Origins and early history In 1836, mayor
Cornelius Lawrence opened 42nd Street to encourage the city's northern expansion, saying "
move up town and enjoy the pure, clean air". The Theater District began attracting theaters and restaurants after the
Metropolitan Opera House moved to West 39th Street and
Broadway in 1883.
Oscar Hammerstein I opened his
Victoria Theatre on 42nd Street in 1899. Over the years, the district has been referred to by New Yorkers as "the Rialto", "The Main Stem", and "Broadway". Around the turn of the 20th century, it was simply called "The Street". By the 1970s, 42nd Street was seedy and run-down;
X-rated movie houses,
peep shows, and so-called
grindhouses began to locate there. It was considered by some New Yorkers as a somewhat dangerous place to venture. However, in the 1990s the entire area was significantly revitalized by the city. Most of the adult theater businesses closed and an array of new theaters, multiplex movie houses, restaurants, and tourist attractions opened. This was followed in 1979 by the exterior and interior of the
New Amsterdam Theatre.
Preservation Joe Papp's "Save the Theatres" campaign In early 1982,
Joseph Papp, the Broadway theatrical producer, and director who had established
The Public Theater, led a campaign called "
Save the Theatres" in Manhattan. The primary initial goal of the "Save the Theatres" effort, which was sponsored by Papp's not-for-profit group and supported by the
Actors' Equity Association union, was to save several theater buildings in the Theatre District neighborhood from their impending demolition by monied Manhattan development interests. Papp provided financial resources, campaign buttons, posters, and newspaper ads for the effort; recruited a publicist and actors to promote the cause; and provided a various stage and street venues for public events in support of the campaign for saving the historic theatres. The proposed legislation, which was not enacted, would have required the
Federal Government to aid financially and otherwise in preserving the district and its historic theatre houses as an official
National Historic Site. In December 1983, Save the Theatres prepared "The Broadway Theater District, a Preservation Development and Management Plan," and demanded that each theater in the district receive landmark designation.
Landmark status for individual theaters The LPC considered protecting close to 50 "legitimate theaters" as individual city landmarks in 1982, following the destruction of the
Helen Hayes and
Morosco theatres. A city-landmark status would prevent the theaters from being modified without the LPC's permission, thereby protecting them from development. The landmarks under consideration included both facades and interiors, which were designated separately.
Manhattan Community Board 5, under whose jurisdiction the vast majority of the theaters fell, supported many of the proposed landmark protections. An advisory panel under mayor Koch voted to allow the LPC consider theaters not only on their historical significance but also on their architectural merits. In response to objections from some of the major theatrical operators, several dozen scenic and lighting designers offered to work on the LPC for creating guidelines for potential landmarks. The first theaters to be landmarked under the 1982 plan were the
Neil Simon,
Ambassador, and
Virginia (August Wilson) in August 1985. The landmark plan was then deferred temporarily until some landmark guidelines were enacted; the guidelines, implemented in December 1985, allowed operators to modify theaters for productions without having to consult the LPC. The three theaters' operators objected to the landmark statuses. Landmark designations of theaters increased significantly in 1987, starting with the
Palace in mid-1987. The LPC designated the
Al Hirschfeld,
Belasco,
Booth, and
Brooks Atkinson (Lena Horne), as well as the
Broadhurst,
Ethel Barrymore, and
Biltmore (Samuel J. Friedman) in early November 1987. In December 1987, the LPC designated the
Eugene O'Neill,
Henry Miller's (Stephen Sondheim),
Longacre,
Lunt-Fontanne,
Majestic,
Music Box, and
Plymouth (Gerald Schoenfeld) as landmarks, as well as the Lyceum's interior. These actions brought the number of current or former Broadway theaters with landmark status to 26. Five more landmarks were designated by early 1988: the
Ed Sullivan,
Royale (Bernard B. Jacobs),
Shubert,
St. James, and
Winter Garden. In March 1988, the
New York City Board of Estimate approved the 28 landmark designations that had been approved in 1987 and 1988. Several theater owners argued that the landmark designations impacted them negatively, despite Koch's outreach to theater owners. The
Shuberts, the
Nederlanders, and
Jujamcyn collectively sued the LPC in June 1988 to overturn the landmark designations of 22 theaters on the merit that the designations severely limited the extent to which the theaters could be modified. The
New York Supreme Court upheld the LPC's designations of these theaters the next year. The dispute went all the way to the
Supreme Court of the United States, which upheld the designations in 1992.
Theater Subdistrict zoning In January 2001, the
New York Appellate Division, First Department in
Fisher v. Giuliani, partially upheld the 1998 expansion of the Theater Subdistrict zoning regulations, which added receiving sites along Eighth Avenue where development rights from the landmarked Broadway theaters could be sold. Community and civil society organizations opposed the expansion of the district as it would impinge the nearby residential neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen/Clinton. The court objection, filed in 1999, did not challenge the pre-existing Theater Subdistrict itself or the original development rights zoning legislation. Under the 1998 zoning regulation, New York City also created the Theater Subdistrict Council (TSC), a not-for-profit corporation. The TSC administers the Theater Subdistrict Fund and allocates grants. ==Points of interest==