The Town Hall (also Town Hall) is a performance space at 123 West 43rd Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue near Times Square, in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It was built from 1919 to 1921 and designed by architects McKim, Mead & White for the League for Political Education. The auditorium has 1,500 seats across two levels and has historically been used for various events, such as speeches, musical recitals, concerts, and film screenings. Both the exterior and interior of the building are New York City landmarks, and the building is on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark.
Town Hall was designed in the Georgian Revival style and has a brick facade with limestone trim. The base contains seven arched doorways that serve as the venue's entrance. The facade of the upper stories contains a large limestone plaque, niches, and windows. Inside the ground story, a rectangular lobby leads to the auditorium. The upper stories originally housed offices for the League for Political Education the Civic Forum, the Economic Club, and the Town Hall Club.
Town Hall's auditorium opened on January 12, 1921, and was originally intended as a place for speeches, but Town Hall subsequently became one of New York City's top musical venues in its 20th-century heyday. The first public-affairs media programming, the America's Town Meeting of the Air radio program, broadcast from Town Hall between 1935 and 1956. New York University (NYU) leased Town Hall afterward, but the venue began to decline in popularity during the 1950s and 1960s. NYU closed the auditorium in 1978 due to financial shortfalls, and Town Hall was then renovated and reopened as a performance venue by the Town Hall Foundation.
Site Town Hall is on 123 West 43rd Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue near Times Square, in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The land lot covers , with a frontage of on 45th Street and a depth of . Nearby buildings include the Millennium Times Square New York, Hudson Theatre, Hotel Gerard, and the Chatwal New York hotel to the north; the Belasco Theatre to the northeast; the Bank of America Tower and Stephen Sondheim Theatre to the south; 4 Times Square to the southwest; and 1500 Broadway to the west.
Design Town Hall was designed by McKim, Mead & White in the Georgian Revival style and constructed from 1919 to 1921 as a lecture venue.; Teunis (Dennis) J. van der Bent of the firm was in charge of the overall design,; ; and Russell B. Smith was the supervising engineer. The interior work was completed by Louis Jallade after the building opened. Wallace Clement Sabine has been popularly cited as a consultant in the design of Town Hall's auditorium, but he died before the building was completed.; ; Town Hall was originally built for the League for Political Education. The Georgian Revival style was chosen for its connotations of grassroots democracy.
Facade The main elevation of the facade, facing south on 43rd Street, is clad in brown brick with Flemish bond and is divided into three horizontal sections.; ; The openings have limestone trim around them. Generally, the facade is nine bays wide and is designed to appear as a four-story structure. When it was completed, Town Hall's facade complemented the Georgian facade of the Stephen Sondheim Theatre immediately across the street.
The western elevation abuts an adjacent four-story building, which was formerly an annex of Town Hall and retains a connection at a single story. The eastern elevation is clad with common brick and originally was not visible from the street, but the site immediately to the east was redeveloped in the 1970s with an office building, which is set back from the curb. The northern elevation is not visible from the street since it faces another building.
Base
The first-story facade contains a blind arcade with seven arches containing double doors. The westernmost door leads to the upper story, the five center doors lead to the theater, and the easternmost door leads to the box office. The arches are accessed by either one or two steps, since the eastern section of the site is higher than the western section. Fluted limestone pilasters flank the doors. Each double door has wooden frames and glass panes, above which are multi-pane transom windows. Each doorway has a limestone tympanum above it, as well as a lunette window with a keystone. The extreme ends of the facade, on either side of the blind arcade, contain metal double doors that lead to The Town Hall's backstage hallways. Above each of these end doors is a splayed brick lintel and a wood-framed sash window.
Five of the arched openings have steel-and-glass canopies above them. The canopies are cantilevered from steel rods that extend diagonally from the facade.; ; There are three such canopies: one above each outermost arch and one above the center three doorways. Underneath each canopy are spherical lamps, with glass shades at the edges of the canopy. The centers of the canopies' undersides have large spherical lamps, which are surrounded by smaller spheres. A Greek key band course runs above the mezzanine.
Upper floors
The middle stories generally lack window openings and are faced in brick. The center of the facade has a limestone plaque that contains the words "The Town HallFounded bythe League for Political Education1894–1920'Ye Shall Know the Truth andthe Truth Shall Make You Free'". On either side are two empty niches surrounded by limestone frames. The niches are topped by round arches and contain similar keystones to the openings below them. There are light fixtures at the bases of the niches, as well as on the sills of the round arches. Above the niches and plaque is a set of sash windows with brick and limestone frames. A Greek key band course runs above the middle stories.
