Shubert Alley

[3] A large chamber under the western half of the alley contained air-conditioning and mechanical systems for the seven theaters on the block: the Majestic, Broadhurst, Shubert, John Golden, Bernard B. Jacobs, Gerald Schoenfeld, and Booth.

[16] At the alley's northern end was a brownstone house, which until 1945 served as the residence of Frederick A. Muschenheim, the operator of the Hotel Astor.

[17][18] Shubert Alley continues to serve as a theater fire exit and often is filled with audience members during show-times and intermissions.

[22] Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS has held an Annual Flea Market and Grand Auction in Shubert Alley, selling props, costumes, and autographed memorabilia, almost every year since 1987.

[8][a] According to a 1942 New York Herald Tribune article, theatrical strategists would sometimes use pedestrian traffic, rather than box-office sales, as an indicator of whether Broadway theaters were successful.

[31] Theater scholar and professor Richard Hornby wrote in 1991: "In New York, the desirability of a theatre is inversely proportional to its distance from Shubert Alley.

[41] Before the theaters were built, the Times Square area had been largely residential, containing brownstone townhouses and some commercial tenants.

Since these side streets generally were not connected by midblock passageways, the first theaters were developed in a "series of unconnected clumps", as described by Christopher Gray of The New York Times.

[42] The project was canceled in December 1911, after the site had been cleared, when Ames announced he would build the Little Theatre (now the Hayes Theater) across 44th Street.

[49] The entire site was owned by the Astor family at the time,[50] but Shubert and Ames signed a long-term lease for the land under the theaters in 1912.

[58] These were followed by the Music Box in 1921; the Imperial in 1923; the Martin Beck (now Al Hirschfeld) in 1924; and the Majestic, Masque (Golden), Royale (Jacobs), and Erlanger's (St. James) in 1927.

Sardi's restaurant on 44th Street, across from Shubert Alley, became a popular meeting place in the Broadway theatrical community.

[14] The next year, Shubert Alley hosted what The New York Times dubbed "the first theatrical block party in Broadway's history":[59] a series of competitions judged by Al Jolson.

[53][56] Large posters, named "three-sheets" because they were three times the size of the "one-sheet" lobby cards, were hung from the fence to advertise shows underway in nearby theaters.

[68][70] The clocks, designed by Louis Gottlieb, used the letters of the phrase "Shubert Alley" in place of numerals for the hour marks.

[71] A wooden sign was also installed, with the text "In honor of all those who glorify the theater and who use this short thoroughfare, Shubert Alley".

[72][73] By then, Shubert Alley was one of three private thoroughfares in the city that was not a dead end; the others were Rockefeller Plaza and Thomas Street.

[17] A brick annex to the east, containing a carpentry shop and fire escapes for the Hotel Astor, was demolished during July and August 1949.

[17][70][76][b] The posters were moved to the side walls when the fence was removed,[53][74] and the buses were relocated to Port Authority Bus Terminal.

I got a shock when I found that Shubert Alley is now a smart lane of elegant small shops, instead of being the empty alley where there used to be only a couple of stage doors, parking space for producer Lee Shubert's elegant limousine, and a place where actors met to discuss which offices were casting a new show that day.

[78]From October 1950 to May 1952, the United Nations operated an unofficial information center in Shubert Alley,[79] staffed solely by women.

"[84] Sam Minskoff and Sons paid $10.5 million for the Hotel Astor and the eastern section of Shubert Alley in 1966.

[4][88] After One Astor Plaza was completed, a northward extension of the alley was proposed in 1969 as part of what would become the New York Marriott Marquis hotel between 45th and 46th Street.

In 1977, Maggie Minskoff tried to prevent producer Alexander H. Cohen, who worked in the Shubert Theatre, from parking there because of a personal dispute;[96] the argument continued for several months and nearly led to a lawsuit.

[55] On March 22, 2006, to mark the first anniversary of the official Broadway opening of the musical comedy Spamalot, the "World's Largest Coconut Orchestra" (1,789 people clapping half-coconut shells together) performed in Shubert Alley.

[103] The alley was closed temporarily in 2019 due to falling debris,[104] prompting a renovation that displaced the 2019 Broadway Barks event.