Longacre Theatre, West 48th Street, New York City

The Longacre Theatre is located at 220 West 48th Street in the Theater District, between Eighth Avenue and Broadway, near Times Square. Opened in 1913, it was designed by Henry B. Herts and was named for Longacre Square, renamed Times Square in 1904. The Longacre has 1,077 seats and now is operated by The Shubert Organization. Both the façade and the auditorium's interior were designated a New York City landmarks in 1987.

Like most Broadway playhouses built before World War I, the Longacre was designed by a leading theater architect to house the office and theatrical productions of its owner, the baseball magnate Harry H. Frazee (1880-1929), who was also an influential Broadway producer. Frazee acquired the site in 1911 and developed the Longacre Theatre to accommodate musicals. Besides building the Longacre Theater, Frazee also owned two other Broadway houses: the Harris and the Lyric.

The architect Henry Beaumont Herts (1871-1933) had designed several Broadway theaters with his partner Hugh Tallant, including the New Amsterdam Theatre and Lyceum Theatre, but the partnership dissolved in the early 1910s. The Longacre was one of the first Broadway theaters that Herts designed alone.

The main façade faces north on 48th Street and is arranged symmetrically with classical French details, originally of gray limestone and terracotta, with the terracotta pieces being painted in several colors. The west and east elevations contain brick walls with window openings and fire escapes. Its lobby opens directly onto the orchestra promenade, at either end of which stairs descend to the basement lounges, and ascend to the theater's two balconies. It was considered in 1913 a great improvement in theater design that these two stairwells also offered direct exit to the street.

The Longacre opened on May 1, 1913, with Frazee's production of Are You a Crook? by William J. Hurlbut and Frances Whitehouse, with Marguerite Clark, Elitz Proctor Otis, Joseph Kilgour and George Fawcett. The theater's first hit came in August with Adele, a French comedy featuring William Danforth and Georgia Caine.

Frazee, who co-owned the theater with G. M. Anderson, sold his ownership stake in 1917 to focus on baseball.

In 1922 Ethel Barrymore leased the Longacre for three plays: the Gerhatd Hauptman's tragedy Rose Bernd for which the actress received rave reviews, Romeo and Juliet, and The Laughing Lady in 1923, with 96 performances.

The Shubert brothers acquired the Longacre in 1924 and operated it for two decades before leasing it as a radio and television studio in 1944. The Shuberts returned the Longacre to legitimate theatrical use in 1953. The theater gained a reputation for hosting few successful productions in the late 20th century and was nearly converted to a court in the early 1990s.

The Longacre was renovated in 2008 and reopened in May with the farce Boeing Boeing, which ran for 279 performances.