Broadway: The American Musical . Hello, Broadway! . Resurrection of 42nd Street

by Laurence Maslon



New York's City Hall, and aerial view of Times Square.

There's something about New York City mayors and Broadway musicals that makes them go together. Irving Berlin spoofed City Hall in his 1932 "Face the Music" and Peter Stuyvesant, Jimmy Walker, Fiorello La Guardia, and Edward Koch each became lead characters in Broadway musicals (technically, Koch was Off Broadway).

But it took until March 23, 1973 for an actual New York mayor to appear on the boards. For one evening, John V. Lindsay, nearing the end of his tenure, sang "My City" -- a backhanded paean to the charms of New York -- in a performance of Cy Coleman's "Seesaw," because of his ostensible resemblance to the show's star, Ken Howard. Broadway seemed to like Lindsay, and he considered himself a patron of the arts. But Lindsay's interest in reclaiming Times Square had far more to do with increasing tax revenue than with artistic patronage of the theater. His desire to encourage development in the theater district would spin out, over the next 30 years, into a strange and tangled confluence of politics, economics, public relations, greed, and ego, where alliances shifted constantly and decisions made in City Hall conference rooms could affect the scenic design of a Broadway show.



Times Square at night, and street signs for 42nd Street.

Lindsay's most complicated artistic legacy came under the guise of "tax abatements": financial incentives to encourage investment and development in the Times Square area. The abatements allowed developers to build new office buildings in exchange for huge tax breaks from the city. One provision forced the developer to add a theater on the ground floor of a new building as part of the deal, and in the 1970s, the Minskoff, the Uris (later renamed the Gershwin), and the renovated Circle in the Square were added to the Broadway landscape, the first new theaters built since the beginning of the depression. Unfortunately, they were cheerless and charmless, and Times Square got seedier and sleazier; when dire financial straits hit the city in the late 1970s, they brought an end to this brief period of redevelopment. By 1977, even the famous "zipper" sign that spun out headlines along the Times Tower for 50 years had turned out its lights.

When Atlanta hotel magnate John Portman had contacted City Hall in the late '70s about building a multistory hotel on Broadway, between 45th and 46th streets, Mayor Ed Koch put the project on a fast track.

Now, this area in the '70s was a sewer. This was the den of pornography, prostitution, felony crime, drug dealing -- you name it. And along came Marriott in about 1973 and they wanted to build a new hotel here. Well, that hotel was advocated by everybody in this business, including us. We thought it represented a major signal that the area was alive and well, and so did everybody else.

-- Gerald Schoenfeld, the Shubert Organization

Peep shows and porn theaters of Times Square

The peep shows and porn theaters that lined the streets of Times Square.

But the construction of the Marriott necessitated the razing of five theaters (including two beloved by the theater community -- the Morosco and the Helen Hayes) on that block, a decision that would obsess and polarize the community for years. Despite many protests and several court stays, the demolition began on March 22, 1982, and the Marriott Marquis, as it came to be called, is today the most successful hotel in America.

None of these maneuvers helped 42nd Street itself. By 1990, however, under the new administration of David Dinkins, an organization called the New 42 was constituted to try to resurrect the street one more time. The New 42 put its energy into remaking the area into a center for legitimate theater, something it hadn't been since before the depression. The Victory Theater, now an abandoned wreck, had begun life in 1900 as the Theatre Republic, eventually turning into both a burlesque house and, later, a porn theater. The New 42 wanted to transform it into -- of all things -- a theater for young audiences. As plans for that began in 1992, focus turned to the New Amsterdam at the corner of 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue, Ziegfeld's grand aerie. Defunct as a legitimate theater since 1937, the New Amsterdam too had suffered the depredations of decay, neglect, and specious tenants.


photo credits: Photofest; the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Historic American Buildings Survey or Historic American Engineering Record (HABS, NY,31-NEYO,91-1); the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Gottscho-Schleisner Collection (LC-USZC4-4736 DLC); and Corel

Critics Corner: Who are the 20th century's most influential theater critics?

Disney CEO Michael Eisner describes first seeing the delapidated New Amsterdam Theater; critic John Lahr on Disney's impact on the musical; and hear a song excerpt from a hit show in the revitalized theater district, "Wicked."