Ed Sullivan Theater

The story

The auditorium was deliberately designed to resemble a cathedral — domed ceiling with ribs, walls with stained glass — an unusual ambition for a Broadway house. Arthur Hammerstein built it between 1926 and 1927 as a memorial to his father, Oscar Hammerstein I, with architect Herbert J. Krapp giving it a neo-Gothic interior unlike anything else in the Theater District. The building has cycled through five names and shrunk from over 1,500 seats to 370, but its landmark interior — that cathedral logic — still anchors the room.