Cherry Lane Theatre
38 Commerce Street | West Village | built 1836
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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.
- 1836
A brewery building that became the Cherry Lane Theatre
The Cherry Lane Theatre occupies a former brewery and box factory dating to 1836, on land that was once part of the Gomez family farm. In the 1920s Edna St. Vincent Millay, who had left the Provincetown Players, formed an experimental theater here with a group of local artists. The building has been protected as part of the Greenwich Village Historic District since 1969.
Source: Village Preservation
- 1873
A storage warehouse for furniture and pianos takes over the former brewery
In 1873 the building that Alexander McLachlan had put up as a brewery became the storage warehouse of Jas. Michales & Son. An 1874 advertisement promised separate rooms for furniture, pianos, mirrors and paintings, elevators to move the goods, and watchmen on guard day and night. The firm seems to have gone out of business in 1878, when a newspaper notice offered its showcases at a bargain. The building later served as a box factory, before the neighborhood filled with artists.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1923
Edna St. Vincent Millay and partners open the Cherry Lane Theatre
Evelyn Vaughn, William S. Rainey, Reginald Travers, and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay convert the former brewery-turned-warehouse into a small playhouse they christen the Cherry Lane Theatre. It grows into what is billed today as the oldest continuously running Off-Broadway theater in New York City.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1949
Off Broadway, Inc. opens with a Gertrude Stein play and Bea Arthur in the cast
On June 6, 1949, a newly formed company called Off Broadway, Inc. opened at the Cherry Lane with Yes Is for a Very Young Man by Gertrude Stein, a play about France under the Nazi occupation. The small cast that night included a young Anthony Franciosa along with Michael Grazzo, Bea Arthur and Kim Stanley. The Gilmore Stock Company had held the stage the year before, part of a steady turnover of small troupes in the theater's early decades.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1951
The Living Theatre takes up residence and stages a Picasso play
The modernist company The Living Theatre was in residence at the Cherry Lane in 1951 and 1952. Among the rarities it performed there was Pablo Picasso's play Desire Caught by the Tail. The residency came as the small Commerce Street house was becoming a home for avant-garde work in the 1950s and 1960s, much of it identified with the counterculture.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1952
Neighbors outbid developers to buy the Cherry Lane and save it from demolition
After a report that the building might be torn down for an apartment house, local residents stepped in. On September 29, 1952, the New York Times reported that a civic-minded group headed by Kenneth Carroad had outbid commercial interests and bought the property from the Gomez family, which had owned it since 1819. The paper called the Cherry Lane a laboratory for experimental plays and a proving ground for new ideas, actors and directors.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1958
Cherry Lane stages the American premiere of Beckett's Endgame
Director Alan Schneider brings Samuel Beckett's Endgame to American audiences for the first time on the Cherry Lane's small stage, three years before the theater hosts the world premiere of Beckett's Happy Days. The production strengthens the venue's reputation as a home for avant-garde and absurdist drama.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1961
Samuel Beckett's Happy Days has its world premiere
Beckett's Happy Days had its world premiere at the Cherry Lane, directed by Alan Schneider. The theater had already staged the American premiere of Beckett's Endgame on January 28, 1958, also directed by Schneider.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1969
Cicely Tyson appears in To Be Young, Gifted and Black at the Cherry Lane
In January 1969 the Cherry Lane staged To Be Young, Gifted and Black, with Cicely Tyson in the cast. A look through the theater's old playbills turns up many performers who later became household names. Daytonian in Manhattan lists Kevin Bacon, Barbra Streisand and Gene Hackman among those who appeared on the tiny stage.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1982
John Malkovich and Gary Sinise star in Sam Shepard's True West
Sam Shepard's True West opens at the Cherry Lane with John Malkovich and Gary Sinise trading the roles of two feuding brothers. The staging becomes one of the play's most celebrated and helps launch both actors' careers on the New York stage.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1996
Angelina Fiordellisi buys the Cherry Lane Theatre
Actress and producer Fiordellisi purchases the building and theater for $1.7 million and invests another $3 million in renovations, taking over a venue that had weathered decades of shifting management. Her ownership stabilizes the Cherry Lane heading into its eighth decade of continuous operation.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1998
The Mentor Project pairs master playwrights with newcomers at the Cherry Lane
In 1998 Angelina Fiordellisi, Susann Brinkley and the playwright Michael Weller started the Cherry Lane's Mentor Project. Each season it matches an established dramatist with an emerging one to refine a single play, ending in a production. Mentors have included Tony Kushner, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein and Lynn Nottage, and Edward Albee took part as the Mentor's Mentor, attending readings and leading a yearly master class.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2011
Fiordellisi says bookings will erase the Cherry Lane's debt after she had planned to sell
The theater found itself $250,000 in debt in 2010, and that December Angelina Fiordellisi announced that she intended to sell it. Reaction to the news was swift. On August 24, 2011, she reported a steady stream of bookings and said the debt would probably be paid off within a year.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 2023
A24 and Taurus Investment Holdings buy the Cherry Lane
A partnership between film studio A24 and real estate firm Taurus Investment Holdings bought the theater for a little over $10 million from Angelina Fiordellisi, who had purchased the building in 1996. The theater reopened on September 8, 2025, with a series of one-night events.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Cherry Lane TheatreWikipedia
- From Brewery to Off-Broadway - 38 Commerce St, the Cherry Lane TheatreDaytonian in Manhattan
- Then & Now photos: (now) Cherry Lane TheaterVillage Preservation: Greenwich Village Then & Now
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