The auditorium is designed in a red-and-gold palette, with green and purple accents, and contains box seats and a decorative domed ceiling.

[3] In the first two decades of the 20th century, eleven venues for legitimate theatre were built within one block of West 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

[8][9][10] The theater's interior was intended to be completely fireproof, with marble stairways, artificial stone, and plaster surfaces with wire-net lathing.

[7] The seating areas were originally so steeply raked that The New York Times said "the big-hat question", in which some patrons' large hats obstructed other guests' views, "will never be raised in that house".

[62][63][21] George M. Jansen filed plans with the New York City Department of Buildings for a music hall and cafe at 207–211 West 42nd Street, to be designed by John E. Kerby, in June 1899.

[68] The theater hosted three additional plays during its inaugural season,[62] including In the Palace of the King, which featured Viola Allen for four months.

[12][34] During the theater's 1901–1902 season, the venue was rented out to producers, who presented such shows as Under Southern Skies, The Happy Hypocrite, and Mistress Nell.

[22][73] Belasco's assistant, Louis Hartmann, convinced him to add a laboratory directly above the dome to test out lighting and stage effects.

[81][82] Belasco's play Sweet Kitty Bellairs opened at the theater in December 1903,[83] running for more than 300 performances,[81][84] followed by The Music Master the next year.

[81] George Arliss, Cecil B. DeMille, Mary Pickford, and Tyrone Power Sr. were among the other actors who appeared at the Belasco in its early years.

[113] Cleves Kinkead's Common Clay opened at the theater in 1915,[114][115] running for over 300 performances,[77][116] and Clare Kummer's play Good Gracious, Annabelle was staged at the Republic the next year.

[126] The Republic presented a long-running transfer of the play Enter Madame in 1921,[127] as well as the farce Getting Gertie's Garter[128][129] and the comedy The Fair Circassian later the same year.

[137][138] Abie's Irish Rose ultimately ran for 2,327 performances through October 1927,[137][139] becoming the longest-running Broadway show at the time, a record that it held for six years.

[144] Bailey gave up his lease on the theater in December 1930, and Arthur Hammerstein announced plans to present talking films at the Republic.

[146] The Republic Amusement Corporation operated the theater for one month, presenting short films continuously and selling tickets for 25 cents.

[147] Billy Minsky, treasurer of the Holly Holding Company, leased the Republic in January 1931 with plans to present burlesque shows there.

[155][162] The police conducted raids on the Republic as early as April 1931, arresting managers and some of the performers for public indecency, but these actions only boosted the theaters' popularity.

[155] After he was elected mayor in 1934, Fiorello La Guardia began cracking down on burlesque and appointed Paul Moss as license commissioner.

[198] The same year, the City University of New York's Graduate Center hosted an exhibition with photographs of the Victory and other theaters to advocate for the area's restoration.

[209] While the LPC granted landmark status to many Broadway theaters starting in 1987, it deferred decisions on the exterior and interior of the Victory Theatre.

[213] The Urban Development Corporation (UDC), an agency of the New York state government, proposed redeveloping the area around a portion of West 42nd Street in 1981.

[222] From 1987 to 1989, Park Tower and Prudential hired Robert A. M. Stern to conduct a study on the Apollo, Lyric, Selwyn (later American Airlines), Times Square, and Victory theaters on the north side of 42nd Street.

As plans for the redevelopment of 42nd Street progressed, several critics lamented the fact that the Victory and other theaters on the block were no longer showing adult movies.

[257] New 42nd Street decided to convert the Victory into a space for live performances,[157] and it erected a sidewalk shed in front of the theater in July 1993, before renovation plans were even finalized.

[264] The restoration included rebuilding the original exterior double staircase and returning the rest of the theater to the way it looked during the Belasco era.

[269] TCI magazine said the theater's restoration proved that "Broadway's tarnished jewel boxes-even those languishing as porno houses-can be saved to support the legitimate theatre".

[270][271] The theater's initial season included acts such as Theatre for a New Audience, Urban Bush Women,[35][272] and the Metropolitan Opera Guild,[268][273] as well as film series.

[274] During the late 1990s, the theater hosted adaptations of shows such as Peter and Wendy,[275][276] The Wind in the Willows,[277][278] and It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues.

[263] The New Victory established a new work development program called LabWorks in 2012,[287][288] and the theater received a special Drama Desk Award the same year.

[291] The New Victory closed temporarily in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States,[292] although it continued to host children's and family shows online [293] which were also broadcast on WNET's Camp TV[294] and Let's Learn.