Booth Theatre

The Booth Theatre opened in 1913, built by producer Winthrop Ames specifically as an intimate venue for serious plays at a time when Broadway was dominated by larger musical houses. Architect Henry B. Herts designed it as a pair with the Shubert next door: the Shubert Organization’s Shubert Theatre page describes their shared “Venetian Renaissance” exterior, and its Booth page calls the Booth the smaller, less extravagant house, styled with “restrained classicism”. It has 778 seats across an orchestra and a single mezzanine, and remains one of the smallest active Broadway theatres. The Booth page also says Ames modeled the theatre on the contemporary European theatres he knew.

Shubert’s figures put 514 seats in the orchestra and 252 in the mezzanine, two flights up (31 steps), with 12 box seats. In our view, the small room is the Booth’s main draw for ticket-buyers: the first rows of the centre mezzanine are worth pricing against centre orchestra for a play.

The Booth shares the same block as the Shubert, the Plymouth (now the Gerald Schoenfeld), and the Broadhurst — the Shubert Organization’s flagship cluster, and in our view the easiest stage-door area on Broadway to find your way around.