The Mark Hellinger Theatre (formerly the 51st Street Theatre, Warner Theatre, and Hollywood Theatre) is a theater and church building at 237 West 51st Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, U.S. Opened in 1930, the Hellinger Theatre is named after journalist Mark Hellinger and was developed by Warner Bros. Pictures as a movie palace before later hosting Broadway productions. It was designed by Thomas W. Lamb with a 1930s–modern style facade and a Baroque interior. It has 1,603 seats across two levels and has been a house of worship for the Times Square Church since 1989. Both the exterior and interior of the theater are New York City landmarks.
The facade on 51st Street is constructed with golden and brown bricks. The stage house to the west and the auditorium at the center are designed as one unit, with a cornice above the auditorium. The eastern section, containing the building's current main entrance, includes statues flanking the doors, as well as an overhanging marquee. The 51st Street facade was originally a side entrance; the main entrance was originally at 1655 Broadway but was closed in the 1950s. The interior rotunda lobby contains eight fluted columns, a balcony, and a domed ceiling with several murals; a basement lounge exists under the lobby. The auditorium has a coved ceiling with murals, as well as boxes and a deep stage.
For the first two decades of the theater's existence, it largely served as a cinema under the Hollywood Theatre name. Vaudeville was presented in 1932, and some legitimate live-theatrical productions were shown intermittently from 1934 to 1942. The theater was briefly known as the 51st Street Theatre around 1936 and 1941 and as the Warner Theatre from 1947 to 1948. Anthony Brady Farrell bought the theater and renamed it after Hellinger, reopening it as a legitimate theater in 1949. The theater was subsequently acquired by the Stahl family in 1957 and the Nederlander Organization in 1976. The Hellinger hosted some hits from the 1950s to the 1970s, including My Fair Lady, but later productions such as Timbuktu! were mostly flops. By 1989, a lack of Broadway productions prompted the Nederlanders to lease the theater to the Times Square Church. The church's congregation, which bought the theater in 1991, continues to operate it.
Site The Mark Hellinger Theatre is at 237 West 51st Street, on the north sidewalk between Eighth Avenue and Broadway, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The irregular land lot covers , with a frontage of on 51st Street and a depth of . The bulk of the theater exists on 51st Street, with a wing extending north to 52nd Street. The Mark Hellinger Theatre shares the block with the Neil Simon Theatre to the west and Gallagher's Steakhouse to the north. Other nearby buildings include the August Wilson Theatre to the north; the Broadway Theatre and 810 Seventh Avenue to the northeast; Axa Equitable Center to the east; the Winter Garden Theatre to the southeast; and Paramount Plaza (including the Circle in the Square Theatre and the Gershwin Theatre) to the south. An entrance to the New York City Subway's 50th Street station, serving the , is just south of the theater.
Design
The Mark Hellinger Theatre, originally the Hollywood Theatre, was designed by Thomas W. Lamb and was constructed in 1930 as a movie palace for Warner Bros. While the interior was designed in a 16th-century Baroque style, the exterior was treated in a style that was contemporary for the 1930s.
Facade
Broadway (former) The Hollywood Theatre's main entrance was originally at 1655 Broadway, with a narrow lobby leading to a grand foyer on 51st Street. At the time of the theater's construction in 1930, cinemas that premiered films in the Times Square area typically had entrances on Broadway, regardless of the width. While the Broadway entrance was narrow, it contained a bright marquee and a huge lighted vertical sign. The Broadway entrance was closed in 1934 and converted to retail space before being demolished completely prior to the late 1990s.
The roof of the Hollywood Theatre's Broadway wing originally contained a V-shaped steel sign measuring tall and wide. Described in 1929 as "the largest electrical display in the world", the sign weighed 115 tons. A dedicated generator illuminated the sign's 20,000 bulbs, which were arranged so that letters could be flashed.
51st Street The only surviving facade is on 51st Street and consists of two modern-style sections, both made of brick and designed with vertical motifs. The eastern section is a narrow tower containing the building's entrance. The other section, which contains the stage house and auditorium, is shorter but wider. Although the 51st Street facade serves as the building's current front entrance, this was originally a side entrance.
The entrance section has a water table made of black granite. The entrance itself contains five double doors below transom windows, all made of glass with bronze frames. On either side are tall figures holding globe-shaped lanterns, as well as bronze display boxes. A modern marquee is mounted over the building's entrance. The facade is made of gold-colored brick, with three strips of brown-brick rectangles above the marquee, rising to a set of three brown-brick squares. On either side are fluted terracotta panels, topped by stylized urns that contain plant forms. On all stories, the theater's brick courses step outward to the left and right of the tower. The top of the entrance's facade contains a parapet with zigzag patterns.