The attic contains seven double-hung sash windows, which are larger than those in the midsection. Each window has an iron grille below it, as well as a limestone lintel with a keystone above. There are recessed brick panels between each of the attic windows, each of which contains a limestone lozenge. Both of the outermost bays contain recessed panels with an ocular window inside. The attic contains an Adamesque limestone frieze above the windows. Above this is a set of dentils and a balustrade.
Interior The Town Hall's lobby and auditorium are on the lower levels, and the offices are on the upper levels.; ; The auditorium is semicircular in plan and is surrounded by the backstage and front of house areas. Two passageways, one each on the extreme west and east ends of the ground story, provide access from the street to backstage areas. While the auditorium is two stories tall, it has been described in contemporary publications as a four-story space.
Lobby The lobby is accessed from the five center doorways on 43rd Street. It has a largely rectangular plan, except for the north wall, which corresponds to the auditorium's rear wall. A contemporary publication called the lobby "a memorial to public-spirited citizens not now living who were leaders of their day in public usefulness".
The lobby contains a floor of terrazzo tiles, as well as classically styled pilasters and a paneled ceiling. The northern wall of the lobby has a screen divided into three portions. The central section of the screen has a set of double doors, flanked by Ionic-style engaged columns. The outer sections of the screen are made of marble with window openings, and they contain Doric-style pilasters. On either side of the screen are staircases that lead up to the first mezzanine level of the auditorium. These stairs have balustrades with iron balusters and walnut wooden railings. Underneath the stairs are additional doorways that lead into the auditorium's orchestra level. Double doors with multiple glass panes lead east to the box office and west to the elevator banks.
Auditorium
The auditorium has a parterre-level orchestra and a single balcony, with a small stage behind the proscenium arch. The auditorium has a seating capacity of 1,495. Every effort was taken to ensure that no seats had obstructed views, which led to the Town Hall's long-standing mantra "Not a bad seat in the house". The balcony is cantilevered from the structural framework, which obviated the need for columns that blocked audience views. The balcony has a loge, or theatrical box. The front of the balcony contains a wrought-iron balustrade. The auditorium retains most of its original wicker seat designs, except for the loge, where modern theatrical seats have been installed. The original seats were capable of unusually high levels of acoustic absorption; they were replaced in the 1980s by seats with similar acoustic qualities. The writer Harold C. Schonberg wrote that only the seating on the balcony had good acoustics, as the balcony's presence muffled the sounds at orchestra level.
The lower sections of the side walls contain marble paneling, which is topped by a molding with a torus motif.; Above that, the walls are made of artificial stone, carved in rusticated blocks. Each of the corners contains a fluted pilaster with a Composite-style capital. The side walls contain two niches, which are designed similarly to the proscenium arch. The gilded cornice just beneath the ceiling contains acanthus leaves, under which are dentil blocks.; ; The cornice is supplemented by a band with Greek key fretwork and guilloche moldings. The plaster ceiling is split into coffers, with Greek key and guilloche moldings between each coffer. The center of the ceiling has an Adamesque ornamental medallion with a large chandelier hanging from it. Smaller chandeliers hang from various other parts of the ceiling. The lighting was intended to be indirect, with 2,500 bulbs in total.
The proscenium arch consists of a band with a Greek key molding, supported on either side by ornamented pilasters with Composite-style capitals. Above the center of the arch is a keystone with foliate decorations. The proscenium measures tall and wide. The stage curves slightly outward from the proscenium, measuring deep at its center and deep at its sides. The back of the stage area was designed with a tapestry. On either side of the stage are round-arched screens, which formerly framed the auditorium's organs. Each arch has a sill that contains foliate decorations and is supported by scrolled brackets. The screens themselves are divided into three parts, with a pediment atop the central section, and contain carved swags and garlands. The organs themselves were donated in 1922 but saw little use and were removed in 1960. The organ pipes remain in place, but paintings were placed within the screens in a 1983 renovation.
Other features
The elevators on the western side of the ground floor, lead to the second through fourth stories. The second and third stories were designed with club offices and a library, as well as communal spaces such as a bar, lounge, and dining area. The fourth story, which corresponded to the penthouse, had a kitchen and space for employees and food storage. Many of the original decorations, including plaster walls, paneled piers, and neoclassical moldings, still exist.