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Lyric Theater
213 West 42nd Street |
 
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Balcony: 2
Seats: 1,256
Grid Height: 75'
Proscenium Width: 40'
Proscenium Height: 30'
Width/Right Wing: 15'
Width/Left Wing: 20'
Stage Depth: 43'
Rigging: Counterweight
Orchestra Pit: Covered
Dressing Rooms: 19
Approximate Area Measurements:
Total Area: 49,300 s.f.
Area of Footprint: 13,250 s.f.
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THE LYRIC THEATER was built in 1903 by the composer Reginald de Koven, and was designed by architect V. Hugo Koehler with a 42nd Street entrance leading to an auditorium on the 43rd Street side of the T-shaped plot. Devoted to light opera, the 42nd Street facade of the Lyric was decorated with masks, lyres and muses. The auditorium was painted light green and rose, with ivory and gold plaster reliefs decorating the ceiling. The theater's 43rd Street facade, built of brick and terra-cotta with a copper roof and iron balconies, resembled an Italian Renaissance mansion. An iron and glass canopy covered an entrance that led to the stage and a stairway to the fourth floor rehearsal halls where Lee, Sam and J.J. Shubert, who leased the Lyric from de Koven, developed many of their early shows.
From October 12, 1903, when Richard Mansfield opened the theater in Old Heidelburg, until 1905, when Douglas Fairbanks starred in Fantana, the Shubert brothers worked together in their offices above the Lyric's lobby. Following Sam Shubert's tragic death in a train accident in 1905, Lee and J.J. built an empire that would greatly influence the Broadway theater. In the Lyric, they produced an operetta based on Shaw's Arms and the Man, and Ibsen's The Lady and the Sea in 1911. Rudolf Friml and Arthur Hammerstein made their Broadway debuts in 1912 with The Firefly, and Friml followed with High Jinks in 1913. In 1914, Fred and Adele Astaire starred in For Goodness Sake, and in 1925 Sam H. Harris presented the Marx Brothers in Coconuts by Irving Berlin and George S. Kaufman. Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough had a long run in their comedy The Ramblers in 1926. Two years later, Flo Ziegfield produced Friml's The Three Musketeers on the Lyric stage, followed by Cole Porter's Fifty Million Frenchmen. In 1934, the Lyric followed the trend of the times and became a movie house.
The New 42nd Street signed a 99-year master lease, during May 1992, with the City and State of New York for six theaters known as the Apollo, Liberty, Lyric, Selwyn, Times Square and Victory. (The Empire theater came under The New 42nd Street's master lease once it was fully restored in April 2000.) A Memorandum of Understanding was signed, in July 1995, between The New 42nd Street and Livent, the Toronto based Broadway producer, for the Apollo and the Lyric Theaters, and a lease was signed in August 1996. Construction on the project to join the two theaters to form an 1,850-seat Broadway musical theater began in August of 1996, and on December 26, 1997, Livent opened the Ford Center for the Performing Arts with the New York premiere of Ragtime. In August 1999, SFX Entertainment Inc. purchased Livent, and became the operator of the Ford Center for the Performing Arts. Subsequently, Clear Channel Entertainment purchased SFX and assumed operation of the theater.
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