The stage house to the west and the auditorium at the center share a facade, with gold-colored brick above a black-granite water table. Horizontal brown-brick strips run across the first story. The first floor also contains display boxes with brick headers around them, as well as an office door, a former stage door, and a wide garage door. On the upper stories, the central section (auditorium) contains a large brick panel surrounded by soldier courses. There are rectangular openings to the east (right) of this panel, with grilles above them. The top story of the auditorium contains stylized brick brackets, which support a decorative copper cornice; there are octagonal panels between the brackets. The stage house contains window openings between shallow brick piers. There is a setback on the stage house's upper stories, with plain brick behind it.
Interior The Hellinger's rococo interior was similar to that of other 1920s movie palaces. The interior spaces were designed by Leif Neandross, chief designer of the Rambusch Decorating Company. The original decorative scheme was gold with highlights of red and blue.
Lobby
The original lobby from Broadway (since demolished) was designed in a modern French style. It was Art Deco in design and led to the present main lobby. According to a contemporary account, the Broadway lobby had mirrored walls with bronze and marble decorations, in addition to a plaster ceiling. The Broadway lobby was designed to potentially support a taller building that was canceled during the Great Depression.
The main lobby is a double-height oval rotunda with eight fluted columns holding up a domed ceiling. According to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), the lobby's design is similar to the interior of the 18th-century Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers in Germany. The Times Square Church uses the lobby to sell religious products such as books and CDs. The main lobby's columns are placed on marble pedestals, and they are topped by Ionic-style capitals. Above the columns is a marble entablature with cherubs. The ceiling has paneled arches and coves, which converge at a rope molding that surrounds the oval dome at the ceiling's center. A classical mural is painted in the middle of the ceiling; the mural was intended to symbolize arts and learning. A large multi-tiered candelabra hangs from the middle of the dome.
The lobby's walls contain marble bases, above which are panels surrounded by ornamental moldings. Lighting sconces are mounted onto the walls, and there are openings to the auditorium's orchestra level on the west wall. Doors on the south wall lead back to the ticket lobby. The north wall contains a grand staircase to a balcony at the auditorium's mezzanine level. Additional staircases connect to that level from the lobby's entrance.
The balcony overlooks the lobby. The staircases from the lobby contain wall panels with ornamental moldings as well as lighting sconces; there are also mirrors at the landings. Underneath the balcony, next to the columns on the north wall, are segmental arches that are supported by console brackets. The balcony itself has a balustrade with motifs of scallops and cherubs, while the underside of the balcony has moldings. The walls of the balcony also have panels with moldings; there are doorways decorated with cartouches and swags, which lead to lounges. Ribs divide the balcony's ceiling into panels, and there are moldings along the border of both the ribs and the panels. Candelabras and globe chandeliers are suspended from the balcony ceiling. There was originally furniture along the balcony.
Auditorium
The auditorium has an orchestra level, one balcony, boxes, and a stage behind the proscenium arch. The auditorium is slightly wider than its depth, and the space is designed with plaster decorations in low relief. The auditorium's seating capacity is 1,603, though historically it could fit 1,506 people. The orchestra alone could fit 900 people. The seats are upholstered in red velvet and finished in wood. From the outset, three hundred seats were equipped with "Warner Theatre-phones" to both amplify and clarify sound for hard-of-hearing users. Damask curtains were placed on the walls to increase insulation. The auditorium curves inward near the proscenium.
Seating areas The rear (east) end of the orchestra contains a shallow, curving promenade. The walls of the orchestra promenade have doors, above which are exit signs with flanking volutes. Both the orchestra and the promenade contain flat pilasters on the walls, between which are panels with moldings on their borders. The orchestra is slightly raked, sloping down toward an orchestra pit near the stage.
The underside of the balcony, above the orchestra, contains globe-shaped light fixtures and three coves with scallops and foliation. Though the balcony is also raked, its underside is convex, preventing sound-deadening air pockets from accumulating at the orchestra's rear wall. The balcony also has a promenade at its rear, separated from the main balcony by decorated vertical piers. The balcony and promenade walls contain flat pilasters and panels with molded borders. The side walls contain arched doorways with molded frames. The rear wall has a standing rail and lighting sconces. The balcony level is divided into front and rear sections by a crossover aisle, which runs between metal railings on either side. The balcony's front railing has foliate motifs, which are aligned on a vertical axis. A projection room was placed at the rear of the balcony, measuring long and tall.
On either side of the proscenium is an archway with a single box that is curved outward. The balcony's front railing extends onto the box's front railing, supporting two fluted Corinthian columns on either side of each box. Underneath the front railing of each box is an arch at orchestra level, which contains a pair of console brackets with a cartouche at the center. There are also cartouches beside the arches, under each pair of columns; these in turn are flanked by brackets with cherubs and swags. Above each box is another arch, which rises from volutes atop the Corinthian-column pairs. Small pendant chandeliers are placed in front of the boxes' column pairs.
Other design features