Sheridan Square Playhouse
97 7th Avenue South | West Village | built 1919
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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.
- 1919
Frank Alberti builds a low brick building where a Grove Street house and stable stood
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The building went up in 1919, just after Seventh Avenue South was cut through, for Frank Alberti. It took the place of a house at 66 Grove Street, an adjoining stable at No. 68 and two three-story back buildings at the rear of the lot. The 1969 district report describes a wide, low brick front, mostly blank, with a low parapet and a canvas marquee reaching the curb, home to the Sheridan Square Playhouse.
“On this site once stood a house (No. 66 Grove Street) and a stable adjoining it (No. 68 Grove Street)…”
- 1932
The Nut Club, a tourist nightclub with cockroach races, replaces the garage
The garage built here in 1919 gave way to the Nut Club, a nightclub aimed at tourists that played up its Village setting with zany acts, cockroach races among them. Village Preservation shows club hostesses in a photograph from 1932, and the club again in an NYPL image from about 1940. The Nut Club eventually closed, and the Sheridan Square Playhouse took its place.
Source: Village Preservation
- 1958
The Sheridan Square Playhouse opens with a 1907 Spanish play, then hosts a two-year musical
The Off-Broadway Sheridan Square Playhouse opened at 99 Seventh Avenue South on May 6, 1958, with The Bonds of Interest, a 1907 play by Jacinto Benavente. Soon afterward it staged a revival of the musical Leave It to Jane that ran for two years. The space had earlier been the Nut Club nightclub, and the building started life as a garage.
“…opened on May 6, 1958 with a production of Jacinto Benavente's 1907 play The Bonds of Interest…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1972
Circle Repertory Company makes the Playhouse its home for more than two decades
The Circle Repertory Company became the theatre's home in 1972 and staged its plays there through the 1993-94 season. The company then relocated to 159 Bleecker Street, the former home of the Circle in the Square Theatre.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1996
The theatre closes and the building becomes the Garage restaurant and jazz club
The last production at the theatre was Ali, written by and starring Graydon Royce and Geoffrey C. Ewing, in 1992, and the space stopped being a theatre in 1996. It then became the Garage Restaurant and Cafe, a restaurant and jazz club that closed in 2015.
Source: Wikipedia
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