Music Box Theatre

The Music Box Theatre is one of Broadway’s most personal venues — it was built in 1921 by Irving Berlin and producer Sam Harris specifically to house Berlin’s Music Box Revues. C. Howard Crane designed the building in a Palladian style, with deliberate restraint that distinguishes it from the more ornate Shubert and Chanin houses of the same era. Berlin retained ownership of the venue until his death in 1989.

The 1,009-seat interior is small for Broadway, with the intimacy that comes from a single shallow mezzanine and an orchestra that doesn’t sprawl. Sight lines are unusually generous from almost every seat — the room was designed when Broadway audiences expected to see facial expressions, not just stage pictures, and the proportions still serve that intent. The rear orchestra at the Music Box is significantly closer to the action than the rear orchestra in most contemporary musical houses.

Operated by the Shubert Organization, the Music Box sits on the West 45th Street block that includes the Booth and the Golden — three small landmark houses within a fifty-foot walk of each other.