The Plymouth Theatre (now Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre) at 236 West 45th Street, Midtown Manhattan, immediately west of the Booth Theater, seen on the left. Photograph published in the Landmarks Preservation Commission's Plymouth Theatre report, December 8, 1987.
The
musical Runaways is shown at the Plymouth Theatre in the photo above. The
musical was relocated from the Public Theater to the Plymouth in May 1978, with
274 performances on Broadway. The Booth Theatre, on the left, is showing For
Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, which
opened at this theater on September 15, 1976, where it was continued until July
1978 and ran for 742 shows.
Plymouth Theatre opened on October 10, 1917, with the comedy A Successful Calamity (announced in this photo) by Clare Kummer. The building was designed by Herbert J. Krapp and finished in brown, blue and gold. The theater was leased and managed by producer Arthur M. Hopkins. Its façades and the auditorium were designated New York City landmarks in 1987. The theater was renamed in 2005 after Gerald Schoenfeld, longtime chairman of the Shubert Organization, which operates the theater.
Text from the Plymouth Theatre's LPC report: «The movement of the theater district north along Broadway had proceeded at a steady pace during the latter part of the 19th century. The Casino Theater was opened on the southeast corner of Broadway and 39th Street in 1882. A year later, it was joined by a most ambitious undertaking--the construction of the Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway between 39th and 40th Streets. In 1888, the Broadway Theater was erected on the southwest corner of Broadway and 41st Street. Five years later, the American Theater opened its doors at Eighth Avenue between 41st and 42nd Streets, as did Abbey's Theater at Broadway and 38th Street and the Empire Theater at Broadway and Fortieth Street.»
