The Palace Theatre is a Broadway theater at 1564 Broadway, at the north end of Times Square, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Designed by Milwaukee architects Kirchhoff & Rose, the theater was funded by Martin Beck and opened in 1913. From its opening to about 1929, the Palace was considered among vaudeville performers as the flagship venue of Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward Franklin Albee II's organization. The theater had 1,648 seats across three levels .
The modern Palace Theatre consists of a three-level auditorium at 47th Street, which is a New York City designated landmark. The auditorium contains ornately designed plasterwork, boxes on the side walls, and two balcony levels that slope downward toward the stage. When it opened, the theater was accompanied by an 11- or 12-story office wing facing Broadway, also designed by Kirchhoff & Rose.
The Palace was most successful as a vaudeville house in the 1910s and 1920s. Under RKO Theatres, it became a movie palace called the RKO Palace Theatre in the 1930s, though it continued to host intermittent vaudeville shows in the 1950s. The Nederlander Organization purchased the Palace in 1965 and reopened the venue as a Broadway theater the next year. The theater closed for an extensive renovation from 1987 to 1991, when the original building was partly demolished and replaced with the DoubleTree Suites Times Square Hotel; the theater was reopened within the DoubleTree in 1991. The DoubleTree Hotel was mostly demolished in 2019 to make way for the TSX Broadway development. As part of this project, the Palace closed again in 2018 and was lifted in early 2022. The renovation was completed in May 2024.
Buildings The Palace Theatre is at 1568 Broadway, at the southeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 47th Street, in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. It faces Duffy Square, the northern end of Times Square. The theater's site abuts the I. Miller Building and Embassy Theatre to the south.
The Palace Theatre was designed by Milwaukee architects Kirchhoff & Rose and was completed in 1913. The theater was funded by Martin Beck, a vaudeville entrepreneur. The theater has been housed in three buildings over the years. While the interior space dates to the 1913 design by Kirchhoff & Rose, the original theater building was partly demolished in 1988 and the theater space was renovated inside the DoubleTree Suites Times Square Hotel, completed between 1990 and 1991. The DoubleTree Hotel was itself demolished in 2019 to make way for the TSX Broadway development.
Original building The Palace Theatre was originally composed of an office wing along Times Square, as well as the theater wing on 47th Street that contained the auditorium. The original building's site was assembled from ten land lots at 1564–1566 Broadway and 156–170 West 47th Street, which were arranged in an "L" shape. The Broadway lots collectively measured , while the 47th Street lots measured . This structure was designed by Kirchhoff & Rose, with James J. F. Gavigan as an associate architect. The steelwork was constructed by the George A. Just Company.
The office wing was an 11-story or 12-story structure, which served as the theater's main entrance. In the original building's later years, the entrance had a marquee. The office wing had an ornate marble facade, as well as two public elevators and a private one inside. The theater entrance was wide and contained an outer lobby with either Pavanazzo or yellow Carrara marble and a Siena-marble inner lobby. The lobbies were accessed by two sets of stained-glass, bronze-framed screen doors. There were stairs to the upper floors in the inner lobby. Past the two lobbies was a foyer that led directly to the auditorium (see ).
The theater wing measured . It had a brick or terracotta facade on 47th Street. The interior had French decorations. The auditorium originally had a seating capacity of 1,820, with double balcony levels and 20 boxes arranged in tiers. It was characterized as having an ivory-and-bronze color scheme. Five massive girders spanned the auditorium; each measured long and deep, weighing . There were also 32 or 36 dressing rooms.
DoubleTree Suites An Embassy Suites hotel (later a DoubleTree Suites), designed by Fox & Fowle, was built on the site between 1987 and 1991, replacing the office wing on Broadway. The hotel had 460 suites and was 43 stories tall. The theater's facade was almost entirely hidden behind of billboards for the first of the hotel's height, as per zoning regulations governing buildings on Times Square. The hotel leased the unused air rights above the Palace Theatre to achieve a greater height than would normally be allowed under zoning regulations. The hotel was placed above and around the theater's original auditorium and stage house. The hotel rooms were supported by four steel-and-concrete "super columns", which each measured tall and were placed to the west and east of the auditorium. Resting on the columns were two concrete-encased steel trusses, measuring long by tall and connected by 17 crossbeams.
The theater's lobby, as well as the hotel's entrance and some retail shops, were on the ground story. The entrance to the theater was at approximately the same location as in the original building, and the lobby from the old office wing was preserved. The theater lobby was divided into two sections leading into a foyer. Above that was a five-story atrium with some of the hotel's public spaces, which were placed between the beams, and 36 guestroom stories. A emergency exit was preserved on the eastern side of the theater. Within the theater itself, mezzanine restrooms, an air-conditioning system, and an elevator to the second balcony were installed. Furthermore, the backstage facilities were enlarged. The Palace Theatre's original facade on 47th Street, consisting of rusticated limestone blocks at the first floor and brick on the upper stories, still remained but was not protected as a New York City landmark. The theater's lobby was also not protected as a landmark.
