Apollo Theatre (42nd Street)

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Apollo Theatre (42nd Street)

The Apollo Theatre was a Broadway venue with its entrance at 223 West 42nd Street in Manhattan, and its auditorium located on 43rd Street. It opened on November 17, 1920, built by the Selwyn Brothers with the Times Square Theatre, and was designed by Eugene De Rosa. The combined front on 42nd Street hid an interior that could seat about 1,200 people.

In its early years, the Apollo hosted musical productions such as Gershwin’s Strike Up the Band (1927) and various editions of George White’s Scandals. It also showed films, including foreign cinema, in the 1920s.

In 1934 the Apollo became 42nd Street’s third stock burlesque house, joining Minsky’s Republic nearby and the Eltinge Theater across the street. It hosted acts by familiar names like Abbott and Costello, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Ann Corio. After rising opposition to burlesque in the late 1930s, the theater shifted to film.

For decades the Apollo mainly screened films, particularly foreign titles, and by the 1970s it showed X-rated movies. In 1978 it was refurbished and renamed the New Apollo. Beginning in 1979, it hosted plays such as On Golden Pond, Bent, Fifth of July, and The Guys in the Truck, but the venture failed in the early 1980s. The New Apollo ended its life as a rock music venue called the Academy.

The building fell into disrepair and was condemned. In 1990 it was repossessed by the city and state, and in 1992 came under the New 42nd Street program. It was demolished in 1996 to make way for the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, now known as the Lyric Theatre. Some architectural features, including the proscenium arch, were saved and later installed in the Lyric. The theater’s exterior appears in HBO’s The Deuce.