New York's Theater District: The Legacy of the Golden Age, A Walk and a Map

Here, decade after decade, actors, playwrights, producers, directors, stage managers, and the millions of theater fans who love them have assembled at this brightly-lit location for shows such as A Streetcar Named Desire (Ethel Barrymore Theatre), West Side Story (originally at the Winter Garden), Oklahoma! (St. James Theatre), Waiting for Godot (John Golden Theatre), A Chorus Line (Shubert Theatre), Born Yesterday (Lyceum Theatre), Death of a Salesman (Morosco Theatre, destroyed 1982), and thousands more. Stretching north on Broadway from Times Square and concentrated between 8th Avenue and Broadway, the Theatre District and its historic venues constitute a living museum of drama and the stage.
"Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were lined five deep with throbbing taxi-cabs, bound for the theatre district, I felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes made unintelligible circles inside. Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well."
- from The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
During the decade of the 1920s, people took the theater seriously, and many Americans beyond New York were intimately aware of the plays, actors, and theaters of the New York theater world. The demand for tickets led to a surge in theatre construction. During the 1927-28 season, over 260 productions debuted on Broadway.
View New York's Theater District: The Legacy of the Golden Age, A Walk and a Map in a larger map


Readers interested in exploring the theatre district may want to wind back and forth through the numbered streets from south to north,

Images: top, New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd St., bottom left, the Barrymore Theatre; bottom right (top) Belasco Theatre, (below), theatres on 45th Street. by Walking Off the Big Apple.
See many more photos of the theatres in this set on Flickr WOTBA.
Related posts: Walking Arcades of the Theater District and The Marx Brothers on Broadway, & Notes on New York Theatres in the 1920s
Great post, Teri. And what a wonderfully evocative quote by Fitzgerald--you can just feel the moment.
ReplyDeleteHi Terry,
ReplyDeleteI really loved that Fitzgerald quote when I found it. I didn't remember the Manhattan street settings when I last read The Great Gatsby, so I may have to read it again soon.