmer,
Larry Gates, and
Van Heflin, followed in 1964 by
Lorraine Hansberry's ''
The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window with Gabriel Dell and Rita Moreno. (composed of The Mutilated and The Gnadiges Fraulein''),
Hal Holbrook's solo show
Mark Twain Tonight!, Holbrook,
Teresa Wright, and
Lillian Gish starred in
Robert Anderson's play
Never Sang for My Father at the Longacre in 1968. The
National Theatre of the Deaf also performed at the Longacre for a limited engagement in 1969.
1970s and 1980s William Goldman's 1969 book
The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway had specifically cited the Longacre as a flop theater. Goldman wrote that the Longacre was not near many other theaters, especially as compared with venues on
45th Street, and claimed that the Longacre hosted weak shows because its owners "could only get dreck to play there". According to theatrical historian Louis Botto, this reinforced "the notion that no hits open there", creating a cycle of flops in the early 1970s. The Longacre finally saw a hit in 1975 with the opening of
The Ritz, which featured Moreno,
Jerry Stiller, and
Jack Weston for 400 performances. This was followed by revivals of ''
No Man's Land, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, and Jesus Christ Superstar''. ultimately seeing 1,604 performances over three theaters. The Longacre's next hit was
Children of a Lesser God with
Phyllis Frelich and
John Rubinstein, which opened in 1980 and had 887 performances. and a 1987
New York Times article reported that the theater had been empty for 201 of the past 208 weeks. Shows during the decade included
Passion,
Play Memory, ''
Harrigan 'N Hart, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Precious Sons
, The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940, Don't Get God Started
, and Hizzoner!
. A video for the song The Rum Tum Tugger
, from the musical Cats'', was also shot at the Longacre during one of its dark periods in 1984. During the late 1980s, the Shuberts renovated the Longacre as part of a restoration program for their Broadway theaters. The
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) had started considering protecting the Longacre as a landmark in 1982, with discussions continuing over the next several years. The LPC designated the Longacre's facade and interior as a landmark on December 8, 1987. This was part of the LPC's wide-ranging effort in 1987 to grant landmark status to Broadway theaters. The
New York City Board of Estimate ratified the designations in March 1988. The Shuberts, the
Nederlanders, and
Jujamcyn collectively sued the LPC in June 1988 to overturn the landmark designations of 22 theaters, including the Longacre, on the merit that the designations severely limited the extent to which the theaters could be modified. The lawsuit was escalated to the
New York Supreme Court and the
Supreme Court of the United States, but these designations were ultimately upheld in 1992.
1990s and 2000s The Longacre hosted the musical
Truly Blessed, a showcase of
Mahalia Jackson's music, for a month in 1990. No other shows had been staged when, in November 1991, the city and state government officials proposed setting up a community courtroom in the theater to process
misdemeanor summonses. The Shubert Organization was to donate the space for three years. Another site for the court was eventually identified, and the Longacre returned to legitimate use with a short run of
Tango Pasion in April 1993.
Frank D. Gilroy's
Any Given Day also had a short run of 32 performances the same year. A revival of
Medea with
Diana Rigg was hosted in 1994, followed by a short run of
Phillip Hayes Dean's
Paul Robeson with
Avery Brooks in 1995.
Horton Foote's
The Young Man from Atlanta opened at the Longacre in 1997, The Longacre then hosted ''The Gershwins' Fascinating Rhythm'' in April 1999 and
John Pielmeier's
Voices in the Dark that August. In 2001, the Longacre hosted two brief runs:
Judgment at Nuremberg and
A Thousand Clowns. The musical
''One Mo' Time ran for only three weeks in 2002, while
Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam opened later that year and ran six months. As part of a settlement with the
United States Department of Justice in 2003, the Shuberts agreed to improve disabled access at their 16 landmarked Broadway theaters, including the Longacre. The Longacre then had two major flops: The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
(2003), which closed after one performance, and Prymate
(2004), which lasted five performances. A revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opened in 2005, which ran until the following January; Boeing Boeing
279-performance run was the longest of any production at the Longacre in almost three decades. and ran for five months. Other productions in the early 2010s included Chinglish in 2011, Magic/Bird and The Performers in 2012, First Date the Musical in 2013, Of Mice and Men and You Can't Take It with You in 2014, and Allegiance in 2015. Instead, the theater hosted A Bronx Tale in 2016, The Prom in 2018, and The Lightning Thief in 2019. During the run of The Prom'', in 2019, Broadway's first known onstage wedding happened at the Longacre between two women. The theater temporarily
closed on March 12, 2020, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. It reopened on November 2, 2021, with previews of
Diana, which ran seven weeks. A limited revival of the play
Macbeth opened in April 2022, The musical
Dead Outlaw opened at the Longacre in April 2025, followed by
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) that November. ==Notable productions==