Ziegfeld Theater (theater)

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Ziegfeld Theater
Ziegfeld Theater around 1928
location
Address: 1341 Sixth Avenue
City: Manhattan , New York City
Coordinates: 40 ° 45 '45 "  N , 73 ° 58' 44"  W Coordinates: 40 ° 45 '45 "  N , 73 ° 58' 44"  W.
Architecture and history
Opened: February 2, 1927
Spectator: 1,638 seats
Architect: Joseph Urban and Thomas W. Lamb
Named after: Florence Ziegfeld

The Ziegfeld Theater was a Broadway - Theater in New York City . It was on Sixth Avenue from 1927 to 1966 , on the corner of 54th Street.

history

The founder was the famous Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld junior , who had the theater built with the financial support of the billionaire media mogul William Randolph Hearst . The architects and interior designers were Joseph Urban and Thomas W. Lamb, who specializes in new cinema buildings . Urban, who was mainly responsible for the artistic design of the theater, remained associated with the house as a set designer for all productions until 1932 . The theater had 1,600 seats in an egg-shaped auditorium that tapered towards the stage. The walls and ceilings were decorated with the fresco The Joy of Life . On February 2, 1927, the theater opened with the musical Rio Rita . Under Ziegfeld's direction, only musicals came on stage in the early years of the theater. Great successes were, among others, the first performances of musical Show Boat (1927), which ran until 1929, and Showgirl (1927) and the implementation of an annual Ziegfeld Follies - Revue for the year 1931st

In the course of the worsening global economic crisis and the decline of the theater industry on Broadway, the Ziegfeld Theater was closed in 1932. Investor Hearst, who took over the management of the theater after Ziegfeld's death in the same year, could not keep it. In the following years it was converted into a cinema and only reopened in 1944 by the theater producer Billy Rose . Rose expanded the range of programs and staged musicals and revues as well as ballets , classical and modern pieces from European theater literature and operas with international guest stars. In 1955 he stopped the theater business and rented the space to the television station NBC , which produced television shows here . After Rose made a second attempt at the Ziegfeld Theater in 1963, it was finally closed in 1965 and demolished in 1966 despite local residents' protests. A skyscraper has stood in its place since 1967, today's Alliance Bernstein Building . A last remnant of the demolished building is now next to garbage cans in the front yard of a private house on the corner of 52 East 80th Street: a sandstone woman's head created by Joseph Urban for the theater facade. A theater producer who had lived in the house until 1998 was given the head during the demolition work. In 1969, in memory of the Ziegfeld Theater near the cinema -Palast same name opened.

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