TSX Broadway
During the late 2010s and early 2020s, the DoubleTree/Palace site was redeveloped as part of TSX Broadway, a $2 billion mixed-use structure with a 669-room hotel, which was built around, above, and below the Palace's auditorium. The new structure retains the lowest 16 stories of the DoubleTree structure. The area occupied by the 1987 lobby was replaced with retail space, which would also extend three levels below ground. This required the auditorium to be raised by about . The auditorium is supported by columns that, in turn, rest on caissons extending deep.
About of back of house space was created as part of the project. The main entrance was also relocated to 47th Street, where the facade was raised and a marquee sign was installed. Escalators along 47th Street connect the new entrance to a new orchestra-level lobby next to the raised auditorium. In total, the theater was expanded from .
Auditorium
The auditorium, which the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has protected as a city landmark, is the only portion of the original theater that survives. It is placed in a rigid enclosure that is structurally separate from the buildings within which it has been housed. The auditorium has boxes, two balconies above an orchestra level, and a large stage behind an oversized proscenium arch. The auditorium's width is slightly greater than its depth. The foyer and lobby were designed with plaster decorations in high relief, which alluded to the vaudeville presented at the Palace, while the stage itself was originally sloped. Though the auditorium's orchestra level was originally at the ground story, it was raised to the third story when TSX Broadway was built.
The New York Times described the auditorium as "Baroque with Beaux-Arts influences". Many of the original design features were removed over the years and were restored in the 2020s using plaster molds and historical photographs.
Seating areas , the theater has 1,648 seats; prior to its closure in 2018, the auditorium had 1,743 seats. The orchestra level has a raked floor that slopes downward toward the stage. Both balcony levels have curved fronts and cantilever above the orchestra, sloping downward toward the stage. All three levels contain promenades, which have cornices on their ceilings. Staircases behind each promenade connect the three levels of seating. One of the staircases was nicknamed the "Judy Garland staircase" because the actress Judy Garland would use it for surprise entrances. In addition, an elevator connects all three seating levels.
The first balcony level extends half the depth of the orchestra and contains two staircases about halfway through. The front of the balcony has decorative moldings with classical masks, while its underside contains plaster moldings of ropes. The second balcony contains rope moldings on its underside, which form a rectangular pattern. The front edge of the second balcony's underside contains guilloche moldings interspersed with oak branches, above which are decorative moldings with masks. The second balcony's side walls have decorative pilasters that support a frieze, as well as exit doors with curved pediments. The ceiling of the second balcony has ventilation grates, which are not part of the original design.
The orchestra level has boxes on either side, divided by white-marble barriers with black-marble baseboards. On either side of the proscenium are arched niches with a doorway at orchestra level and a box at the first balcony level. Each niche's box contains a doorway with pilasters on either side, which are topped by console brackets that support a curved pediment with a tympanum. The niches are topped by a recessed lunette that resembles a shell or sunburst. The niches originally contained three boxes each, but these were extensively altered in a 1965 renovation. Additional boxes exist on both sides of both balcony levels. The first balcony level has one additional box behind each niche. The second balcony level has five curved boxes on each side in a terraced arrangement, with higher boxes being further from the stage. The fronts of the balcony-level boxes have decorative moldings, while the undersides of these boxes contain foliate ornamentation. Originally there were 20 boxes at orchestra level, 23 at the first balcony, and 12 at the second balcony. There was also a projection booth behind the balcony for film screenings, which was built in the 1930s and removed in the 2020s.
Other design features Pendentives at each corner of the auditorium support a wide coved ceiling. The cove is divided into a set of panels with different types of scrolls and floral moldings. The front of the cove, near the sounding board, has a cartouche with putti. There is a flat ceiling surface with a pair of curved triangular panels, as well as a dome with modillions, rosettes, and fruit-and-flower moldings. There is an old-ivory bronze chandelier measuring across, which hangs from a pendant on the ceiling.
The proscenium arch measures across. It contains pellet, egg-and-dart, and acanthus-leaf moldings surrounding a band of acanthus leaves. The top of the arch consists of a keystone with a molding of a child's head. A sounding board rises above the proscenium arch, with foliate bands at the perimeter. At the center of the sounding board, above the stage, is a circular panel depicting a lyre. The orchestra pit is at the front of the orchestra seating level, in front of the proscenium. It dates from a 1965 renovation and contains high walls. The stage is behind the proscenium arch and orchestra pit. The stage historically had a Wurlitzer Opus 303 organ. The orchestra and stage both have stage lifts.
History