Al Hirschfeld Theatre

The story

A vaudevillian built one of Broadway's most architecturally ambitious theaters. Constructed for Martin Beck in 1924 and designed by G. Albert Lansburgh in a Moorish and Byzantine style, the building was conceived as a unified whole — facade and stage house treated as a single composition, with cast-stone columns, red brick upper stories, and vaulted interior lobbies decorated by muralist Albert Herter. Beck wanted something that outlasted the variety acts he'd made his name on. It did. The 1,404-seat house, now named for caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, remains a New York City landmark inside and out.