Palace Theatre (New York City)

Palace Theatre

The SpongeBob Musical, 2017
Address	1564 Broadway Manhattan, New York City United States
Coordinates	40°45′32″N 73°59′05″W / 40.758842°N 73.984728°W / 40.758842; -73.984728
Owner	Nederlander Organization and Stewart F. Lane
Operator	Nederlander Organization
Type	Broadway theatre
Capacity	1,743[a]
Current use	Closed for renovation
Construction
Opened	March 24, 1913 (vaudeville) January 29, 1966 (Broadway theater)
Rebuilt	1987–1991, 2018–2022
Years active	1913–1932 (vaudeville) 1932–1965 (movie palace) 1966–present (Broadway)
Architect	Kirchhoff & Rose
Website
broadwaydirect.com/venue/palace-theatre
New York City Landmark
Designated	July 14, 1987[1]
Reference no.	1367[1]
Designated entity	Auditorium interior

The Palace Theatre is a Broadway theater at 1564 Broadway, facing Times Square, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. 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 1,743 seats^[a] across three levels as of 2018^[update].

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 30 feet (9.1 m) in early 2022. The renovation was completed in May 2024.

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