Walter Kerr Theatre
219 West 48th Street | Times Square | built 1924
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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
The Shuberts finish the Ritz Theatre in 66 days and open it with Mary Stuart
The Shubert brothers planned six theaters on 48th and 49th Streets after World War I, and the Ritz was among the four that were built. Herbert J. Krapp designed it in plain patterned brick, and the New-York Tribune called its 66-day construction a world's record. Its first production, John Drinkwater's Mary Stuart, opened on March 21, 1921.
“Only 66 days had elapsed from the start of construction to the theater's completion, which the New-York Tribune called a "world's record".”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1937
The WPA's Living Newspaper show Power plays the Ritz for five months
The Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project used the Ritz in the winter of 1936-37. In December 1936 its dance program The Eternal Prodigal played for a week at the theater, following eleven months of preparation. The next February, Power, produced as part of the project's Living Newspaper series, opened and ran for five months.
“The theater hosted Power, a show produced as part of the WPA's Living Newspaper series, the following February; it lasted for five months.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1943
The Blue Network turns the Ritz into a studio where Radio Hall of Fame is filmed by television cameras
The Blue Network leased the Ritz in late 1943 and recorded Radio Hall of Fame there, the first regular network show captured by television cameras. By 1946 ABC, owner of the WJZ-TV station, was renting the theater for studio use, including the game show Stop the Music, with a dressing room on the second floor fitted out as a telephone switchboard room. In 1950 ABC removed every orchestra seat to enlarge the stage.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1972
Children! Children! with Gwen Verdon opens and closes on the same night at the Ritz
After stints as a porn-film house and a vaudeville venue with a backstage massage parlor, the Ritz was restored in 1972 for $225,000 and reopened on March 8 with the musical Children! Children!, starring Gwen Verdon. Reviews were so bad that the show closed that same night. The next two bookings failed as well: Hurry, Harry lasted two performances, and the British comedy No Sex Please, We're British managed 16.
“The show was so poorly received that it closed the same night.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1976
The Robert F. Kennedy Theater for Children is evicted from the Ritz for unpaid rent
In May 1976 the Robert F. Kennedy Theater for Children was evicted from the old Ritz Theater at 219 West 48th Street for not paying a court-fixed rent. The lawyer Selig Silverman, the receiver in a foreclosure suit filed by the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company of Philadelphia, said Civil Court had issued a warrant of eviction. The company had operated from the former Broadway house near Times Square.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1981
Jujamcyn begins renovating the Ritz to replace two theaters about to be demolished
On November 19, 1981, Jujamcyn Theaters began renovating the Ritz with a ceremony at which Mayor Edward Koch was scheduled to speak. Jujamcyn's president, Richard G. Wolff, said the 958-seat house at 219 West 48th Street would fill the gap left by the coming demolition of the Morosco and Helen Hayes theaters. The $1.5 million job was due to finish the next spring. The theater, which had gone by the name Robert F. Kennedy Children's Theater for a few years in the 1970s, would take back its original name.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1984
A 499-seat plan lets Dancing in the End Zone play Broadway at near Off Broadway prices
In November 1984 the producer Morton Gottlieb won unusual concessions from artists, unions and the theater owner for his drama Dancing in the End Zone. In return he agreed to fill only 499 of the Ritz's 954 seats and to keep the top ticket under $30. The production cost $450,000 instead of about $800,000, and the top price was $29.50 against as much as $37.50 for Broadway dramas. The play was set to open on January 3, and the plan drew interest and some controversy across the theater industry.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1990
The Ritz reopens as the Walter Kerr Theatre after a $1.9 million refurbishment
Rocco Landesman announced in 1989 that the Ritz would be refurbished for $1.9 million and renamed for the drama critic Walter Kerr. The house reopened on March 5, 1990, with a musical salute to him, and August Wilson's The Piano Lesson came next. Since then it has staged seven Tony Award winners for Best Play, including Proof, Take Me Out, Doubt and Clybourne Park, and, among musicals, Hadestown and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1993
Tony Kushner's Angels in America: Millennium Approaches opens, and Perestroika joins it in repertory that fall
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches opened at the Walter Kerr on May 4, 1993, with Ron Leibman as Roy Cohn, Stephen Spinella as Prior Walter, and Marcia Gay Harden, Jeffrey Wright and Joe Mantello in the cast. It won four of its nine Tony nominations, including Best Play, and also took the Pulitzer Prize. The sequel, Perestroika, arrived in the fall and the two plays alternated until the original run ended on December 4, 1994.
Source: playbill.com
- 2005
Rocco Landesman buys Jujamcyn's five theaters, including the Walter Kerr, for under $30 million
On February 16, 2005, the producer Rocco Landesman became the owner of Jujamcyn Theaters, paying less than $30 million to the estate of the chairman James H. Binger for five houses: the Walter Kerr, St. James, Al Hirschfeld, Virginia and Eugene O'Neill. He also bought the theaters' air rights. His first show as owner was to be John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, a Parable, moving to the Kerr from Manhattan Theatre Club that March.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2017
Springsteen on Broadway opens at the Walter Kerr and runs 229 performances over 14 months
Bruce Springsteen's solo show began previews on October 3, 2017, and officially opened on October 12. Performed with a guitar, a piano and his stories, it ran about two and a half hours without an intermission and played at near-full capacity. It closed on December 15, 2018, after 229 performances that grossed about $113 million, at an average ticket price of roughly $506.
Source: playbill.com
- 2021
Hadestown reopens the Walter Kerr as Broadway musicals return after the pandemic shutdown
On September 2, 2021, André De Shields walked across the Walter Kerr stage in a silver suit and boots and asked the cast, the audience and the trombonist a one-word question, "Aight?", launching Hadestown's first performance since the pandemic closure. One block south, Waitress had begun at the Barrymore an hour earlier, making them the first two musicals back on Broadway. Audiences had to show vaccination and wear masks.
Source: Internet Archive
Further reading
- Walter Kerr TheatreWikipedia
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