Nederlander Theatre
208 West 41st Street | Times Square | built 1921
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1921
A carpenter's shop with a tennis court becomes the National Theatre
The building went up in 1920 as a carpenter's shop, with plans that also listed club rooms, a shower, apartments and a tennis court. In 1921 Walter C. Jordan bought it and spent $950,000 converting it. He named it the National after another house claimed the Times Square name, and it opened that September with Sidney Howard's first play, Swords, under Shubert management.
“In 1921, Walter C. Jordan acquired the building and spent $950,000 to convert it into a theater.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1930
Grand Hotel opens at the National Theatre and runs 459 performances
Grand Hotel, William A. Drake's adaptation of a work by Vicki Baum, opens on November 13, 1930, and runs until December 5, 1931, for 459 performances. Eugenie Leontovich plays Grusinskaia, Sam Jaffe plays Kringelein, Albert Dekker plays Baron von Gaigern and Hortense Alden plays Flaemmchen in the original cast.
Source: playbill.com
- 1938
Orson Welles's modern-dress Julius Caesar moves to the National Theatre
The Mercury Theatre's Caesar left the 687-seat Comedy Theater for the 1,200-seat National on January 24, 1938. Orson Welles, who played Brutus, had made Caesar a fascist dictator in a production that opened on November 11, 1937. The cast included Joseph Cotten, George Coulouris and Martin Gabel, and the run reached 157 performances.
Source: wellesnet.com
- 1939
Tallulah Bankhead stars in The Little Foxes at the National, which runs 410 performances
Tallulah Bankhead opens as Regina Giddens in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes on February 15, 1939. Regina and her brothers plan to make money from a cotton factory run with a Chicago businessman, while her husband Horace opposes them. The play runs 410 performances until February 3, 1940, and Patricia Collinge appears as Birdie Hubbard in the original cast.
Source: playbill.com
- 1940
Ethel Barrymore opens in The Corn Is Green, which plays 477 performances at the National
Ethel Barrymore opens as Miss Moffat in Emlyn Williams's The Corn Is Green on November 26, 1940. The play runs until January 17, 1942, for 477 performances. Mildred Dunnock plays Miss Ronberry and Rhys Williams plays John Goronwy Jones in the original cast.
Source: playbill.com
- 1955
Inherit the Wind opens at the National and plays 806 performances
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's courtroom drama Inherit the Wind opens on April 21, 1955, and stays until June 22, 1957, for 806 performances. The play, inspired by a famous trial, shows a small American town overrun by a media circus.
Source: playbill.com
- 1956
The Shuberts sell the 1,162-seat National Theatre to Harry Fromkes for $900,000
The New York Times reports in September 1956 that the 1,162-seat National Theatre at 208 West 41st Street went to Harry Fromkes for $900,000. The headline, which says the Shuberts are disposing of the house, adds that it is to be renamed for George M. Cohan and that a Cohan melodrama is scheduled.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1959
Billy Rose reopens the National as the Billy Rose Theatre
At a foreclosure sale in June 1958, the producer Billy Rose picked up the National for $849,500. He spent $500,000 on renovations, had the designer Oliver Messel give the auditorium a red, gold and white scheme, and renamed it the Billy Rose Theatre. It reopened on October 18, 1959, with Heartbreak House, which ran for 112 performances.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1962
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opens at the Billy Rose and runs 660 performances
Edward Albee's play opened at the Billy Rose Theatre on October 13, 1962. Its producers, Clinton Wilder and Richard Barr, had met wavering support from the Actors Studio months earlier. It ran for 660 performances, won the 1962 New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the 1963 Tony for Best Play, and was recommended for the Pulitzer, which the board declined to award that year.
Source: edwardalbeesociety.org
- 1978
The Nederlander Organization buys the Billy Rose, calls it the Trafalgar, then renames it for its founder
In 1978 the Nederlander Organization buys and refurbishes the theater, which Billy Rose had bought and named for himself in 1959, and renames it the Trafalgar. Two years later the house takes the name it carries today, honoring David T. Nederlander, founder of the family firm. Playbill's venue history adds that the theater opened in 1921 as the National, backed by theater agent Walter C. Jordan, with William Neil Smith as designer.
Source: playbill.com
- 1981
Lena Horne's solo show settles into the Nederlander for more than a year
Lena Horne opened her one-woman show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music here in May 1981, and it played for more than a year. The house, renamed in 1980 for the impresario David T. Nederlander, otherwise struggled to book shows in the 1980s, and in 1983 the musical Teaneck Tanzi shut down the very day it opened.
“Lena Horne performed her solo show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music at the theater starting in May 1981; the show lasted for more than a year.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1988
Times Square Church leases the Nederlander and soon fills it to standing room
The Times Square Church's founding pastor, David Wilkerson, took a lease on the theater in January 1988, one month after Sherlock's Last Case ended its run. Services quickly crowded the house, and by 1989 it was at standing-room capacity five days a week. That led the Nederlanders to lease their Mark Hellinger Theatre to the church in February 1989, and the congregation moved there the next month.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1996
Rent opens at the Nederlander and runs 12 years
Jonathan Larson's Rent opened on Broadway at the Nederlander on April 29, 1996, directed by Michael Greif, after a hit Off-Broadway run. It won the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Musical. Playing more than 5,000 performances, it closed on September 7, 2008, after twelve years, and Playbill called its depiction of the AIDS crisis on stage revolutionary.
Source: playbill.com
- 2009
Neil Simon blames the Nederlander's location after Brighton Beach Memoirs closes in a week
The Broadway revival of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs shuts a week after it opens at the Nederlander. Simon, then 82, says he fought not to be booked there, arguing that 41st Street off Seventh Avenue sits too far from the busy blocks around 44th and 45th Streets to catch tourists or theatergoers browsing marquees. He still praises David Cromer's staging and the cast led by Laurie Metcalf, but says ticket sales were too weak.
Source: archive.nytimes.com
- 2012
Disney's Newsies turns a limited run at the Nederlander into an open-ended one
On May 16, 2012, the producers announce that Newsies will not close on August 19 but will run indefinitely at the Nederlander. The musical, about newsboys striking against a media baron, was first meant as a title to license to regional theaters and schools until critics raved about its debut at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse. After roughly nine weeks of Broadway performances, the show, which cost $5 million to mount, has taken in about $7.9 million, and it holds eight Tony nominations.
Source: archive.nytimes.com
Further reading
- Nederlander TheatreWikipedia
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