City Center is a performing home for several major dance companies as well as the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), and it hosts the Encores!

The northern section is much simpler in design, with a largely windowless brick facade, and contains four rehearsal studios and a 12-story office tower.

[11] By the 21st century, the artistic hub had largely been replaced with Billionaires' Row, a series of luxury skyscrapers around the southern end of Central Park.

[3][19] The building was designed by architects Harry P. Knowles (a Master Mason), who died before its completion, in conjunction with the firm of Clinton and Russell.

[19] The 55th Street elevation also contains multicolored glazed terracotta tiles originally manufactured by the New York Architectural Terra-Cotta Company.

Each of the horseshoe arches in the arcade is supported by pink-veined and gray-veined granite columns and contain voussoirs made of glazed ocher tiles.

[27] The uppermost part of the facade is stepped upward at its center, following the curve of the domed roof, and is topped by a large cornice with dentils.

[30][20] The stories above originally contained the Shriners' lodge rooms, so Knowles chose not to add windows, as was typical for office buildings of the time.

Instead, on the fourth through ninth stories, the center of the facade contains six vertical piers, which are made of projecting bricks that are angled outward.

[30][34] The side elevations of the northern half of the building contain even less decoration; they largely consist of brick walls with some scattered window openings.

[19] The main auditorium's interior contained Moorish motifs such as multi-pointed stars, lancet windows, and large chandeliers hanging from molded ceiling plasterwork.

[57] By 1911, the Shriners owned a converted brownstone row house at 107 West 45th Street, and they also held large meetings in the concert hall of Madison Square Garden.

[77] Irving Verschleiser,[a] operator of the Central Opera House on the Upper East Side, leased the building's ballroom and kitchens in 1934, with plans to convert it into the Mecca Temple Casino.

[78] Aside from opera, dance, theatrical productions, and concerts, the auditorium's events in the 1930s included a Federal Theatre Project circus,[79] a protest meeting attended by over one-fifth of the city's Armenian population.

[83] A writer for The New York Times reported that the auditorium had been relegated to "political oratory, all sorts of organizational harangues and resolutions, [and] second-rate prize fights".

[92] Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and New York City Council president Newbold Morris began planning to convert the Mecca Temple into a theater.

[93][94] La Guardia and Morris cofounded the City Center of Music and Drama (CCMD) with tax lawyer Morton Baum, who was described as "the financial, production, and political brain that held it together".

[99] Performers who appeared at City Center between the 1940s and 1960s included Helen Hayes, Montgomery Clift, Orson Welles, Gwen Verdon, Charlton Heston, Marcel Marceau, Bob Fosse, Nicholas Magallanes, Francisco Moncion, Tallulah Bankhead, Vincent Price, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Uta Hagen, and Christopher Walken.

[150][151] After mayor William O'Dwyer pledged his support of City Center, the Board of Estimate renewed the CCMD's lease in February 1950.

[158] CCMD officials, citing increasing production costs asked the New York State Legislature in early 1953 to pass a law allowing the organization to lease the building for $1 annually.

[161] The CCMD began raising $200,000 in April 1953 as part of its first-ever fundraiser,[162] and the Rockefeller Foundation also donated $200,000 to fund the ballet and opera companies for three years.

[181] As early as 1959, the CCMD was negotiating to move all of its shows from the former Mecca Temple to the newly-developed Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

As part of the proposed City Center Plaza, the CCMD wished to build four theaters, each with 400 to 800 seats, on the site of the third Madison Square Garden (MSG) on Eighth Avenue.

[223] CCMD officials considered selling the 55th Street theater in 1974 to a developer who planned to erect a residential and commercial skyscraper on much of the block.

[42][38] In addition, the lobby was expanded; the seats were re-upholstered; a wheelchair ramp was installed; decorations, including the chandeliers, were restored; and the auditorium was repainted.

According to Squadron, this would allow the foundation to expand the cramped stage; construct new storage areas; rebuild the balconies; replace the seats; and add ticket booths, bathrooms, and elevators.

[255] In addition, City Center's executive director Anthony Micocci was considering producing musicals at the theater by the late 1980s, after the stage had been renovated.

[268] City Center continued to host visiting dance companies like the ABT, which resumed performances there in 1996;[269] it also operated a dance-education program for middle-school students, which served 5,000 pupils per year by 1999.

[274][275] City Center hired architecture firm Helpern Architects and contractor Nicholson & Galloway in 2005 to repair the theater's leaky roof for $2.8 million.

As of 2023[update], Michael S. Rosenberg is listed as the president and CEO of New York City Center Inc.[296][297] For the fiscal year that ended in June 2020, the organization recorded $21,340,158 in revenue and $23,620,235 in expenses, for a total net loss of $2,280,077.